I chased my brother with a fork. Was I going to stab him? I don't know. He wrestled me against a wall, and the prongs of the fork went into the fleshy part of my hand. It was a minor injury but the sort that immediately produced a profuse amount of blood. I ran into the bathroom, locked the door, wrapped my hand in toilet paper, slid to the floor and sobbed. Twenty minutes later, there was a pounding on the door. "This is Officer Cohen. Open that door, young lady. Now."

Officer Cohen? My mother had done it again. Unable to quell the eruptions of violence in our household -- violence that she herself often provoked -- she had called the police. The peculiar schizophrenia of my life was not lost upon me even then. At school, I was an A student, a virtuous girl in a wool jumper who schlepped a sturdy school bag and had just announced her intention to run for Student Council president. And now there was this cop to deal with.

Gingerly, I opened the door. "Let me see your hand," said Officer Cohen. He unraveled the toilet paper and ascertained that I would live. "What's going on around here? Your mother is terrified. Can't you and your brother get along? Don't you people know how to control yourselves?"
But control was not something we understood. On the contrary, we seemed to exemplify its absence. I was a star player in a family that specialized in chaos: unrestrained diatribes and violence that inexplicably and thankfully fell short of murder, but felt horrific and dangerous nonetheless.

Why am I thinking about it now? Maybe it's anxiety. This is, after all, a strange moment in history. I awake in the night with a sense of foreboding. The drums of war are beating and peace has become controversial. A spaceship fell from the sky on Saturday. People are grieving. I walk at the mission and see the curved slice of a small white moon. We are suspended in this instant between hope and despair and anything might tip the balance.

Restraint is a difficult path. Its light is dim, its rewards ambiguous, its music quiet. I have learned to prefer it. Why? Perhaps because I'm still haunted by the violent and undisciplined landscape of my early life. I saw my little sister put her fist through a window. I remember the shattered shards of glass, the blood on the floor. I saw my brother dragged from the bathroom to be beaten with a belt. I've been chased with a kitchen knife, knocked to the ground, humiliated by hateful words. Once I took a punch in the face, then watched my swollen eye change color like a jawbreaker, maybe even enjoying the attention it brought. Don't think I'm innocent. I've kicked in a car door, thrown dishes, banged on walls, pulled hair, scratched skin, and been shamelessly hysterical.

It was all I knew. When life is a state of siege, one learns to respond to it as such. My childhood twisted me, trained me for warfare, filled me with fury. But there were sweet moments, lulls between battles. There was a day when my father took me to the city. I carried a black patent leather purse in which I had placed a lucky green rabbit's foot. We went to the automat and I chose rice pudding in a weighty glass dessert dish. It was winter and we bought hot chestnuts in a brown paper bag from a man on a windy street corner. The world was cold and scary, but I felt secure that day. My fingers traveled through the fur of the rabbit's foot and touched its tiny nails.

And once we had guests, just like normal families. I don't remember who they were, but they brought a cake in a mint green box tied with white string. My father turned on the radio, and my sister and I danced, and the people clapped for us. I wore a red kimono, and I twirled.

I wanted more of these things: company, dancing, rice pudding.

I didn't know that the anger and the sadness had already woven itself into my personality like a coarse and wiry fiber. I was earnest and conscientious, but touchy and self-righteous, known for my volatility. When I was a still a child, my father tore a scrap of paper from a notepad and wrote these words about me: She seems so fair and tender, but she's ready for the fray. And if you dare offend her, you'll ne'er forget the day. It was succinct and true. But how could I have emerged otherwise?

It is amazing the things we survive, but the repercussions of this lunacy in me and all my siblings ranged from nervous tics to tragedy. I was drawn to discord and seemed destined to replicate it everywhere, an exhausting and fruitless way to live. Finally, I chose to break the pattern. It wasn't easy or precise. Mostly, I trained myself over several years to subdue the herds of wild horses in my head, turning them back, making them somehow quiet. I already knew how easily I could be hurt; what was new was realizing how much power I had to hurt others, how much power there was in not doing it.

And now it is a winter morning, dark and strewn with stars, glassy and still. Do I dare compare my own small whimpering with the world's collective misery? Perhaps it is only a matter of degree, a matter of luck, a matter, at times, of choice. The worried world bleeds into me and all of it is stunning. We are one in our resilience and fragility, amazing and ephemeral. We all weep for our losses. Our hearts are unhinged and banging in the wind like broken doors.

We can inflict more pain, but how much better, and harder, to stop. And now I know why I am writing. It is only a prayer, after all. I want children to have childhood. Let there be the dance of red kimonos before music becomes noise. Let there be hot chestnuts and safe nights. Let the person at the door be company. Let the instinct for compassion outshine the urge to hurt. Let us recognize each other as the brothers we could be.

It's only a prayer after all. Soon morning will roll in from the sea and come loose above the hills. This new sky is not as deep or vast as the pool of our shared yearning.

- Cynthia Carbone Ward