David's Childhood Life

Response to Stitches: A Memoir

The book Stitches: A Memoir by David Small begins with David’s life in Detroit, where he lives with his family. His father, Ed, is a doctor that rarely spends time at home, and his mother, Betty, is a quiet person that keeps everything to herself. Betty abuses her son David when she has the opportunity. His brother, Ted, is always in the basement playing with his drums, and David is the smallest in his family so he finds a way to deal with his reality. David’s grandparents got married because his grandmother, Betty’s mother, got pregnant. Unfortunately, Betty’s mother’s husband’s family, the Murphy’s, did not accept her, and when her husband dies, the Murphy’s forced her out of the property. The Murphy great grandfather tries to kill himself, and although he did not die, the poison ate away his vocal cords. David’s dysfunctional family makes him feel unsafe so he copes with reality by getting sick, being rebellious to his mother, and becoming like Betty to protect him. He does not like his life, and he wants to change but his mother’s examples of how to act in life follows him throughout his childhood.

First, getting sick is a form of escape from his reality. By getting sick, he gets his father’s attention since Ed is a doctor. He knows his father knows what to do. When David is six years old, David sees his father and his colleagues as heroes. David says, “They were soldiers of science, and their weapons was the x-ray” (Small 27). Although, David does not know that in the future the x-rays that he thought were there to heal his father actually gave him cancer. His mother, Betty, on the other hand is unloving and always slamming the kitchen cabinets doors. She never speaks her mind. Instead, she delivers abuse his son. Stitches reveals, “Her silent fury is like a black tidal wave, either you get out of the way, or . . .” drown in the waves (46). Betty’s mother abused her when she was a child. For example, David and Betty visited his grandmother, but while they are visiting, Betty goes out for the night. David stays with his grandmother, and she burns his hands with hot water because he talked-back to her (90-91).

Second, David is rebellious to his mother. When he is six years old and is visiting his father at the hospital, he knows the rules in the hospital are not to play with the wheelchairs and not go near the elevators. His mother reminds him to follow the rules, but he does exact the opposite. After playing with the wheelchairs, he decides to explore the hospital by going floor to floor. Surprisingly, he ends up on the fourth floor, where he finds more than one fetus that is in a jar. Suddenly, he sees the fetus open his eyes and jump from the jar and start to follow him (29-42). This imagination of the man in the jar is a guilty feeling of disobedience to his mother. Although he decides to be disobedient, his subconscious makes him feel guilty that he was following the wrong path.

Finally, David becomes like his mother at some point. When he is fourteen, his mother goes to the hospital to visit him because she knows he has cancer. David asks Betty if he could get the book that he is reading at home. He states angrily, “But oh, wait, I forgot you stole that from my room and you burned it up” (173). The way that he responds to Betty reveals that he learned how to defend himself from his own mother because she gave him her own example to follow.

As a result of his mother’s treatment when he is a child, he is trapped and anxious. He tries to cope with stress by getting sick, being a rebellious son, and becoming like her at some point in his life. At the end of the book, he is an adult and he dreams that he is six years old again and is living alone. His grandmother is in front of his house in the building where she was locked away because of her mentally sickness, and David’s mother is in the front of that building sweeping a floor for him to follow (324). He did not follow their path, and he decides not to be like his dysfunctional family (325). He decides to write this artistic book probably to face his past and become a better person.