Finding Leadville Chapter 2: I'm Sorry, I Love You

The author recalls walking with her mother to say "I love you, I'm sorry" to the bees

I did not like this. Not one bit. 

At barely six years old, I fought to keep the tears from my eyes. My mother’s hand was nestled in mine and we walked lightly through the tall, un-mowed grass in our side yard. We were barefoot, the loose linen of our dresses slipping around our calves with the summer breeze. Dragonflies and butterflies flitted enroute to sunny landing places: the wild rose bush by the woodshed and the sea of dandelions beyond it. A bee buzzed much too closely to us. A breath caught in my throat and I gasped involuntarily, burying my face in my mother’s legs. 

“It’s okay,” my mother softly nudged as I gripped her thighs, “Say: I love you, bees. I’m sorry, bees.”

The haven of her skirted legs was appealing, safe. The bees were not. 

I felt her hand press against the blonde of my head and she swooped my hair through her fingers, a gentle prompt. I peered out nervously before retreating back into the fabric tussle. 

“I love you, bees,” I whispered into her body. 

Turning and crouching, she met me at eye level, rubbing my back as she did so. I was safe now. I was okay. The bees weren’t here to harm me, especially if I wasn’t harming them.

Two days earlier, I was swarmed by a throb of them, my bare summer skin lit up by their defenses. Moments before the onslaught, one of my five brothers and I were playing thoughtlessly behind the old barn at the back of our home’s property. Layered piles of boards laden with nails, rotten slabs of old wood, and rusted pipe littered the ground. This area was out-of-bounds; yet, my siblings and I never paid much attention to that rule. Play consumed us with make-believe time travel into colonial times and we built rickety forts in the hallowed silo nearby. 

My brother shouted some kind of call-to-action, like ”Charge!” or maybe even, “To the summit!” I followed after him, charging or to-ing, high knees and punching fists. Suddenly, we lost our footing. The boards beneath us gave way and our little legs crashed through the rotted wood. 

Barely a second passed before a buzzing swarm encapsulated us. I was blinded by the fury. Red raged across my eyes and through the buzz I could only hear screaming. Who is screaming? I remember thinking. Of course, it was me.

A door slammed beyond the barn and a furious crunch of footsteps rained closer toward us. I was lost in a black daze that arrived with extreme pain, and then the shock of nothingness. It could have been a lifetime or seconds – I felt myself lift off the ground and pulled into a familiar armpit. My father. Sweeping mounds of bees from my skin, he somehow transported both of us from the back of the barn into the house. Ice cold water, as sudden as the stings. I gasped as dad plunged me into the bathtub. 

There were moments in my early thirties where I purposefully sought out the relief of an ice dip like this. Living in the tundra of a Minnesota winter meant the land of 10,000 lakes –  ice sheets that some Minnesotans would carve holes into. There, people like me would show up in bathing suits and water shoes, the temps in the single digits, and drop into the January lake. 

I’m sure my father took us from the ice bath to the hospital and I’m sure it was stressful. Both my brother and I were safe and cared for in the end. I got a pink panther ice cream pop and delighted in the hard candy nose that turned to gum. That day, my father was my hero. I thought he'd always hold me tight and scoop bees off of my skin, lessening pain as much as he could in my life. 

I found my father emotionally unpredictable in my childhood, a complicated explosion of uncertainty. He was hardworking: laboring in the garden on the weekends and full days at the Correctional Center during the week. He was creative: building furniture for my mother, planting beautiful trees with the seasons, and tuning the harmonica to our giggling whims. But, he also seemed tired, easily angered. He had little patience for giggles-too-loud and the constant whirr of chatter that came from a house with twelve children. All too many happy moments were broken by the whiplash of his emotions.

Spanking, as for many in the 80s and 90s, was a formality in our home. If we misbehaved, if we got too loud, if we were too much, we got a spanking.

