THE HUMAN DUTIES

Photo: Liam in the womb

   

THEN & NOW:


    When I was a child I thought I was the richest poor person in the world. I knew we didn't have money, "We are too poor for that," was often the reason I could not have something. But I thought I was rich in family and love. I decided I had the best family that had existed since Joseph had married his knocked up Mary. I had the strongest, kindest, funniest dad, the most loving and gentle mother, two sisters that were so sweet and attentive they were like extensions of my parents, and an adopted uncle that lived with us and dotted on "the girls," and especially "the baby". I thought I was wrapped in a cocoon of love and protection, and in some ways I was. In those days, I did not long remember any hard times, insults, fears, or pains, though they certainly came. Such is the way of a child almost always. Such is the way of adults sometimes. A mother, for example, remembers the joys of giving birth so much clearer than the pains.

    Still, a time came when I left childhood and the near constant seclusion of my home and began to foray into the lives of others. As a teen, I looked around with less optimism and more angst. I wondered why my parents hadn't worked jobs that provided me with three square meals, and health insurance, and maybe even an Easy Bake Oven. I wondered why they had not encouraged me more in my studies, inspired feminine pride in my heart, given me more opportunities, encouraged or at least allowed me to participate in the extra curricular activities that interested me. I was rocked by the flaws I suddenly saw in their parenting, by the flaws I saw in my once perfect life and family, and I was angry. I thought I was angry with my parents, and especially my mother, but I know now that my anger is almost always self-directed. Possibly yours is too. I believed I was angry at my parents for not being more perfect, when in truth I would have rolled with those punches of imperfections if I'd seen them coming, one after another, from day one. What I was truly angry about was my inability to see the imperfections as a child. I was angry because I had "let them fool me" into believing everything was fine for so so long.

    I directed my anger especially at my mother. In part because she so often seemed the driving force behind my father's refusal to take a paying job (she required his presence at home) and that seemed to play a large role in our poverty. Also in part because she was rougher on me than dad was, and rougher on Dad and Sandi than they deserved. Factor in that I had learned from my father to smile at strength and to frown at weakness, and that my mother's strength was subtle, easy for a child to miss, and you may understand the full picture of my displeasure with her.

    Pop was not perfect. I watched him beat a horse nearly to death. He once told me I wanted to go see my friend Ran because I wanted him to "push me up a tree." I was indignantly thinking, "I've never had to have help climbing a tree in my life!" If my mother had not been scandalized and chastised him thoroughly I might not have known what he was implying. (Go Mom for putting him in his place that time!) Dad also spanked me when I was six months old. I caught breath in pain and did not begin breathing again until he had ran from one end of the house to the other shaking me, begging me to breathe, swearing that he'd never spank me again if I would only breathe. He kept his word. He never spanked me again. Once, though, he did not "spank me" but he hit me (not so hard, but still -- he hit me) in the head with a crutch. And yet, all of these hard times slid to the back of my young brain. They paled in the light of the attention and affection he had given me and continued to give me and in light of my assurance of him. I never wondered if he loved me, and that easily bought him forgiveness and respect, even through my most angst ridden teenage years.

    Mother though, even as a very young child I was distanced from her because of her illness. In those days, Daddy made my breakfast, Lila brushed my hair, Sandi read me a story, mother gave me a bath and told me good girls did not touch down there except for washing with a soapy washrag, which we must do even if the soap burns us so much we cry. It did not matter if my skin was tender, if I'd fallen getting into the thin metal tub and hurt myself, if I had a rash down there because of dampness, if the soap was strong and hot. That was the "dirtiest part" of me and it must, at all costs be soaped up, she said. And that was my childhood. When I was seven she told me, with venom, and for the first of several times "I despise you!" I can also remember many instances of her telling me she was going to die very soon. Whatever I was looking forward to in life, my mother reminded me she would not be there for it occurred. "I'll probably be dead," She would say, "Before Christmas/Easter/spring/next year/school starts/etc./etc./etc." I lived in a constant fear of burying her when many kids my age did not know what death really was. Over and over, I believed her. It is amazing how many times a child can hear something like that and believe it might be true "this time". She also began telling me, "When I die I want 'Dee Dee killed me' put on my tombstone." I thought her dying wish would be granted, and I would be the only LIVING person with their name accusingly branded on a tombstone. How would it feel, I wondered, to try to live knowing my name was not only on a tombstone in a graveyard, but branded there as a killer, a murderer of my own mother? When she caught Ran and me wading in the creek when we had specifically been told we could not. She whipped me with a switch until blood was running down both my legs. Ran was beaten with a thick tobacco stick as his mother dragged him across the field. I ran inside to my father who was on crutches, expecting him to rescue me from Mother. Instead he attempted to guide me into a corner to stand for punishment but his guidance whacked me a bit too hard. In short, he hit me in the head with his crutch. Then, when I was eight she went to bed and did not get up until I was grown and had moved far away. (See blog "Death Bed Vigil") For many years, I thought she got up at last because she no longer had to look at me.

