Tag Archives: fathers

Planet of the Apes

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Jumbled.

Out of focus.

Lack of focus.

Scared.

Inward-silent-screaming.

Panic?

Doubt?

Should I…..?

Should I liquidate my assets and move somewhere like Thailand or an island off Greece ? Somewhere where the weather is good most of the year and no one cares about its mineral rights or geopolitical power?

I live in a cold place. Maine is about 20 degrees during the day right now, and we have had a snowy winter. It is beautiful here and very, very quiet. It is the end of the line, geographically speaking; we are about 2.5 hours from the Canadian Border. It isn’t far enough away; I feel the feelings encroaching, and the impacts are just barely far away. Yesterday I bought an $11 roll of aluminum foil. Being that aluminum is the 3rd most abundant element on earth, I found it troubling and I then bought it anyway. From now on I will be washing my aluminum foil so that it can be reused. You can’t catch me!

There are so many things I wish to be writing about, but instead I am working on quilts, and walking, and looking at snow, and looking at stars, listening to music, and trying to keep the loneliness and fear at bay. It is very hard. I am a highly emotional person. Sometimes I feel that my heart lives outside my body, and so it bumps into everything.

Right now I am off work for the most part, except when I go to caretake a house that is in my care. This means I get to sleep in everyday, and take my dog for walks, and make toast in the morning. I try to only read the news 2 or 3 times a day. I try to not listen to anything but my favorite podcasts. I try to find little things to appreciate, and I do, everyday. I make new recipes and call friends. I am worried that I am turning into a weird person who channels anger into making quilts. My connection to metalworking seems to be waning, and what does that mean?

I find myself wandering alot lately, as if I am in fog. I don’t understand this. I have so many skills and so many ideas, so many topics to write about and make things about, and yet, I don’t seem to do it. I work at night, sewing tiny pieces of fabric together. I am making a quilt about anger and about seeing. When I start making a block I am mad as hell, and by the end, the anger has dissipated, so I think it is working. The block I am making is called the Eye of God, and the eye is definitely aimed at my poor dead dad, the one who abandoned two twin boys back in 1968 and impacted the lives of many people afterward; his grief became a wrecking ball that just never gave out.

There are other wrecking balls around, swung by other men who are, no doubt, lying about something very big, so sad and empty that all they can do is destroy and hurt. It is an old story, but I am tired of it all. Tired of the actions of men, chimpanzees swinging their dicks around, holding automatic weapons, not thinking about everyone behind them that has to pick up the pieces. My current interpretation of the patriarchy is that is tired and cranky (hangry maybe? hangry for actual human connection and permission to be…..) and, like a tired and cranky child, it is striking out at any hand that comes near. Our Vice President says to Germany and other partners in Europe to be cooler to the Alt-Right parties who negate how bad those Nazis were, our President lets an unelected person have access to critical data systems that hold information like the fact that I moved here from England sometime in the 1980s on the coattails of a man who was running away from his poor decisions, his anger, his family, everyone who could have comforted him and forgiven him. He ran to New York City and we took a helicopter around the Statue of Liberty and we never went back. Smash.

It is no secret that I did not vote for our current president, nor will I ever support a man who I knew best from his episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous“, a show I loved as a kid. I cannot support this person and I don’t understand how anyone can, but I am clearly wrong as the majority of voters did indeed support him. I wonder, though….will they in a few months?

I keep thinking about a marble running down a hillside or a dune. The marble starts at the top, shiny and beautiful, and starts wending its way down a hillside. As it moves, it carves a shallow trench in its wake, perhaps it hits other tiny pebbles, runs over grass or shells. When it reaches the bottom, no matter its small stature in an of itself, its actions have permanently (or impermanently, as after all, everything is impermanent) changed the surface of the Earth. People who think that the actions of the president will only impact the 2 million or so people he wants to fire in the federal government and will not hurt them are delusional. The marble that is mass layoffs in our government will pick up, roll over, carve out, and forever alter so many unpredictable aspects of our life in the United States. Only time will tell.

I am going to work on forcing myself to write here, to document. I have so many things to say and stories to write down. I want to write about meeting my half-brothers and how wonderful they are and how excited I am to meet them. I want to write more about Mary Ann and taking care of Cody’s grandma, Maw Maw. I want to write about my volunteering for the local hospice group and trying to find my way again after losing my confidence over the last three years. It is a long and great journey, so much to say! I cannot let the fear of the present moment erase these experiences and these stories.

Wish me luck, thanks for reading, and stay tuned.

