The Tin Man and Little Sausage — Chapter 3

What if one day a mother, out of the blue, threw her child down the stairs and then refused to acknowledge that it happened or talk about it? The child would be banged up on the floor, crying, hurting, scared, and the mother would walk down the stairs and ask the child what was wrong. When the child asked why the mother had done what she had, the mother would act confused. Done what? Why are you crying? The mother would look at the child and say, You’re fine.

The child would take a moment to feel herself. She had just been thrown down the stairs by her own mother. She’d banged her head, her knees, her elbows, and her butt on the way down. She was in pain, and yet her mother said she was fine. How can you both be hurting and fine at the same time?

The child starts to develop into The Tin Man. It starts in her fascia and muscles. They constrict around the pain, forming a shell of holding, of tension, of small breaths and a confused digestive system. The Tin Man can be thrown down the stairs and won’t feel it. The Tin Man can be looked at and not seen and it won’t hurt because The Tin Man is tough.

The Little Sausage that was the child, the meat and flesh of her, gets swallowed up by The Tin Man the way a turtle lives inside its shell, the way a fetus floats inside its mother--except without the human connection. It’s a smart way to live when you are too soft for a sharp world. You get to both be there and not there. You get to be adopted and not adopted (until your parents die and then you don’t know what you are, but this won’t happen until much, much later. The Tin Man will have been married twice and will have moved over fifty times).

As The Tin Man, you get to be feel safe and not safe all at the same time.