I Come From

 

I come from Appalachian stock

From grandfathers who went into the bowels of the earth to collect coal and came out with faces black as night.Men who preached hell fire and brimstone gospels to country churches and sang shape note songs from paperback hymnals; and came home and spent their black company script on tobacco and brown liquor at the company store. Men who I barely knew because to them I was invisible.

I come from Grandmothers who were mean as snakes. Who babysat their grandkids while mama’s worked and who shamed you for doing wrong and made you think God felt the same way; women who thought the best way to make you behave was to cut a switch and wear you out. Women who hated beauty and called it evil and never cut their hair or put on makeup Women who believed children should be invisible.

I come from fathers who left the hills of Kentucky before they were old enough to drive and lied about their age to work in the factories of Michigan and Ohio so they could escape the black faces of the mines. Daddies who stayed home to watch John Wayne on Sunday mornings while mommas took the babies to church to scare the evil out of them. Men who told you to move out from in front of the TV so they could see. Men who wanted you to be invisible.

I come from Mothers who were cold and distant. Who sent you to your room after a whippin’ and made you stay there for what seemed like forever so you could practice being invisible. Mothers who cooked and cleaned and ironed t-shirts and pillow cases and handkerchiefs and made sure you did it too as soon as you were old enough to know how to not burn yourself on the iron. Women who waited on men hand and foot; brought them a coke while they lay shirtless on the couch watching the console tv.

I come from Ohio where everyone thought we were rich because our house was on a hill and we had an in-ground pool and a boat and a motor home and another house on the lake; but no one knew how much they fought about the money it took to pay for it all. Where I spent hours under the tree by myself being invisible, catching bees and lightening bugs in a jar with holes in the lid; looking for four leaf clovers and fairy rings in the creek bed and making cloud pictures in my mind while I looked for proof that there was more than the house on the hill. Where I watched movies with women who wore beautiful gowns walking down curved staircases in mansions; where everyone was pretty and ate food on dishes with flowers, rimmed in gold; women who were anything but invisible.

I come from a family that left for Birmingham when I was 12 to chase more money and fill up the house with pride and arrogance and stuff that made you look like you weren’t from Appalachia. But everyone did know because you put fake deer under the trees in the front yard even when the HOA said you couldn’t; and you built a pool house that looked like a barn in Appalachia in a neighborhood that looked like the Brady Bunch lived there. And we certainly weren’t invisible even though I wished we were  

 I come from a family who gave no direction on how to live other than go to church every time they opened the doors and don’t drink or smoke or cuss or have sex because if you get pregnant, you can’t come home and by God, you better be invisible then! And don’t expect them to help you figure out what to do after graduation. They didn’t go to college and they have all this stuff, so why do you need to go. And if you decide to do that, then you need to move yourself; and now that you are gone, you really are invisible.

I come from a family who lost it all. Who watched the IRS lock up the family business and foreclose on the house. From a family who gave you the choice to stay behind and fend for yourself at college and stay invisible or come with them to Memphis to start over. And because you didn’t think you could survive without them, you leave everything good behind…the scholarship, the boyfriend who was the first person who really loved you and made you know you weren’t invisible and the job where they saw promise in you and promoted you.

I come from a marriage to a man who I thought was the closest thing to Jesus on this earth; who I thought was too good for Appalachian blood and who would save me from becoming like them. A man whose silence I mistook for depth and wisdom and who I trusted implicitly. A man, who with no words, could make me feel like I should just be grateful that he saw me even though he never saw me because I was invisible. I come from a marriage where I was a shroud, covering the shame in a man who could not admit to or own his own sin that was as black as the faces coming from the coal mines; a man who kept a whole other life invisible. 

I am Karen Gale Jones Dixon and I have another name that is written in heaven that I do not know yet.

I come from a God who sent a young mom to teach me that God isn’t waiting to punish me but instead loves me and saw me sitting under the tree looking for a sign in the clouds. I come from a God who taught me to sing from my heart without hymnals and shape notes. I come from a God who gave me children when I thought I wasn’t a good enough mom to have them. I come from a God who saw me married to a man who bought my beauty with a broken promise and HE said “ENOUGH”  and rescued me so that he could heal me from the grandfathers and grandmothers and mothers and fathers and husbands who never really saw me. I come from a God who laid with me face down on the floor as I wailed in pain and doubted his love and blamed him for failing me and who held me as I kicked and screamed and waved my fist in his face; a God who holds my broken pieces together and lifts me out of the pit

I come from a God who continually shows himself to me in clouds and four-leaf clovers and bees and fireflies in my flower garden that I planted, which reminds me I'm not invisible. I come from a God who loves when I use my mother’s bone china with flowers and gold rims to serve my friends who have loved me well; a God who blesses my love of beauty and calls it very good; a God who sings over me while I sleep and speaks his word hidden in my heart back to me when I doubt.

I come from El Roi- the God of Hagar who was also invisible and to whom he revealed himself as the God who sees.

I am Karen and I am not invisible.