As I take into account all realms of possibility, and as Pearl Harbor day has come and gone another year, I think of the unspoken wounds of our parents and their parents before them and so on, since the beginning of time.

These wounds never stay closeted because we share these wounds, even if we barely know of their existence.

Tomaso’s father Donald was left stranded on the Pacific Islands for several years during World War II. He was a communications commander and often attempted, via Morse Code, to get attention of those who who would eventually rescue him.

Meanwhile Donald befriended the so-called natives and as Tomaso and his sister surmise, may have sired a few children while he was there. That aspect of things was never explored. Donald became proficient at making stills for grain alcohol otherwise known as moonshine. Hard to say how many people became alcoholics because of Donald E Harner.

Even moonshine fails to obliterate the memory of wounds in the underbelly of subconscious recollection. Donald was depressed when I knew him until his death, but was a character heralded by all who knew him. Tomaso was all of these things and much more. Rare personas, both of them.

My mother‘s parents divorced when she was three, and placed her in a Roman Catholic convent. She was raised by the nuns, until age 13. She suffered from abandonment and separation anxiety, yet I had no insight into her psychosis until I started to think about it as an adult. On the surface, I thought we were raised in a normal family, but the 1960s and 70s were not normal times. As a family, we were anti-Vietnam war activists and racial justice advocates. As a result, the John Birch society targeted my family routinely. I was a “red diaper baby,”

All this is not to say we are victims of the world of our ancestors.

But learning about them and facing them is the first step to releasing them. OM

**This is the alter I set up on All Saints Day, November 1, 2020. There's the picture of Tomaso playing the according. It sits on top of his very own ashes.**