Facing the Music Read Online Free

began to write in code. I wasn’t about to let her think that she had any power over me. I created my own unique scheme of symbols to replace each letter of the alphabet. They were simple substitutions that any fan of cryptic word games could solve, but it was my only defense. I wrote so much and so often that the second script became fluid and natural to my hand. At the very least, my stepmother would have to spend time deciphering it, and then she would know that I was onto her.
    It must have gotten on her nerves, because one day she snapped. In an elaborate spring-cleaning ruse, she instructed me to go and clean up my room. As soon as I opened the door to my bedroom, I saw that my pages were littered all over the floor. Seeing my secrets out in the open, a chill came over my body and I could only stand there, frozen in fear.
    She proceeded to rifle through my things, confiscating all my paper and pencils. Arcing toward an apoplectic fit, she shredded countless sheets into confetti, snowing my room with my private dreams.
    I had never witnessed another human being so overcome with anger, and now, without the sanctuary of my pages, I had no way to protect myself from it.
    My father heard about the incident when my stepmother told him that I had been falsely accusing her of malevolence in my diaries. I was grounded in my room for several weeks as a result, but in all, his response was muted compared to the tragedy it felt to me. He offered little acknowledgment that I was truly hurting inside. Several days would pass before I would realize that the significance of the episode had actually appeared on his radar.
    Not long after, my father presented me with an old metal toolbox. It seemed a strange gift at first, but then he handed me a padlock and some paint to decorate it. Without a single word about what had happened with my stepmom, it was clear that he understood. He made a way for me to find safety as best he could. He couldn’t rescind the punishment I was serving, lest he, too, encounter my stepmother’s wrath, but he gave me the combination to the padlock. He directed me to a place in the barn, high in the rafters, where he had constructed a safe hiding place for my new treasure chest. In one of the most enduring and compassionate acts of his life, he gave me what mattered most, his best available love.
    Now that I had a new place to keep my writing, along with the assumed protection of my father, the codes became unnecessary. Still, I had learned a valuable lesson. The secrets of the heart are vulnerable and more valuable than I had ever imagined.
    For as much as the experience changed the spirit of our home, it began shaping my writing as well. I was maturing. My thoughts and dreams were becoming less childlike and more cerebral in tone. I was shifting from the daily news to the more philosophical and poetic. I was noticing the world around me. I was becoming increasingly more aware of my own ability to contemplate the world around me: Who am I? What is life all about? What do I do with all these feelings I have inside of me? I began writing with abandon, hopeful and refreshed that my voice mattered, that somehow, I was capable of being heard.
    In many ways, what I wrote in those pages were like my prayers to God. My grandmother’s forced marches through Sunday school must have made some kind subconscious connection. I began to find comfort in the idea that what I spoke of in my pages seemed to find a sympathetic ear. As if, somehow, though I could not see the Listener, I was being heard. Life suddenly began to open up, not to just the things I could see with my own eyes. There seemed to be a kind of spirit weaving it all together. A sensation. A knowing. A presence of some spiritual nature that acknowledged my existence in the universe.
    I would find myself sneaking outside in the middle of the night to try to find it. I would lie on my back, beneath the big Kansas sky, and imagine myself as a