by Sara Mcgrath

Created on: April 09, 2008   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

The Irish say that the bogeyman is a type of faerie who lives in the bog and kidnaps children so he can play with them. They say that he keeps them a year and a day, but he kept me for six years.

I didn't grow up with my father, Lance, my favorite of my mother's friends. I grew up with Ann's father, who I called Dad for the first seven years of my life, those years when children believe in magic and bogeymen. He stands only five feet, eight inches tall, but his shadow stretches the length of my life and beyond. I catch glimpses of it, looming behind me when I stand alone in the shower, arising from dark corners where I feel too afraid to turn and look.

I do not like to refer to him as Ann's father for the reason that I would lift the burden of his name from her if I cannot lift the burden of his blood. I would call him instead by his given name of Michael, or his common name of Mike, as I called him for many years, but those are my husband's names, so they battle in my subconscious for the status of good or evil.

After that first Michael, the first man I ever met, I next heard of the archangel whose name served as the war-cry of the angels in the battle fought in Heaven against Satan, the ultimate bogeyman. But having already associated the name with badness, with evil, I feared the heavenly warrior whom I imagined with black hair, black eyes, and supernatural strength. No glowing white angels visited my childhood dreams.

Sara, also a biblical name, means princess.

I snuggled in on the couch with my grandmother and my little sister to listen to stories about princesses. These princesses attracted trouble like closets attract monsters, and when trouble befell a princess, she expected a strong, brave savior to help her, to whip open that closet door and defeat the monster. But I didn't expect anyone to help me. I expected to suffocate in there and die alone.

However, my mother didn't name me after a princess, she named me after a sad-eyed lady. She named me after Bob Dylan's Sara, his estranged wife, his song of loss and bittersweet memory. I don't want to say that the song set the tune for my life, with Gypsy violin and harmonica, instruments that cry, because it didn't. It gave me solace, a sad music place where I felt at home.

He he who I loathe to identify any more distinctly, the archangel of my nightmaresmarked me. He marked me, as God in the bible story marked Cain, the man who stumbled into town with a big, ugly mark on his forehead. Everyone can see the mark. My mark may not show as blatantly as the one borne by Cain, the bad brother, but people recognize my mark nonetheless. They see the pain and ugliness, the sad eyes, and they turn away.

(from Strange Little Girl: Memoirs of a Sad-Eyed Lady
http://www.lulu.com/content/1403371)

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