Free Weight

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For awhile, I looked in the mirror and I didn’t recognize myself; who was that, staring back at me with little wrinkles everywhere, eyelids that are changing, a worried brow, gray hair? For a while, I knew that it was, indeed me, but a me that somehow had changed. Now, they have come together and I see the same old face in my current new face.

This blog has existed for about ten years, and so much has happened in those interim ten years. For a long time, I was good at writing regularly, at night, by myself, in my house. But then ten years ago I got together with the man I am now married to, and my evening behaviors changed. To me, writing is a solitary act. I really don’t like to do it when anyone is home, even with the door closed. I somehow feel that it is important not to be interrupted when channeling whatever this is.

Here I am today, writing stream of consciousness style, so please bear with me. Today is my friend Mary Ann’s birthday and she would have been 46. She died two years ago. She visits a lot, but we can’t talk anymore, and that is what I miss the most. I also miss talking to my dad, as we did during his last few years of life. We had had a lifetime of fights (since I was a teenager, so half a lifetime I guess), that we gave up sometime after I got married and we moved Maw Maw into our house after she had a stroke. Taking care of her made me realize that our lives are very finite and we can leave the planet oh so quickly. I vowed to never talk to my dad about anything important ever again, and we began talking all the time.

Today I am thinking about his first, secret-to-us family in England. What is weird about this iteration of thinking, after now knowing for about 2 months, is that I feel the most compassion for him that I have ever felt. I never could feel this compassion for him in life because he never told us about this thing, this majorly big issue in his life that explains so much. When I asked my aunts about him in 2017 and they told me they wouldn’t tell me, I thought all kinds of things.

I thought he had gotten someone pregnant and his parents were really mad. (Partially true)

I thought maybe he had gotten drunk and wrecked a car and his parents were really mad. (No)

I thought he had fought in Vietnam and had PTSD. (Not true; now we aren’t sure if he was ever over there, but he said he was, so……)

Basically all of the things I thought it could be were way more colorful and interesting than a breakup of a marriage in its infancy, and leaving the infants that came along with the young marriage behind, never to see them again. It’s just so damn sad.

Lately, sometimes, I get so sad. It’s like something is literally hanging around my neck with a weight. What’s in the weight? I don’t even know. Is it just me? Am I a melancholy baby after all? It would seem so. I used to be more fun though, I think. Why is this weight so heavy and how do I lift it? I don’t want to feel this sad and anxious all the time; emotions so overwhelming and a general feeling of no one liking me. And coupled with that, a crazy desire to keep everyone happy so that I don’t say things when I am angry or sad or irritated or when I need to. Those two things must be intertwined; some ouroboros that is.

Earlier I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in Texas and we were talking about how reflective the 40s is. This decade is wild and whack. I don’t understand how the shift is perhaps a bit more money in the bank, or perhaps an investment (house) or something, and then people start to die? Right now, I think this trade off, this change, this phase, level-up, or whatever you want to call it, is bullshit.

I also accept that everyone dies and literally they have to die at some point. It just seems that it is weirdly becoming a regular part of life, and I am having to adjust to it and “deal” with it, and try to understand it and be at peace with it. One of the things I learned when Maw Maw lived with us is that death doesn’t scare me. I think I knew this, as I when I got very sick in high school and didn’t die, I think I chose to no longer be frightened of it and be open to it all the time. When Maw Maw was dying, a day that I haven’t written about yet, it was very weird and mysterious. Watching someone leave the planet “is NOT like in the movies” (I said this over and over at that time).

Why can I not seem to get out of thinking about Maw Maw, my Dad, Mary Ann, and my friend Kate (who died this past summer). I am shaken by Kate’s death; I always thought she’d end up working for the federal government and be interviewed on 60 Minutes or something. Mary Ann I just miss. My Dad I just miss. Those two were my phone people; I spoke to them almost every day. I haven’t had my phone people in over 2 years, and I miss them. Maw Maw I miss, but she makes me smile and laugh. She was old and she was ready to roll out. I just miss her, again, because it would be fun if she was here and we could watch a movie. They just seem to live in my mind right now; I am not sure what to do about that.

When I think of my Dad right now I just wish I could tell him that it’s ok, we know, and we just wish he would have told us because everything is fine. It happened so long ago, before he had even met my mom, and I know that no matter what happened, it was not an easy decision and I am sure he didn’t want to make it. My Aunt Margaret told me about his white wedding, and how beautiful it was, everyone in white dresses and my Aunt Helen was the flower girl. She told me she has photos somewhere and I so hope she can find them. I have a hard time imagining my dad as a 26 year old person. How was he ever that young?