    I resented her for all the doctor visits, all the hot penicillin shots, all the times I was told I could not play outside because it was too cold and I would get sick. Mother had been a sickly child. I was a sickly child. Her first daughter (the only other girl that was blond haired and blue eyed, like me) had died at eleven months old. She was now paranoid and I was malnourished and prone to ailments. It was a bad combination. I grew up anemic and prone to catching every bug coming and going. I had strep throat and tonsillitis several times a year and bladder infections until I was afraid to go pee even when I was healthy. I would refuse liquids as much as I could and hold my water like older women tended to do, telling themselves, "I'm going to finish this chore before I go," and practically bursting before they got to the bathroom. I knew what the bladder infections were like and I did not want to go pee and find out I had one. It could start burning so randomly and then it'd be off to the doctor for penicillin shots and several days of pain and fever would follow anyway, shots or no shots. No one told me that holding my water and refusing to drink when I was thirsty would make the infections more likely. They did not even know I was doing that. Mother seemed to like the attention she got when she was sick, the attention she got when I was sick, and she was paranoid about losing me. I began to feel like we went to the doctor every time I sneezed, and I had allergies too, so I sneezed a lot! In hindsight, I believe she may have suffered from Munchhausen and I by proxy.

    As a young child, I simply tried to please my mother, to soothe her fears, to fix everything in her world. After all, she was the best mother in the world. Right? When I was twelve, I began to question her rules, and logic, or lack thereof. Most of this came from religious studies. My parents were strict Christians -- Baptists, which over all was a good thing for me. If things had continued the way they were before my parents found the lost Jesus I am sure I would have had a rougher life. My father had a temper like no other (remember the beaten horse?) and tamed it only for God. My parents made many good changes in our family due to their new relationships with God. They both stopped smoking and Dad stopped drinking. They worked on adopting the "turn the other cheek" theory and they began singing these heartfelt old spiritual songs that fed my soul something I hadn't even known it was hungry for. But some of their changes and ideas were not-so-good, and much of it made no sense to me once I was old enough to look at the world with full eyes. They read their Bibles, but they also listened to the preachers and did most of what they were encouraged to do, which was often not in the Bible. Once I hit 12 years old and began to read The Good Book for myself, I began also to question many of the rules in my home. (So, it's all God's fault that I became so rebellious to my parents. Not only did He design my teenage nature but He reportedly designed the book that caused me to ask a lot of questions.) "Why can't we even walk into a store that sells alcohol if Jesus turned the water into wine?" "Why can't I wear pants, braid or cut my hair, paint my nails, and wear make up if what really matters is what is inside my heart?" "Why did God give Miriam and Aaron leprosy for rejecting Moses' Ethiopian wife if white people should never marry black people?"

