How the Godfather hit home

Watching The Godfather in its entirety for the first time in many years I was struck by a particular scene that I must have suppressed from my memory after the last time I saw the movie. I remembered the scene existed, but I just forgot how true it was.

Connie, Michael and Sonny's sister, is pregnant, angry and yelling at her husband for being with another woman. She screams, he insults her and calls her derogatory names, racial and ethnic slurs while she knocks all the china on the floor. Until he grabs her and takes her into the bathroom where we can only hear him beating her while calling her names. We hear her crying and the thuds of his fist or whatever he uses, on her body and face. Like Psycho, our imagination is more powerful than any filmed scene.

Except for those of us who don't imagine it, but instead remember it.

Imagination may be extremely powerful, but it is no match for a painful memory. Or worse, many painful memories.

If you cannot relate to this, then use your imagination that in that scene you are a 4 year old watching and listening from the doorway. or another room. or another floor. Now imagine this happens enough that you almost expect it to happen. Almost. It is still a shock to your system even when you know the sounds, the screams, the insults, the slurs.

Now imagine you are 5 and it still happens. and keeps happening when you are 6, then 7, then 8 and into your teens. Sometimes it is the night before school on a weeknight. Sometimes it is the night after having a wonderful day at the beach or camping or boating. Then this scene happens before you must go to bed and wake up and face other children at school.

What do those other children live with at home? I didn't know. I thought maybe the same thing as my home. Didn't everyone have a scary dad? Was I so different?

Mario Puzo, who wrote the book that The Godfather was made from, must have been a child in a home with domestic violence or he was very good at research.
I don't know if anyone can be that good at research.

"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

Those words are known by most to be from a speech given by a president of this country. However, they are far more meaningful than any political implications they had at the time.

Fear really is the enemy and it's hard to not be fearful when it is in the core of my memories, but it can be conquered! It still rears it's ugly head once in awhile, but being aware of it when it does is half the battle.

The good thing about growing up in fear is when you find out that's not how everyone else lives and there's another way to walk through this life. What an amazing discovery that was. I can't remember the day--it was more like a slow unfolding that led to a small "aha" moment, more like a "hmmm" I see.