The Back Seat and the Canopy Bed: Growing Up Between My Parents’ Sorrows and My Own Silence
This piece is one of the most tender and revealing stories Marcela has written on her journey to becoming the woman of her dreams. It captures the moments that taught her independence—not by choice, but out of necessity. It’s about learning to smile while sprinting up a mountain, carrying confusion, shame, and courage all at once.
In this photo, Marcela is with her siblings in front of their house in La Floresta in Bogotá, Colombia.
When I look back at my childhood years, two main emotions always surface for me: joy and fear. I have beautiful, joyful memories of playing with my friends from the block in the neighborhood where we lived in Bogotá.
Our block was a series of about twenty small, white houses with terracotta-tiled roofs, each with its own modest front and back yard. It was the mid-1960s, and I lived in a cute house where I had my own bedroom—a sanctuary furnished with a canopy bed, a two-drawer nightstand, and my very own vanity. I remember exactly where everything was in that room: on each side of the vanity mirror, I had placed stickers of Topo Gigio (a fictional anthropomorphic mouse, originally the lead character of a children's puppet show on Italian television in the early 1960s), and in one of the drawers lay my brush and comb.
My best friend, Gloria, had the same bedroom set, and we even had the same doll and doll carriage that had been given to us for Christmas in 1969. Gloria and I were inseparable—we went to the same school, rode the same bus, and were only one grade apart. I am one year older, and our days were a blend of school, homework, playing outside with our neighborhood friends, birthday parties, and family meals. Yet, even in those seemingly perfect days, joy was intermingled with an undercurrent of fear for me.
My father was a helicopter pilot for a company contracted by the oil pipeline builders in the Colombian Amazon region. His work required him to spend 15 days in the Amazon camps and 15 days in Bogotá. I have few memories of the times he was in Bogotá during the period when I was between five and nine years old. One of my most joyful memories is of the days when my dad would fly back home, and I would choose not to go to school on his first day back—he was perfectly fine with it. We would spend the day together listening to his favorite radio show, a comedy called La Escuelita de Doña Rita, reading the newspaper, and taking a nap after lunch. It was during these early years that my family began to change—my brother was born three months after I turned four, and my baby sister arrived when I was six.
My mother was a stay-at-home mom, like most mothers in the 1960s, especially in Colombia. She was young, beautiful, and in love with her husband. She was friends with the other mothers in our neighborhood, many of whom, including my mother, were pregnant with their first or second child—except for Gloria’s mother. Gloria was the baby of her family. My memories of my mother during those years in the La Floresta neighborhood are of a young woman filled with sadness. When my father was in the Amazon, I sensed she felt a slight relief that he wasn’t home. But when he returned, it seemed to me that she would emotionally withdraw, overtaken by sadness. This sorrow stemmed from my father’s infidelity. She knew that his presence at home also meant he would go out—and perhaps not return for a night or two.
When I wasn’t outside playing with my friends or at Gloria’s house, I would retreat to my room. It was a safe haven from the sadness that often filled our home—a sadness born from my parents’ fighting. I could not yet understand what they were fighting about, but I eventually realized that my father’s unfaithfulness was at the root of their strife and my mother’s persistent sorrow. As the eldest of three, who carries more memories and emotions of my parents' years under the same roof due to the gap in years between me and my siblings, I bore witness to a kind of sorrow and strife that my younger siblings might never fully grasp. I saw my mother’s sadness settle into her very being like a heavy fog, making her emotionally unavailable in ways I didn’t yet comprehend. I stopped asking for help, stopped expecting her to be present emotionally, to help with my homework or to fix the hem of my uniform skirt. I learned independence at a very young age—not by choice, but out of necessity.
One memory remains particularly sharp—a symbol of how I navigated my childhood. It was a Monday, the first day of second or third grade, and my school uniform was not in my closet. My father had taken it to the dry cleaners my family owned and had not returned home with it since the Friday before. I got up that morning feeling so excited, just like any second grader would be on the first day of school. When I went to search for my uniform in my parent’s room, I found my mother sitting on their bed with an angry and sad look on her face. When I asked for my uniform, her response was, “Your father didn’t come home last night.” Actually, my father didn’t come home all weekend. It was not easy for me at the time to know when my father was supposed to come home or not, if he didn’t, I assumed he was in the Amazon.
