As the young man continues to talk and explain it all to our lady’s dragon, our young woman above smiles down on them with the knowledge that our dragon will be learning all he needs now to continue. Warmth fills her being as she knows that once that door is open to knowledge the darkness can no longer take a strong hold again. Though shadows will always try to blanket the world, it is the knowledge of being able to see the light once that will enable any soul to continue that journey back to the light and source of all love.

She steps away from the top of the hill and sets out to find the other women who will begin to weave all the knowledge needed to begin the healing of the dragon’s lady. Long hours and detailed threading of design will be woven into every inch of the delicate silk strand needed. The name of this has been many things indeed. These women do not care what it is called by those who seek it for healing, it truly has no earthly name.

Just as one can not give Love to another person or receive love as a gift from another so is the way it is with the woven threads they must now create. Love is a word. It is not a feeling for it is what one has been raised to know of it. If you are raised where love hurts, then that will be what Love feels like to you. Those who know the Father and the Mother’s Love truly know what Love feels like. Their Love is warm, secure, peaceful, joyous and always present.

Anyone who is darkness can be brought back into the light once they have been bathed in the light and the doors of knowledge are opened to them. The weaving that needs to be done now will repair the holes and weakened areas of her Tapestry of the life she came to witness. The best place to start is not always the beginning for sometimes the hole opened up creates a more immediate need, yet in this case the fairies have held up their work with this lady to assure that she would not fall into the acrimonious part of earthly living.

We will need to consult many now to compare her chart and original tapestry to assure that all is set back on the correct path. Together we will search for the very first thread added to the weave and travel along it until we find the first worn or break is found and repaired. I’ll go now and find the other women and fairies of the forest who will begin this task as we have done countless other times.

The beginnings of my childhood...

These stories are actually facts repeated over my years and since they have not changed in context I can safely assume that these things really did happen.

From my mother's story she has told every one over the years, that the first words out of my mouth she had to slap me for. It seems that with having 2 older sisters and 2 older brothers I'd didn't have much of a chance to get any words in there. But along the way I was learning words and she probably just never had the time to sit and listen to me.

One day when I was almost 15 months old she was changing my diaper and I told her "to get her damn hands off of me" Pretty bold words for my first try. She of course had to slap me so that I would know that they were not the proper words to say to your mother. Like at 15 months or so I knew any different. She could not for the life of her figure out where I learned them.

There was a time in my life where I figured that I had over heard perhaps from my father who had a habit of when he got mad going into the bedroom and cussing under his breath. And that did make sense because each baby slept in our parent’s room until the next one came along. So by the time I was just over 1 year old I would have been in the other bedroom with 4 older children about a year apart each.
It wasn't until I was grown and been through a few marriages myself that the thought came to my mind. After having the sixth child I could envisage where those words might have come from. I know for my self after having just three children saying to my husband "get your damn hands off of me" Which means for me I was slapped for repeating an adult. My mother would never admit to using such language. But it sure made more sense to me. Doesn’t matter where I learned them I had no knowledge other to repeat what I had learned though she would swear no one spoke those words around me.

The next story is about my eating habits. As the story goes, when my mother went into the hospital to have my brother, Michael, the rest of us kids had to go and stay at her friend’s house. Gretchen was her name and I believe her husband’s name was Walt. They had two older children and since back then they usually kept the mother in the hospital for a week while my dad went to work we stayed with them.

During that stay Gretchen was talking to my mother on the phone and she was asking how we where all doing. Of course we where fine. She asked how she was making out with me because I was such a fussy eater. She always had to cut my food up in little tiny bits in order for me to get them down. Gretchen assured her that I had been no problem, in fact I was eating all my food normally, with no special treatment.

That did not go over well, to say the least. Now at just over a year old I was an embarrassment for her.

So the story goes on with my mother coming home from the hospital and us all being picked up at Gretchen’s by our father to go home.

Now caring for 6 children with two of us still unable to do anything for ourselves was too much for my mother. She tells the story about how she always made breakfast for my father. And he had even offered once to make breakfast when he was home on Sundays, but she would not have that because it was her duty. But one day shortly after the sixth child was in the picture she was so overwhelmed after we got back from church, mind you we all went to 7:00 am mass, that she started to cry and snapped at my father to help out. Which from that day forward he cooked breakfast every Sunday after church.

Then there was a time my father's mother came for her two weeks. This Grandma had 13 children and she spent a few weeks at each one of their houses throughout the year. Hey, I guess it saved her rent.

Now I have to tell you about this woman. My father left home when he was just 16 to get away from her. She was about the bitterest person under the roof. She would make my brothers and sisters sit at the table until they had eaten ALL of their spinach. Got the picture? She was tough to say the least.

So can you guess my Mother's surprise when her Mother called her to ask if she was ok and what was going on over there. Her Mother said that His Mother had called her this morning with concern about how she was treating me. So I don't have to spell out the conversation she must have had with my Father when he got home.