It was as normal as breakfast or brushing our teeth. First, we’d do something that was tagged as naughty. Then, we were ushered to the stairs – a commonplace spot in the home for a public rump slap. My father would pull our pants down, exposing our bare butts to the audience of siblings who, no doubt, were “learning their lesson,” and slap us, hard and loud. Red marks from the wedding ring on his left hand accompanied my skin. Commonplace in the 90s, many of us have this story. I believe that my parents did the best they could with the information that they had. They were using force as a means to parent well. But, of course-- it hurt.

A social worker by education, dad has a good friend whom we affectionately called Uncle. One day, Uncle informed my father that he should use a belt instead of hand spanking. If so, Uncle reasoned, the child would associate the punishment to the tool instead of the parent, protecting the relationship of father and child. 

It was Saturday afternoon nap time. We were supposed to be snoozing. The box fans in each room were whirling, sending lazy hot air around the otherwise stagnant room. 

Instead of choosing sleep, we opted to dash in a frenzied game of tag. My mom was nursing one of my baby sisters in her bedroom, my dad out in the garden. A false sense of freedom empowered us.

Like an indoor track, the top floor was set up so that one could run down the hall, zip through the girls’ bedroom with the two bunk beds through the open doorway to the adjoining laundry room and ricochet oneself out that doorway to the top of the stairs, ready to sprint around all over again. (In later years, I would be an avid indoor track athlete and participate in many joyful, excited loops inside, no spanking interruptions telling me to stop, just the bell at the final lap telling me to GO AND GO NOW.) 

Zooming around inside though was classic naughty behavior. Even naughtier when my father walked into the house, beaten by the sun and weary from the week of working with inmates. We were blissfully unaware of his entrance – we ran, we screamed, we made happy noises. 

Before I knew what was happening, red rage engulfed the room. This time, my father wasn’t there to save me. This time, it was him. This time, he had his belt clamped in hand and wasted no time hitting it against my backside. 

Unsurprisingly, I was confused. Was my father there to protect and care for me? Or was he the one I needed protection from? Why did I want to spend the early mornings with him on his fishing trips, hoping to feel special in his presence, while there were welts still freshly healing on my bottom? I don’t know if this confusion is special. I don’t think it is.

Our parents, imperfect in their humanity, bring us into the world, care for us to the best of their ability. The very thing our parents wanted as a child, they might be incapable of creating fully with their children. As a 36-year-old with a widened lens, I have compassion for my parents; we only have access to the tools we have access to. As a 6-year-old attempting to learn what freedom felt like in my legs and what adventure felt like in my soul? There was no way I could grasp that concept.  

My mom got good at explaining away my father’s behavior: “He was once hit by a car,” she’d explain, “He’s quick to anger. Be good and he won’t get provoked.”

I can understand the intention of love there. I know my mother loves my father fiercely. And I can respect that. But what did I learn from those moments? What was the lasting impression that followed me into adulthood? I think part of it is that men can get absolution for their bad behavior, for unregulated emotions, for being at fault. I learned that men can get the write-offs and excuses and "oh-pardon-him" – and little girls, when they aren’t good or following the rules or being nice and quiet and sweet ... little girls get punished. (My brothers were certainly not immune to any of this.)

Thus began my complicated (and tiresome) understanding that the man who could protect me and love me, could also harm me; that it was imperative to be a "good girl" to be loved, to be worthy. I had to be the one to say, "I love you. I'm sorry." I carried this falsehood in my heart; it kept me safe in my body as a child and, naturally, it followed me throughout my life.

I wanted -- want -- to be worthy, to be special, to be seen.

And so, when my dad took up running, I did, too.

This is part of an ongoing series called, Finding Leadville. This story tracks the journey of Barbara Powell as she discovers, trains for, and runs the 2023 Leadville 100. It chronicles her experience in emotional healing, navigating elements of the patriarchy, Catholicism, and forgiveness, and the simple-yet-profound power of just moving forward. We are all worthy of love and we all deserve to tell our story.