Epiphany

According to Ulmer, the epiphany is a "primal scene... in our context this is to say that the scene registers the subject's experience of interpellation" (63). When he describes the exercise that goes along with this theory he calls for a sensory description of a setting of "a moment of understanding or realization about yourself or the world" from youth.

The tricky thing is, I have many moments of understanding. My childhood was not steeped in misery, I was the loved child of two parents who took great pains to ensure my healthy growth both physically and mentally. Now, I am aware that the epiphany need not be connected to some childhood trauma but it would appear that traumatizing events are hotbeds for instruction- great learning emerges from great tragedy. And even as I look through my relatively blissful boyhood this holds somewhat true. The last of five children (an older brother and three older sisters) ours was a rambunctious, close knit family of varied  personalities that shared a common bind of fierce loyalty. We were the only ones allowed to make fun of us. I was made bluntly aware of just how far that family loyalty would go one summer when my aunt, uncle and cousins were visiting from St. George, Ut.

My siblings and I on my wedding day

We had a pool in our backyard, and during Arizona summers there is only one place to be outside in the blistering heat, and that is in the pool. Our St. George cousins, themselves accustomed to sweltering summers, were happily splashing about with our family in the pool. I was perhaps six years old at the time, just old enough to be out with everyone but not quite old enough to fully participate in the fun, my oldest sister being 17 and the ages ranging pretty evenly right down to me. The air was filled with sounds, the cousins yelling, my siblings laughing and the parents chatting idly in the shade of the patio with the exception of my uncle, who was mixing it up in the pool with the kids. One of the parents thought it would be fun to start a water fight (seeing as we were all wet already) and brought out a giant laundry hamper full of facecloths. These cloths, once wetted, became  perfect reusable projectiles.

Soon, the pool was a battlefield. Everyone was throwing the towels back and forth, the war split fairly evenly between families. Being six years old and about 40 pounds soaking wet and no muscle my job (as delegated by my oldest sister, the General) was to pick up the enemy's spent missiles and stack them on the side of the pool for my siblings to use. We were losing the battle quite frankly (though to
this day no one remembers keeping any sort of score, but the battle was not going our way), for my uncle was of course marshaling the forces of his children and was zipping wet cloths at us with deadly accuracy. It was exactly one of these wadded up cloths that caught me in the face as I was gathering towels, surprising me and knocking me over a low wall and into a patch of spiky bushes. I immediately began to cry but was quickly calmed by my second oldest sister, who had come to my aid and immediately began carefully brushing the needles off me. I still remember looking into the pool at my remaining siblings, all trace of fun wiped from their faces. My sisters and brother took it as a personal offense and decided my uncle had taken it too far. With what could only be described as shooting daggers with their eyes they got out of the pool. Wordlessly wrapping their towels around their wastes, pausing only to give my uncle disgusted looks we all walked as one, silently (save for my whimpering) still dripping, into the house.

Aunt Pam, Uncle Scott and small cousin

Looking back on it now I am self-conscious. This story has been told and retold, and I always wonder if I had just sucked it up a little bit would we have stormed out of the pool that day and caused a rift in the family. That incident was the beginning of an unspoken rule in our house, "Uncle Scott is a jerk." It was not until almost a decade later, when we moved and spent more time with them, that we became disabused of this notion.

To me, this was the very essence of tragedy, the hamartia, the tragic error. Did my Uncle Scott plan to hit me too hard and send me careening into the roughage? Certainly not. As my Uncle I have no doubt he felt familial affection for me (or I should hope). But he aimed too high, hit me just in the wrong spot and was made an outcast from our family circle for years. This simple error of offending one's family is a very real possibility for us all, I realized it was a mistake at the time but was far too caught up in a feeling of solidarity to suggest we go easy on him. It was too much fun to all have someone to hate. Looking back on it now the thought fills me with pity and fear, we are all just one wet towel away from many missed years of friendship.