I wish I could tell him that it’s ok because it is. It explains so much, almost everything. It explains why we came to the US, and why his family didn’t know that. It explains, perhaps, why we fought so much. Did he feel guilty every time he looked at me? Did he feel guilty all the time, ashamed, anxious, afraid, and did he transform those feelings into rage and anger? (Seems so). It seems so sad, what a waste of time and energy. My mom said that she would have welcomed the boys into the family, but who knows if they would have wanted that, or their mom. I know that with Cody’s situation with his baby mama, she was (metaphorically) driving the bus and made it extremely hard for him to see or have partial custody of his son. It took many thousands of dollars and hours of time to secure those rights. But, he did it, he chose to fight for them. Why didn’t my dad fight for his boys?

I can only imagine how sad he must have been, and that is how I have compassion for him. I wonder if he knew it wasn’t working when they were living in Scotland and found out they were pregnant. I wonder where they moved after that. Did they own their house or rent it? Was it near my grandparents or her parents or neither? How much was he working then, and doing what? I know that he was a cigarette salesman at one point down in Devon/Cornwall, but was that before when he first got back from Australia, or between Outward Bound and Noble Denton?

It is such a drag that I probably won’t know the answers to many of these questions. The tragedy of this story, or at least one of the big ones, is that the boys’ mum died the same year that he did. She died still with his last name, after all that time.

I feel better after writing a bit. Please bear with me as this all comes pouring out. I am so scared to let it, but it feels like a weight lifted when I do.

Grief, again. Grabbing hold of my heart and squeezing it in a vice. Some people describe grief as being shaken by a wild animal, but mine is a cold squeeze and I feel like I can’t scream out even though I want to. If I scream, someone might get mad at me for being too dramatic or sensitive or overly-emotional. If I scream, people might know and worry or be mad at me for making noises in quiet places. I said this to my therapist two weeks ago and just remembered it:

“If I look at it, then I may be sad forever.” Where does that come from? When I say it outloud or read it, I know that it is some part of my brain trying to trick me. I can’t be sad forever, and how would letting this out make me sadder? Perhaps it’s the weight? It doesn’t want to let go?

Indirectly

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My Dad was an incredible storyteller; when he was dying, nurses at the hospital would ask my brother and I if the stories he had told them earlier were true. One asked, “did he really jump out of planes?”. After he died, we received card after card after card telling stories or sharing condolences about the loss of him, and the loss of his stories.

My brother and I always said that we knew that parts of the stories were true, but we never knew how much, or if some of them were real. Turns out that he spoke around a core truth, a center story, about which we only learned three years after his death.

Before he died, he said to my brother and I a great many things. Just before he went into a coma, in which he laid for 9 days, he told both of us individually that he wasn’t afraid to die and he knew this was the next step in his life, in his journey. This conversation, to both of us, was comforting and I think it was to him, too. He repeatedly told us that we had to take care of our mother.

One of the common themes of his stories was his time in Outward Bound, both teaching in Devon and helping boys of under-resourced backgrounds who had gotten into trouble, known as “Borstal Boys”, and trying to get another school started with little success. We always assumed the school he wanted to start was also in Devon. He spoke about it and told us that it was his biggest regret that he didn’t just try harder, that he was sure that it would have worked eventually, but that he felt that he had to earn more money, and so he eventually abandoned it.

It turns out that there was a story at the core of this story, and probably, at the core of all the others, too. It turns out that he was married in 1966, had two twin boys in 1967, and somehow left that relationship and his sons by 1971. He never told my mom this, or my brother, or I, and his family kept this secret until this last October.

This has been so hard for me to write about, despite peoples’ suggestions that it will help. For some reason, writing about this has been difficult because it scares me. My brother and I found our half-brothers (we think) and last week, sent them handwritten letters asking them to speak with us. They are 58, we are 44, and 40. Writing the letters was hard, and putting them in the mail required a lot of energy and focus, Why? I cannot tell you, although all I know right now is that I feel that knowing this story, and sending the letters, put something in motion that I now can’t take back.

When my Dad got together with their mother he was around 24 years old. I can’t even imagine my Dad as a 24 year old. For some reason, he was always old. Like my brother says, he will be 50 in our minds forever. But he was 24, and then he got married when he was 26, and had two boys when he was 27. Just like my husband Cody did. Just like so many people did. And then 4 years later, he no longer had them, had left them, and had asked his whole family to keep the secret, which they did.

For about a month, I was really mad about this. Sometimes, I still am. Right now, though, I think – why? And I know that there must have been a reason why. Tragical romance? Raising twins as babies gone awry? Lack of involvement in child raising on the part of my dad who was a rig worker and was 6 weeks on, 6 weeks off? Parents didn’t like him? All of the above and so much more?

