We are always looking for a witness. From the time we’re small, we’re nagging our parents: “Mom, Mom…look at what I can do! Did you see that?” Who we are and what we can do is not marvellous (we think) unless someone else sees it.
My childhood and adolescence were less than idyllic. My mother was mentally ill, particularly during my teens, and my father was a kind, but incompetent adult. I progressed through school without them taking any notice for the most part. No one came to parent-teacher interviews (I was actually surprised to discover this was not the norm), no one came to Christmas concerts and, up until the last minute, no one was coming to my high school graduation. Rarely did anyone from my family witness my school life. With one notable exception….
When I was in high school, I got rooked into being on the basketball team. I was tall, so I think the coach had hope I could just stand under the basket and score point after point. I was a disappointment in this regard to say the least. Still, it was good for me to be on the team for many reasons, not the least of which was because it got me out of the house and away from my crazy mother.
Naturally, being on the basketball team involved practices (two a week, if I recall), weekly games, and periodic weekend tournaments. The other girls’ parents would often come to games to see them
play. It never occurred to me that parents would do such a thing…of their own volition.
Our coach was a lovely man and a wonderful, inspiring teacher. He worked hard to teach us the game and develop our skills, but his real focus was on ensuring every girl on that team felt they belonged and had value. Despite his best efforts, I never scored a point from the field while he was coach…though I was reliable on free throws. It didn’t bother him. I still got to play the appropriate amount of time as a junior member of the team. Eventually, he left the school and was replaced by a vile little man with the face of a rodent and a woman’s name: Laverne. Who would name their son Laverne? This is likely why he was such as asshole.
His focus was on winning, so he only played the girls who were really good basketball players. The rest of us languished on the bench until, in the last few minutes of the game, he might patronizingly put one of us in. One evening during a home game, I looked over to the doors of the gym and saw something so rare and surprising it might as well have been Sasquatch. There was my mother standing at the entrance of the gym with her high-heeled boots and her garish fur coat. How she knew I was playing, I’ll never know. What possessed her to make my father drive her to the school (a doorway she never darkened) is a mystery beyond a mortal’s ability to comprehend. But there she was…in all her psychotic glory. And, more than anything, I wanted to get on that court. Goes to show you that no matter what a parent does to a child, the child nevertheless yearns to say, “Mom, Mom. Look at what I can do! Did you see that?”
I told Laverne the Rodent that my mom was there. Most of the staff didn’t know I actually had a mother, so he (like me) was legitimately surprised. To his credit, he did substitute me in. I learned from another teacher some time later that he said he’d never seen me play better basketball than I did in those few minutes on the court while my mother watched. You see, I just needed a witness.
We’re always looking for witnesses – to crimes, to accidents, to history. We look to others all the time to confirm an experience: “Did you see that?” “Did you hear what she said to me?””Did I imagine that?” Witnesses provide us proof that something actually happened…especially when we can hardly believe the reality.
Bearing witness to the experience of another is an honour we take for granted. Having someone bear witness to our experiences is deeply connecting. And when we know someone has witnessed us in life without our knowing, it’s like they’ve seen us naked for, in a way, they have. If we are not conscious of the witness, we cannot be self-conscious ourselves. We exist in our natural, unobserved state. Our humanity is, as a result, utterly visible. If that’s not intimacy, I don’t know what is.
We’ve become so blinded by life’s superficialities that we rarely have the opportunity to bear witness – to really see – for others. And what is a witness, but an archivist of moments, recording for posterity experiences outside of themselves. They are a kind of omniscient narrator, watching as characters move through an unfolding story. It’s from their vantage point that they can provide us with perspective, a replay of what actually happened, and help us remember details. The witness confirms our reality. Most importantly, perhaps, the witness provides the life affirming answer to one of first questions we may ask after we learn to speak: “Did you see that?”
“Yes. I saw the whole thing. And it was amazing.”
for J.L.
The Age of Sage 