She tells that she was very upset over her actions and told him about the difficult time she was having with me at mealtime. She knew I could eat my food whole because I had done it at Gretchen's while she was in the hospital. So my Dad decided to come home for lunch the next day to see if he could help the situation and please both women at the same time.

The next day at lunch time my Father made me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a staple back then, and placed the sandwich in front of me. And of course I proceeded to eat the whole thing. My Father made me open my mouth and the sandwich was gone. No problem here at all. With that my Father went back to work and left the rest up to my mother.

I’m quite sure she was not pleased with me for the third time in my young life. She was mad as hell, she says, when no sooner had my father closed the door I reached into my mouth and scrapped the sandwich off the roof and threw it on the table in front of me.

I laugh now just thinking about that scenario and I remember my Mother joking about it later on in my life, but even though I don't recall what happened then, something tells me it was not so funny to her at the time.

I'll tell you now that there had to be another me then to be so good at embarrassing my Mother before I was even two years old.

Now some of us do believe in the theory that we are born dissociate and we are effected by the situations that happen in our lives. It makes a lot of sense to me when I talk to my brothers and sisters and they where raised by the same parents and where subject to the same " discipline" and "punishments" that I was, yet feel entirely different without any "PTSD" evident in their lives.

The Doctor's Opinion
Back then you had one family doctor. This doctor not only delivered you but saw to the families after care. Dr. Weis if memory serves me. All but the first and the last child were born in All Soul's Hospital, in Morristown, New Jersey. A Catholic Hospital for a Catholic family.

During a regular scheduled visit my Mother talked about her concerns for my eating habits. Well you have to know that my mother almost starved to death as a child because her mother was told to just leave her and she'd eat when she got hungry. Which as my Mother tells it almost happened. So with this knowledge in her heart what could he suggest for me?

She says the good doctor said that we just might have the same temperament and since I was healthy and thriving not to worry too much about it. I guess she didn't have much time to worry about it because after Michael the next 4 came just two years apart. There were a couple of miscarriages in between them. Before we knew it we where a family of 10. My brother, Philip, was born July 26, 1961. He was born a Mongoloid, affected with Down's syndrome. He would be the biggest burden in my life yet the biggest blessing.

With the entire extra works that went into raising a child with Down's syndrome, it was four years and one miscarriage before my youngest brother, Bart was born. He was born December 27, 1965. He was to be the baby of this family. Mostly what I remember is thinking what a name for the poor kid to try to spell when he got to kindergarten, BARTHOLOMEW. Up till then I was the only one who had the longest and hardest name to spell. JACQUELINE We where tied but at least he got a good nickname from his. There was no shortening mine at all. And once my mother slipped when she went to say JACQUELINE it came out DRACQUELINE and my siblings never forgot.

I learned early that True love hurts

What should have been good memories with my father ended in pain?
Gosh, now here's a struggle, where to begin. I'm not really sure when I became aware of that man who up to some point in my life was only a voice.

The sound of his voice must have been a great trigger in my younger life because I really have no picture in my mind of what my Father looked like when I was real young. The presence of him I can feel but not the man himself.

In order to support such a large family as ours my father seemed to always be working. I do remember that he worked at a Post Office as a mailman a lot of years. In fact there's a story I'll share with you that comes to my mind as I think about that job.

Money was, to say the least, somehow linked to the fact that my father was not home most of the time. When he was there it had to be order otherwise there was twice the hell to pay. The need for my father to have his control and the need of my mother to show she was doing a good job raising us kids. She still brags to this day that the neighbors and friends who came to our house could never believe that so many children actually lived under this roof. In other words we where taught early to be seen and not heard. And unless called upon the seen part could be left out too.

Just before I was born my family moved from a little rental house to the family’s own house. It was a Cape Cod style and for those who don't know what that is it's a two bedroom house with a large sloped ceiling attic and a large enough foundation under it to add rooms. What started out as a two bedrooms, living room, kitchen, and bath, with a front porch became in the end over many years, a five bedroom house with a large laundry/storage area in the basement. It was like a rec room until my brothers were grown. Then it became the boy’s room down stairs. But still the house only had one bath.

I still marvel at how a family of 11 children and 2 adults made due for the 18 years I lived there with just one bathroom. I live by myself right now and still use two baths.

This one bathroom was the cause of a few of things, which shaped my younger years. Back then the locks on bathroom doors didn’t have the easy access hole like we have today. There most likely wasn’t one of us who didn’t accidentally lock the door. Some where along the years my mother took to taking the works of the handle to stop that from happening. The result of this was she had easy access to the bathroom no matter who was in it. Also it became easy access to any one else in the family also.

Many times one of my siblings would open the door for their own purpose whether they knew you were in there or not. My mother would also have us pull the bath curtain if someone else needed the bathroom while you were taking your bath. Many times the brothers would pull the curtain back to peek. Instead of protecting us girls from this she would just make you hurry up and get the bath done incase some one else needed to use the bathroom. It was beyond her what was going on.