This is the first time I am writing about this. I keep having emotional outbursts that are inappropriate. I keep thinking about my Dad. I have so much compassion for him now; more so than I ever have. I also want to shake him sometimes and I wish I could talk to him. Somehow I feel that this is the core issue that the whole family rotated around, even though we didn’t know what it was. Years ago, in 2017, I asked my aunts (his sisters) if there had been something that had happened that stopped him from having a close relationship with his family, and especially his mother. They told me it wasn’t their story to tell. Now I understand that, and they were right to tell my mom first. But, I feel somehow ok, good, accepting, forgiving, and curious about how I knew something was off.

For years, my heart has ached at my lack of family. I always wondered why we moved to Texas in 1983, and why we never went back to England. Now I know. I feel like I knew about my brothers even before I knew who they were or what they were to me. It’s as if their absence was a presence in my heart, all along.

I hope to write more about this and explore how it is changing my perspective toward myself and my dad and my place in the world. It is wild. I just turned 44, and I have decided I will live to 88. This means that my life just started its second half; just started over again. Right now I feel so sad sometimes, so angry, so confused; what am I supposed to be doing? Where am I supposed to be? But I suppose Destiny interjected the need for me to know the answer to the big question. The answer is: two brothers, twins, born in January, fellow Capricorns. I hope they want to speak to us.

Ridikkulus ! Or, Why No Lie Is Worth Telling

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It is not everyday that you have a major life revelation, something that stitches some theories into the facts column of your memories, forever cementing but also altering your life. Last night, my mom sat myself, my brother, and my husband down to “talk about something for an hour” she said. Three hours later, we had learned that:

  • My father was married a very long time ago to a first wife, sometime around 1965
  • My father and his wife had twin boys who were born on 7 January 1967
  • My father’s first wife “couldn’t cope” with raising twins (on her own? with an unhelpful husband who “worked alot”? with perhaps post-partum depression that was undiagnosed?), so she moved back in with her mother and
  • They never spoke again

My dad’s family, who knew his first wife, who had been to his wedding, and who knew his twin sons, were asked to honor the request of no contact, which they did for 54 years, until a few weeks ago when my aunt told my mom she knew something but she also knew it would be hurtful. My mom asked her to tell her, regardless, and here we are.

For years I have wondered what precipitating event caused my father to lose contact with his family, for after this, he barely spoke to them for 15 years. In fact, my aunt didn’t even know that I was born in England, one hour or less away from where she had her second daughter, born one month before me.

In 2017, I went to England for my cousin Sally’s wedding in the Lake District. It was beautiful and I can’t wait to go there again. Whilst driving through London with Aunt #1, I asked her, “did something happen between my dad and his parents? Like an argument? Did he do something to disappoint them or something? And that’s why you all stopped talking?” She said, “It is not my story to tell. You have to ask your father.” Whilst walking through a town in the Lakes with Aunt #2, I asked her the same question, and she gave me the same answer.

In 2009, when I was getting divorced from my first husband, my parents came to see me. I was confused as we weren’t especially close at the time. Now, looking back on it, I suspect my dad felt that me going through a divorce would be very difficult. I know my mom was worried about me, but she said that they felt I was handling everything very well (later writings will go into how good of an actress I am – Oscar caliber). In my laundry room, my mom let slip that my dad had been married before and that “divorce isn’t that hard, eh Michael?”. This is when I learned he had been married before for about 5-6 years. When I asked him why he had never said this before, he said he didn’t think it was important. I asked him, “what, are you going to tell me that we have half brothers or sisters somewhere?” he said a definite “No.” He lied.

Why did he lie? To me? To my mom? To my brother? What happened and why?

Tragically, his first wife (first and second wives were both named Susan, oddly), died about one year after he did, in 2022. He was born in 1939, she in 1943. He died in 2021, she in 2022. He had his twins when he was 28 years old. I cannot even imagine what my dad was like/looked like/acted like when he was 28. My husband had his son when he was 26 and I remember what he looked like: an adultish person.

Thankfully, all of my dad’s siblings have told us we can ask them anything now that the cat is out of the bag. But sadly, both people involved are dead. Strangely, she kept Blythe as her last name all these years, as have done the boys. Why? If it was such a split, wouldn’t it make sense to change names or……….something.

