“Children should be seen not heard!” is a phrase my mother used to employ frequently throughout my childhood. She said it when she wanted to emphasize how little my personal wants and needs mattered in the grand scheme of things.
One of my favorite books from my youth was titled Trophy Kid Or How I Was Adopted by the Rich & Famous by Steve Atinsky and it was about an immigrant child who was adopted by a facsimile of power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie when they were together. The main character Joe’s internal struggle was his constant ennui in spite of his very privileged upper-class lifestyle. The book begins with a soldier saving him from a war-torn clity after his home country somewhere in the Middle East is obliterated. Even though he now resides in a mansion in Beverly Hills with his adopted family. Despite having everything a person could possibly ever want he was unhappy, depressed even. His parents were barely home due to their busy movie and touring schedules. He spent most of his days either with the housekeeper/nanny or completely alone. I related heavily to this story primarily because of my own upbringing. I didn’t spend large swathes of time with my parents as a child because they were both busy working, when they weren’t doing that they were running errands on the weekend, partying, or sleeping. The first 12 years of my life were spent being sent down to my parent’s country and being raised by my grandparents and extended family. My mother’s voice bounces around my skull like a rubber handball. The kind we used to buy at the cornerstone growing up and immediately lose upon it bouncing onto the next-door neighbor’s roof. “Children should be seen NOT heard!” she’d snarl.
At one point during the start of the pandemic, my older brother full-on charged at me and attacked me for pointing out his constant coughing and hacking and hair loss were most likely definite signs of coronavirus. He pushed my body roughly into the solid wall next to my bedroom door and the back of my skull bounced off it. At what should have been a small intimate outdoor gathering celebrating my graduation from college he invited his friends from high school and began to play his music loudly and even set up a hookah for them all. Most of his guests went straight to the food table and didn’t even bother to greet me. I made sure my own friends had a good time before attempting to complain to my mother the next day. I showed her my bruises. I begged and pleaded with her to finally acknowledge me. “What would have happened if my head had been smashed into the wall?! Or if he had managed to push me down the stairs?!” “I guess…he would have killed you. You’d probably be dead” she said flatly barely looking up from her computer. I remember being 8 years old then and recalling how she would always be so busy with work. I used to dream of days her Blackberry would self-destruct.
When I had a therapist she told me sayings like that were common amongst older generations, especially Caribbean, African, and Latin American ones. Years ago I read another book, although the title of this one I cannot recall. In it, the main character speaks of the art of slinking. He describes the way in which cats of all sizes mostly do it to stalk their prey or proceed undetected as they meander from one area to another. Prior to the pandemic and college, this was an art form that I had seemingly mastered. I slunk by undetected keeping my head down (for the most part) doing what needed to be done just to get through it all. Just read this book, just study for this test, just run this race, just fill out this application, just ask for this letter of recommendation, just make this list of colleges, just go to this college, just get your degree. I’ve protested, I’ve chanted, I’ve donated, I’ve helped, I’ve harmed and made it out largely unscathed to tell the tale. I also have a complex where if I feel like I am being purposefully ignored and/or misunderstood I tend to fly off the handle. Because although I am no longer a child deep down inside I hear and feel “children should be seen not heard.”