When the boys couldn’t get away with that they would crawl up on the back shed roof and look in through the window. My mother didn’t see any use for curtains and for all of my life doors on the bedroom was unheard of. This also allowed the boys to watch you dress in your room.

I remember my father's post office job because some times my mother would need the car and she'd have to get us up and take us with her to drop my father off at work. He walked his mail route around Rainbow Lakes 5 days a week.

He always had Sundays off, the other day I was not sure. I know that he worked a second job at nights at the Rainbow Inn bartending. I remember once going there with my mom to bring back some glass bottles we had. So those are the only two pictures I have of my father and work. The back of the post office and the front of the bar room. Didn’t have any of those" take your daughter to work" days back then.

I remember that there was always change on the shelf between the kitchen and dining area every night. It was always there and I remember taking it off there one night. The next day my mother was asking every one of us, who had taken the money. There was so many it could have been anyone, but she went on to tell us that it was your fathers lunch money and he had to go hungry because some thief took that money. It must have happened before I was in school because I know that I sat during the day thinking of my poor father having to go hungry because I had taken the money. It was a good lesson for me to learn because after I put the money back on the shelf I never took another thing that didn't belong to me in that house, Except one.

Some times when we where on summer vacation and it was grocery day my father would take a couple of us with him to the store. It was named Penny Savor or something like that. I remember being there only once for sure. I can still remember the old dirty wooden floors, and assume that the only way I remember that is from my father not being pleased with me being on the old dirty floor. I remember getting a choice between wheatee and cheerios. I don't know which one I picked because we always had a box of each in the cabinet. It probably was a joke on me back then and an attempt to appease me perhaps.

That was about the two personal things I remember that includes my father and me. The rest of the stories seem to be cluttered with the rest of my brothers and sisters.

One of my father's favorite things to do that he still does to this day with the small ones is to invite them up on his lap and then rub his coarse whiskers across their face. When my children where little and I'd see him do that I would comfort them after wards and taught them check for those whiskers before excepting any invites. The feelings of that have stuck with me to this vary day. I never doubted my father's love for me; it's just that in those all to few brief moments alone in his lap what was meant in fun really hurt. I know today I still have very sensitive skin, and the men in my life learned real quickly not to try to cuddle with an unshaven face. It still hurts.

So I guess I was real young when the line between love and affection became blurred with play and pain. And after watching my father love my own children I truly believe that he didn’t think of it as hurting. I even told him once my kids starting checking his face before they'd jump into his lap, that they where just checking so his whickers wouldn't get them.

The great healing in my life was moving up to where they lived in Pennsylvania and raising my own kids on their property. It gave me the opportunity to tell my father how it felt to on the other end of things. And say it lovingly because by then I had learned that as a parent we sometime do things not meaning to hurt our children. I had already started to break the cycle that I saw becoming real with my children.

Each time I would witness them discipline one of my children the way they did us, I would have that talk right then and there about how I felt and how I wanted my children to feel about me. My father was much more teachable then my mother was. Until some how it became her idea to treat them different.

I remembered from my childhood the times when my father would take all of us children sleigh riding. One particular day we where at a big hill behind the towns hospital. St. Claire’s Hospital It probably was good to be there so if your kid got run over with a sled or toboggan you where close to the emergency room. This one time that I recall so well was that after some time of getting hurt going down the slope with the older ones, and of course they knew every large bump there was that would throw you off, I stopped going down.

They all told me I was being a baby, which I probably was still, and as I stood there just watching them my feet started to get real cold. The extent of our winter ware as I remember was just a coat and rubber boots you put on over your shoes. I remember complaining to my father that I was cold and since the other kids where not ready to go home, I was told to go sit in the car.

I don't know how long it took them to finish and go home, but I do remember my mother making me put my feet in the bath tub to warm up. And if any of you has ever had frost bite you know how painful that process is. Once again care was blurred by pain.

I did survive it and many years later when we moved up to my parents property, perceive how I felt when my mother informed me that I had to buy the children that first year, good snow boots. The winter was so cold that she had to go out and buy good boots for herself her first year.

Actually it probably was the first time in my mother’s life that she had to be out in the cold and finally got to feel how cold your feet can get if they are not protected well enough. An opportunity for me to tell her that I remembered being young and my feet always got cold the minute I went outside. Once any part of your body gets frostbite it never fully recovers.

So I was surprised but glad that she could understand something about it and even though she could never understand that some sort of validation or "god forbid" an apology was what I childishly looked for, the adult side of me felt good.

I do believe that I was blessed with these times with my parents. Even though I know that they could never fully understand the things that shaped my life, I know that in some way the parts of my childhood where they personally were the injuring party has been laid to rest.

As my story goes on there are many parts that they have no clue about or any chance of understanding the impact my younger years had in shaping my younger experiences.