Did he ever pay her any money to help raise them? Were they ever in contact? Why did the split even happen in the first place? Apparently my grandmother took care of the twins when she could. She always loved babies and was great with children. She also had to live with this condition of giving up her first two grandchildren, and, her daughters say, fought it until my granddad insisted. I cannot imagine how painful that must have been for her, for him, for his first wife. It just seems like so much pain, and I will never know the reason why, probably.

When I asked my dear Uncle Denys why this happened, why we left the UK and our entire family, when we were having tea after Sally’s wedding, he said, “it was a different time”. Maybe it was? What does that mean? Did he know?

This opens up so many questions. Is this the reason that we moved to the States, so that he would never have to deal with it? It seems so. Why did he never tell my mom? Why did she never insist on meeting his family before they were married?

Because, oh yes, my mom never pushed on meeting his family. He said they didn’t want to meet her, and she accepted that, despite that his 5 brothers and sisters would have loved to meet her, and did, about 15 years after his first divorce, when he was married to his third wife and living in Houston, Texas.

I have written about this here before, but sometime around 1970 my dad lost touch with his family and regained contact with them around 1985, after we had emigrated to the United States. My granddad was ill with progressive health problems, and we came to England and met the family for the first time. The aunt who orchestrated this meeting is the same that spilled the beans to my mom two weeks ago, She is truly amazing and a creature of love and acceptance. I love her so much. After the first English meeting, my grandparents came to Texas and saw us there. My granddad died very soon thereafter, in 1989, of cancer and heart problems. He had been a nuclear chemist and the exposure to chemicals damaged his body. My grandmother was diagnosed with cancer in the 1960s, looked around at her 6 children and her scientist husband who didn’t pay bills but knew how to (mostly) build an atom bomb, and said to her doctor, “I can’t die!” and didn’t until 1994.

What is bothering me so much about this story is the lie at the center of it; a lie that, to me, is wholly unnecessary. Why would he leave behind his children? What about his wife? Did he love her? Did she break his heart? Did he break hers? Yes, yes, and yes? We could have had two older brothers. (We think we have found them. One looks just like him, with eyes just like me and my brother’s. The other looks like my granddad, to a T. Round, bald head, round nose, nice smile.)

28. When I was 28, I was getting divorced from my first husband. I owned a house in Austin. Did he own a house in England? He always told me he sold his boat to buy his first house with my mom. Is that true? The trick of this lie is that the two people who were really involved are now dead.

This experience, which right now is only 24 hours old, has taught me that is never worth it to lie. Never. What would have happened if he had just told my mom about all of this, like we would all expect to have happen between two people committing to each other in marriage? Would anything have changed? Only one, to be certain. The lie wouldn’t have been there. My uncle used to stay with them, he says. My grandmother helped with the babies. My aunt was living with my grandparents when they split and she remembers everything.

My dad was always best in a group, at a party. In person, he was very challenging. He was avoidant, afraid of commitment, and angry. When he was confronted, he became so angry that he was scary. I suppose that guaranteed that no one would get close. He drank to excess, creating health problems for himself and his family. He died three years ago, and during the last year of his life, became very emotional. He cried alot. He said to me once, “I used to be a great man” or something similar. I told him, “you ARE a great man, Daddy”. Despite talking to my brother and I a lot over those last two months especially, and we did talk, a lot, he never told us about this. Was this his wound? Was it the reason that everything else happened? It seems so. By avoiding three people, or perhaps four (apparently my dad’s first wife’s mom did not like him and did not want them to get married), he dragged in 5 brothers and sisters and their partners, his second wife, friends(?), my mom, my brother and me. All drawn into a web of sadness that was never soothed or understood, just forgiven, because that is what you do when people die.

This is just the first time I will write about this. I had to get something down, some sort of recording of how it feels to know an answer, perhaps the answer, to the question that I have been asking about my father for years. I knew something had happened. I thought it was something in Vietnam. Right now I don’t even know if he was ever there. I don’t know very much about him at all. Today, I feel like I know more and less, good and bad. My takeaway from 43 years on the planet is that it is both/and yes/no good/bad all the time, together. They are mixed, hand-in-hand, like dough, chocolate, or clay.

In some ways, it feels like a circle has been closed, soldered shut with fire and time and communication, finally. I wish I could hug my dad and tell him I am so sorry that he felt that this was the best decision he could make at that time, and I also feel like shaking my dad by the shoulders and shouting, “WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?”. It is both. I understand the sadness and shame, but the lie? The behavior? My brother and I hope to reach our brothers and we hope that they want to speak with us. Beyond that, no expectations. Goddammit, Daddy.

p.s. I hope you know the reference in the title today. I think it is the appropriate spell for today. I wish I could shout it at my dad.