I could hear my friends outside our house calling my name, the bus was about to come and I would miss it. I opened the window in my parent’s room, their room faced the front door and I needed to let my friends know that I didn’t have my uniform so I couldn’t go to school. As soon as I opened the window to let them know of my current situation two things happened at the same time. My mother in a stern voice said to me, “Don’t tell them your father didn’t come home this weekend,” and my father pulled into the driveway in his white Mustang, jumped out of the car with my uniform in tow. YAY! Dad’s home with my uniform, I remember thinking. Now, I can catch the bus with my friends.
My father ran up the stairs, handed me my uniform, and said, “hurry up honey, get ready.” Then, he walked into their bedroom and closed the door. Yelling ensued. I don’t remember the words, actually I don’t remember the words of any of their fights, I do remember the emotions of fear and loneliness that ran through my body. To this day when I am in the presence of couples having a tiff, I feel panic in my body.
Minutes go by and I realize the bus is gone. I am now sitting in my bedroom in silence with my uniform on, confused and sad. I missed my first day of school. How was I going to explain to my friends why I didn’t go to school? Why didn’t I have my uniform that morning? At that age, anything that makes you different is a huge deal. All of a sudden my father appeared in my bedroom and realizing that I had missed the bus, he said, ‘Come, I will drive you to school,’ YAY!!! My dad is driving me to school on my first day of second grade.
For a brief moment, relief and joy washed over me and I felt like a carefree child once more, excited to head off to school in style—with my dad riding in the front of his 1969 white Mustang. On the way out of the main entrance to our neighborhood, I noticed two elegantly dressed women stepping out of a bakery. Even before my father spoke, I felt pain in my gut—I knew they were not simply two women in evening gowns buying bread at seven in the morning on a Monday. In my softened memory, I have replaced their identities with Agnetha and Frida from ABBA: one in a light blue gown and the other in a light green one, a reminder of the early 70s when women wore evening gowns to go out on the town. When my father saw them, he acted surprised, and I felt my heart sink.
My father pulled over, told me to roll down the window, and eagerly invited them to join us on our way to school asking me to move to the back seat. I hated that. This wasn’t the first time I had been asked to move to the back seat. As we drove, the women began asking me questions, and I answered nothing. Of course, my silence earned me a reprimand from my father. As we neared the school—on the side of a mountain outside the city—panic set in. I knew that instead of arriving in style and joy, I would be met with shame and whispers. If my friends would see the two women in the car with us, I would have to explain who they were, I would have to make up a story that I thought would make sense. In a burst of desperation, just before we reached the entrance, I jumped out of the car and ran into the school. I paused while sprinting up the mountain and smiled. I had transformed my fear into a moment of defiant courage. Although I dodged the bullet that day, through several years I would later have to explain who all these mysterious women were in my father’s cars.
Moments like these shaped my understanding of the world—a world where love and betrayal coexisted, where joy and fear walked hand in hand. My father could be attentive, affectionate, and sometimes the most loving person in my life. Yet, he was also the source of my mother’s sadness and despair. Even when physically present, sometimes his mind seemed to be wandering, always thinking that the grass was greener elsewhere. He lived that way until he died at the age of 57, succumbing to cancer. My mother, though physically present, was emotionally absent. She had given all of herself to a love that drained her, leaving little for her, and perhaps little for me at the time.
I was never able to fill in what was missing in their lives or help them build a happy marriage. I couldn’t take sides, though I kept trying to balance the love and attention I gave them both, believing—hoping—that somehow I could help them stay together. But there was nothing I could do. Now I know: it was never mine to fix.
What emotions from your childhood still echo in your adult life, and how have they shaped the way you see yourself and your relationships?
Did you ever feel like you had to grow up too soon? What were the moments that taught you strength, even if you didn’t choose them?
When you think about the roles your parents played in your life, what have you carried forward—and what have you had to consciously release in order to heal?