    As my questions mounted so did my resentment for Mother. I saw her as a hypocrite because it became increasingly clear that she did not follow the book she said she lived by. I found it deplorable that she would say harsh things about people, things she would not (usually) have said to their face. I tried to preach forgiveness and understanding and she branded me "Peacemaker". She would spit the word at me and somehow manage to make it sound like an insult. I resented her because she was tough on Dad and Sandi, and many of my friends. Lila was spared most of the drama by then. Dad and Mom had married Li off when she was fifteen years old. I am not sure who got the worst of that situation, Lila trapped in a bad marriage or me trapped with a mother I could not understand, or despite my preaching on the subject, truly forgive. As my questions and rebellion mounted my mother's inability to deal with it raised as well. Several times when I was teen, always times when my father was not at home, my mother would lose her temper with my insistent questions that she called "back talk" and she would begin to slap me. I had a temper much like Dads, and only my love and respect for my father kept me from hitting her back. I knew he would not hear about her slapping me, but I was certain that he would hear about it if I were to hit her back, even once, even lightly, or if I were simply to draw back my hand. He would be told and he would be more than disappointed. For reasons I've never understood, I counted the blows she gave me. For reasons I do understand, I would lose the ability to count them after a while. This happened several times but my record was 17. I once kept count when she slapped me up to the 17th blow, but I have no idea how many times she hit me after that. I lost the ability to count the blows. My brain would be muddled. After my discipline for "sass" the atmosphere in the home would be diffused. Mother, who was often in an angry twist over something, often directed at Dad, would become much more mellow. Weeks would pass before she would be wound up and begin to complain angrily again. She would complain, I would ask questions that were often impertinent (though I did try to reason with her, try to gently help her see the points I was making.) We would scream and yell, she would slap me until I lost count, we would barely speak to each other the rest of the day, and the day after we would pretend nothing had happened. We would start all over again. In the back of my mind I thought I was doing the world, my family, and especially my dad a favor by sucking up my mother's anger. It became a sick game we played that neither of us fully understood and that we both lost.

    When I was almost 21 and living a few hundred miles from my parents, I had my own child. Determined to be a better parent than either of mine I read every child rearing book that could follow, and I buried myself in Parents and American Baby magazines. I listened to all that advise people give you and I dissected it to see which was worth keeping. I kept the good my parents and other parents had taught me, tried to avoid anything bad, and used every drop of common sense the Good Lord had afforded me. When I moved back to my home town, it soon became apparent that my mother was offended by anything I did as a parent that was different than what she had done when I was younger. I tried to explain to her that, in my opinion, she did a better job parenting me than her parents had done with her, I would do my best to do a better job with my kids, and it was their duty, I believed, to do an even better job than I had done. It was the human condition, the duty of the race. She did not agree. To her good parenting was good parenting and bad parenting was bad parenting and she'd been a good parent, and thus I needed to be just like her! Looking back, I truly wonder if my mother remembered or yet remembers much of my childhood. The doctors had her on some strong medications and it's possible that she doesn't even remember things the way they happened. Certainly, the few things I have "thrown up in her face" have largely been denied.

    I was in my late 30s before it finally hit me. Until then I had been too young and too self absorbed to look at the big picture in my dealings with my mom. I had started out too young to know that people sometimes say things they do not mean, and by 30 something I still had not realized that if you are very broken it's hard for you to live a "normal" life and be a "normal" mother. If you have horrible examples for parenting you always feel like you're struggling to make it up as you go along and often you are! You make it up wrongly almost as often as you do correctly, even with very diligent efforts. My mother grew up in a home with two alcoholic parents. My grandfather was a danger to his own children in what I consider to be the most intimate, and therefore probably the most painful, way that an adult can be a danger to a child. My mother's oldest sister was married off to her husband at the ripe old age of 13. Her husband was one of my grandfather's drinking buddies, and he won Aunt Mae's hand in marriage in a card game, but he lost the right to sleep with her on their wedding night. My grandfather won that round and 13 year old Aunt Mae spent her wedding night giving her father sexual pleasures instead of her new, unwelcome, and much older husband. My grandfather would sell sexual pleasures from his wife as well. My mother said her mom would never have sold her body sober, but Grandfather would get her entirely drunk and then collect money from his friends and watch while they used his wife in the living room floor. My grandmother was sometimes oblivious to what was going on. She might be so drunk she was experiencing black outs or so drunk she was unconscious. But that little girl that was my mother saw and remembered all of this and more. Once she "ran away" from this only to find that the shelter she thought she had found at a neighbor's home resulted in the same thing she was running from. The neighbor that was supposed to harboring my mother molested her, and she went home the next morning, believing, I am sure, that the whole world was unsafe and wicked.

    My mother married my dad in great part for me and my sisters. She said she met him and he was so good to her that she prayed, "God, if you are ever going to let me love a man, let me love this one." She thought he would be kind to her and to her children, that he would never be the sort of father that her father was. She believed with all her soul that my dad would be a good dad. She was fifteen years old and thinking of me. I'm not sure how much of it was good fortune and how much was good judgement, but largely she was right. He was not perfect, but over all I think my pop has been a wonderful father, and in my late 30s I came to realize that I have my mother to thank for that nearly as much as my dad. My mother hurt my feelings several times, she kept me in a nervous shape a lot, she physically abused me a few times, she didn't care much if I brought home As or Fs, and she jerked me out of band, and gymnastics, and chess club so fast it made my head spin. But no one ever, for one second of one day, treated me the way she was treated every day of her childhood. She saw to it that I was spared that. She saw to it that I had a life that was light years ahead of her own, so much safer, so much more enjoyable, so much MORE that it humbles me. My parents were far from perfect, but they both did much better than their own parents had done. I tried to do an even better job with my sons, and I challenge them to do a better job than I did when my grandchildren come along. I think that's our duty as a human being.