I Hope It’s Not Just Me

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I just looked out the window and it is dark.

9:00 p.m. and pitch black!

On my morning walks, I have been noticing a change to the light, but tonight I first noticed a change to the dark. The autumn is coming. I started walking every morning in March of 2020, and now I see the sunrise every day. I used to be a sunset person, but now I am a sunrise and a sunset person. Both occurrences so important, so uniquely beautiful; one of my takeaways from the times of the pandemic is that each day is so, so precious.

I lost my Dad starting now, last year. Starting now, his health switched and he began to sound different. Starting now, he left. Starting now, this year, I see the light shifting and slanting; more golden, it delivers a punch each day. It is as if it is saying: pay attention! See me! And I do.

Aging is beautiful except for two things: your body hurts and people you love begin to die. Aging teaches you so much if you are willing to see it, just like the light, and the dark.

Tonight we had chicken and potatoes and salad. Tonight we watched a documentary about psilocybin. The dog desperately wanted chicken and potatoes and salad, or so he thought.

Tomorrow it will get dark even earlier. I am loving this strange August that is cooler and rainier than June and July. Climate change is this great, scary mystery. We never know what this season will bring, or how the weather will be affected.

With a smile I watch the change. Last year, at this time, I had no idea what changes were about to occur. A year later, now, I understand just a little bit more.

Worn Out Carpet

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I stepped on the bottom stair and it felt as if it was going to give way: somehow it settled under my foot. I noticed the wear on the center of the stairs: carpet worn over twenty years of people going up and down.

I never lived in this house; it was built when I was in college. My brother only lived there for 6 months. When they decided to build, we asked them: why such a big house when neither of your children will ever live in it?

We should have known that the house was part of it, of course, how could it not be? But we were young then: I was 21 and my brother 18.

When my father died in November, my brother and I were working from an assumption that the problems were all caused by him, and therefore, upon his death, our mother would just calm down and seem better; maybe she would become the person she used to be before the last ten years or so. She used to have this smile that was so pretty and a glint in her eyes. Now the look in her eyes is of worry, judgment, or tears. I have a horrible photo of us from years ago. I must be in my mid-20s. It is a selfie from before smartphones and I am smiling with some crazy twenties hair-do, and my mom is pretending to smile with tears in her eyes. I hate that photo.

A few years ago, I wrote a post here entitled “My Mother’s House“, based on wandering through an old, huge, Maine summer house that she was selling. I loved the house and how out-of-time it was. As she was getting it ready for an open house, I wandered all its rooms and thought about my mother and her life and my life and the lives of all the people who had lived in that house.

That essay poem was written almost exactly four years ago. My brother and I have discovered that our assumption about our mother was wholly wrong. I would now like to adjust my earlier concept of my mother’s sense of self being divided into a series of adjoined rooms. It seems to me now that there is only one room and it is the room of Marriage.

I see marriage in the 21st century as a radical act, as it is not socially necessary and wholly driven by choice. Hopefully, the choice to marry is happy and joyful, and the relationship itself is based on communication, affection, mutual respect, and unconditional love. Marriage is hard, and even the great ones have difficulties. I cannot imagine being in a marriage for 44 years that was unhappy for the last 32.

Last week at the table in the kitchen, I sat with my mother and tried to talk about some of the elephants in the room. She told me last week that she thinks that they were happy until 1990, the year he lost his job. She said that they were fine before that, but since then it had been a neverending series of dramas, fights, disappointments, and financial recklessness. These elephants all have my father’s name stamped on them somewhere, but for my mom, too, there is this indelible stamp that says “Marriage” on it. Marriage as defined by social status, belonging, and that dirtiest of dirty words, should.

If you have been a reader here for a while, you know that I hate the word should; should only serves to make you feel guilty.

Like the carpeted bottom stair on the staircase that I noticed last week, my mother’s concept of Marriage is worn out. It makes no sense; the dead horse has been beaten and is now an unrecognizable heap. And yet, Marriage persists as a defining characteristic of her life. She said to me that going to England (a recent trip to do my dad’s ashes) was very emotional for her because it represented the End of Her Marriage. I felt bewildered: how could she want a marriage like hers?

It was then that I realized that she did want that marriage, that she had wanted it the whole time, that both of them had wanted it, and it was a creation of both she and him. We couldn’t blame him anymore: this was mutually assured destruction.

I don’t know enough about domestic violence to share psychological reasoning or meaningful quotes here. I am committed to reading more books about domestic violence and abuse moving forward. Here, I am confused and saddened and I am angry. I am angry at both of them, and one of them is dead.

I asked her why she stayed when she was offered multiple opportunities to leave and she said that “children need a father”. I said, “children needed that guy?”. I told her that lots of single moms do an amazing job raising kids. It was clear that it was not that we (the children) needed this father. My mother felt that she needed my father; which would be fine if there hadn’t been the years of consistent abuse, denigration, violence, codependency, financial hardship, and alcoholism.

When I think about the years of manic crazy fights that my father and I had when my mom and brother would just stand mutely by, when I think about all the times that my father was horrible to my mother and she would sit and cry and we would console her, when I think of all the times that my mother told my brother and I stories about their blowouts and we would listen and console her, I feel, at this moment, very very angry because it seems a very selfish path to follow by two people who supposedly really cared about their kids.

Sidebar: my parents care about us very much, don’t get me wrong. But just like the famous trial that we all followed religiously in the spring of 2022, the two parents involved had no business being together because their togetherness was explosive, damaging, and, seemingly, permanently harmful.

The lady who I traveled to England with, who I sat across from last week, is not the lady I remember from when I was a kid. She is a lady who has locked herself inside her Marriage. (I keep capitalizing Marriage because it seems that my mom regards it as this meaningful institution for her that demands capitalization due to its importance in the definition of her life. For me, I would use Friendship, Creativity, and Reflection as my pillars of identity, for example).

What to do when the guy who was abusive to you, and you in turn abused, dies quickly without saying he loves you? It seems the solution is to pretend that Marriage was exactly what you wanted, that you were both in love, that it could have been different but it wasn’t and you just have to “deal with it and move on” (one of my mom’s favorite sayings). The problem being, of course, that she is not dealing with it and moving on, because she has never dealt with her relationship and has never moved on.

I know that this is my mother’s work and not mine. I have to step away because she is on a journey and has to travel it herself. This reflection of mine also has codependency written all over it, and I am really working on stepping away from that tendency of mine. And I, who lives across the country from her, can do this with dedication and practice and forgiveness when I slip up and engage with her about it. I have my own complications to understand; the biggest one was realizing last week that it was never just my dad, but the issues that impacted me came from both of them. I know that their relationship was their choice, but it impacted me so much. In some ways, it created the sweet, good, smart, beautiful, creative, and sensitive person that I am. It also contributed to some major anxiety, trust issues, fear, hyper-vigilance, and some strange physical ticks.

I am fascinated by grief, which I will begin to write about here in detail. Grief is a strange thing; something that each of us will encounter many times in our life, and each time will be entirely different. More on grief later.

For today, all I can say here is that many aspects of my personality are present, and are quite shocked at the behavior of my mother and the realizations of myself. Little Patience is standing over in the corner with her mouth open in disbelief. Teenage Patience is standing next to her, smoking a cigarette and looking pissed. Adult Patience, present Patience, is standing tall next to them, remembering to breathe, trying to understand, and knowing that ultimately, everything is ok.

My Beach

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It’s been a place that, for years, has been the consistent feature, albeit one that is, of course, always changing.

It is the beach; a very specific beach that curves along a small cove. It is made of tiny rocks that are weathered and worn from much larger ones that make up the island and the mainland across the bay. Across the water you can see Lamoine, a small town in Downeast Maine. My beach, as I have called it for years, is thin and is framed by rocks and trees and two small houses: one yellow and one gray. For years, I have walked up and down it, collecting sea glass, throwing skipping stones, and thinking. It is the place that I wish my ashes to be scattered, as it is the place I come back to, over and over, as life changes and keeps moving forward.

My dad is very sick all of a sudden, after a lifetime of being sick. Sick with post-traumatic stress from Vietnam, sick from alcohol addiction, sick from Texas oil man capitalism, sick from diabetes, sick, now, from lung cancer. About a month ago they diagnosed him with “shadows on the lung”, but due the remoteness of where my family lives and the spectre of COVID-19 which, seemingly, will never leave, he has not been able to receive a biopsy or diagnosis yet. This Friday they make the first steps to diagnosing him with something, while, every day, he becomes weaker and says things that don’t quite fit. Sometimes the things he says are thankful and hopeful and reflective, which is excellent. Sometimes they just don’t fit.

Two years ago at this time, we were taking care of Cody’s grandma, Marie, who passed away December 21. It is strange, the timing of it all. I know that it is just a coincidence, but muddling through the memories of it all is intensifying the emotions I think.

My dad and I have never had a good relationship. There are lots of reasons for this, but none of us can prove the past.