    Once I realized how far my mother had traveled from that broken childhood, I understood that so many of the things that I'd held against her were unfair. She spent a lot of time in bed, taking nerve pills, trying to survive the echos of her past, but she needed that time to heal. She left me, but she left me in good hands, hands that she found for me. I now know that I owe my mother much more than I understood, and every resentful thought I've had toward her is a regret resting in my heart. I spent years looking at my mother's faults and remembering her insults. I'd forgotten about the gentle hands that soothed my fevers, the woman that never believed an adult over me without proof, the woman that hid her tears when I broke the last bowl that had belonged to my grandmother, and said, "It was just a thing. YOU are a person. Accidents happen." And I had never looked at the little girl that tried so hard to pick out a good daddy for me. I'd spent years pretending I was Princess Positivity and a tower of strength, but I didn't look at the positive side of my own mother, and I didn't have the strength to forgive. But like my mother before me, I had to survive and repair. I had to learn and grow. Finding the strength to forgive her finally led to the strength to forgive myself. Forgiveness brought me a new lease on life and the strength to be patient with her a little longer, to help my mother continue on along the path to a better future. So, perhaps that too, is a human duty... Forgiveness.

    Today my mother is an awesome grandmother and a fabulous great grandmother. She has worked very hard for many years to get as healthy as she can be. She is still not perfect, but no one is. These days, she laughs much more than she cries, and she has figured out a lot of things that did not always know. She is all "girl power" and "bless your heart". She cooks, and bakes, and brags on artwork, and ties shoe laces, and makes homemade and heartfelt gifts. She has a wonderful sense of humor and keeps us smiling. She encourages her grandchildren and great grandchildren in their interests and tries to talk all of them into going to college. I did not receive the first apology from her until I was in my late 30s. It showed up unexpectedly one day not long after I'd begun to understand what a miracle she was and how hard she had worked for her future and her family. It wasn't even about anything in the past or anything crucial, but you could have, as the old saying goes, pushed me over with a broom straw. I had never heard her apologize to anyone, let alone to me! Since then she has apologized to me several times and for assorted things, including being addicted to pills and sleeping through so much of my childhood. These days there is nothing to forgive. I forgave her years ago, when I managed, in my thoughts, to put myself in her shoes. Now I only love her. I love her so much! She has become my friend in so many ways, and we are closer than we have ever been, as close as any other mother and daughter I know. Momma has surprisingly become my highest role model. She is my hero, my hope for humanity, my proof that people can and do change. Not simply because she grew and recovered and changed, but because watching her do so and forcing myself to confront the little girl that was once my mother has brought about a change in me that is nearly as drastic as the change Mom has gone through. I am not the resentful person I was before. I look at others now when they are mean and I realize they are broken. I wonder what road they've traveled, and I wish them well in their recoveries. I hope they are as strong as my mom and that they find someone to help them along their journey that is as kind as my dad. I was right, when I was little: I had the strongest, kindest, funniest dad, the most loving and gentle mother, but as a child I missed their flaws, as a teen and younger adult I practically saw nothing but. Now, after years of reflection, and tears, and yes therapy, I can see my parents as the whole and incredible people they are. As a child I missed their flaws, but I also missed the kindness that my dad showered my mother in, the kindness she needed to recover. I missed my mother's cunning in choosing him for her family, and I missed the subtle strength that she had. Yes, verbally she was a wimp! But at the heart of it my mother survived something that many people would have let kill them or kill their spirit. She survived, and made an escape, and recovered. How few people could go through what she went through and only be as broken as she was. How few could work their way through all that and ask their child to forgive them! Well, she did! I certainly underestimated her. I thank God for my Momma, and that she lived long enough for me to realize what a wonder she is and always has been! I thank God for the duty of improving the human race as the generations flow along and for the duty of Forgiveness.