Now, I feel that we lost an opportunity, or that we both wasted so much time. I think about how he left his family, leaving England sometime in the 1960s to disappear only to be found in 1984 by a chance encounter. At least we didn’t do that with each other. I wonder if he will ever tell my brother and I what happened. I feel that we have little time to wait and see.

Since I decided to go up to Maine, at my brother’s suggestion, all I can think about is my beach. What will it look like? Will the rocks have changed in the interim three years? It has been that long.

Reflections in Memory

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We took a walk on the beach one day, in the summer. It must have been late summer because I remember the slanting sunshine: the warmth of it. We walked along the beach in Salisbury Cove: the part of the cove that would later be left behind for the quieter end, off Old Bar Harbor Road. My father and I, probably five or six years old, walked the beach.

The beach in that part of the world is gray with shale and rusty with ironstone. The stone forms in thin layers and is cracked into a thousand million pieces with the roots of trees. While they crack the stone, the root hairs also hold its myriad pieces in space, braving winter’s storms and the shrinking-expanding process of freeze and thaw. The beach itself is made of tiny to large pieces of stone, too many to count. There is no sand here; the closet thing is tiny pieces of basalt that have been tumbled and thrashed for eons. Here and there are pieces of kelp, ends of rope, bottles, a jellyfish or two, sea urchin skeletons and so many mussel shells. Mussel shells are demure on top: brown, black and white, but reveal indigo or lavender pearl inside. I have always loved them and they were my brother’s favorites when he was a little boy. I have many memories of Carew carrying mussel shells by the dozen back to our cottage.

On the day of the walk, my father and I sat on the top of what seemed like a very tall rock, out on the edge of the beach. I don’t know how long we sat there, only that it was warm. Over time, the tide came in and separated us from the beach. In reality, the water was probably 2 or 3 feet deep, but I couldn’t cross, and my dad hoisted me onto his shoulders and carried me to the beach, to safety.

My father has many stories. When I was studying for the GRE, which I never used for graduate school, I learned a word, legerdemain. Meaning slight of hand, I always thought it applied very well to my father. He is a gifted storyteller who holds his own cards tight to the chest. He plays no personal hand: very little is divulged. He is like the Wizard of Oz, hidden behind a curtain.

During the process that I related to readers here, I realized that I had held guilt as my definitive characteristic for twenty years. It took hard and heavy realizations to see that I had to let that go in order to be happy and be in my present reality. It took risk and resulted in reward, but the path was frightening and new. I think that guilt such as this is ultimately useless, and a barrier between ourselves and those who would really love us. Nothing anyone has done, save very few barbarous actions, could result in someone not being worthy of love from those who choose to do so.

When I think of my father and his life, I can see a life of a world traveler, an instructor, a bridge jumper, an oil man, a golf player, a Mercedes lover, an eldest son, a highly sensitive person, a Vietnam veteran, an alcoholic, a rage-oholic, and a depressive. But despite all of that, my father is worthy of love. However, it would seem that he believed he was not, and so acted out so intensely as if to prove that fact. My mother, my brother, myself, his friends and his family are here to prove that otherwise, despite his faults.

I gave myself and was given forgiveness by those who love me. Forgiveness, like commitment, is freeing and highly emotional. It is the letting go, of staring off into a space of love and friendship, and stepping out into the mystery. As my father sits in the television room of my parents house, on the quiet side of Salisbury Cove, staring down at a coastline that we once walked, I hope to say to him: “I love you. We all love you. You have done nothing to disappoint anyone. There are no mistakes. This is the time to think about all the stories, all the adventure, all the things you have to be thankful for. Let it go. You are loved.”

No More Leaving

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No More Leaving
 
At
Some point
Your relationship
With God
Will
Become like this:
 
Next time you meet Him in the forest
Or on a crowded city street
 
There won’t be anymore
 
“Leaving.”
 
That is,
 
God will climb into
Your pocket.
 
You will simply just take
 
Yourself
 
Along!
– Hafiz

 

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post and since my discovery of what had been bothering me all these years. I feel as if some dark glasses or horse blinders were torn off my eyes and thrown across the street when that discovery hit me. It is so strange to me that we can tell ourselves these stories about ourselves for so many years without actually being forced, by our minds and hearts and new experiences, to reflect upon them in an active way.

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For the last several years, I have been looking into the effects of traumatic experiences on myself and on others. I have discovered that many of us, especially as we get older, in our mid-thirties for example, have developed elaborate defense mechanisms and intimate pitfalls. So many of these are not obvious to anyone, even ourselves, until, if we are lucky enough, our eyes are opened and we can re-open the Pandora’s box of emotions to see whether what is in there is serving us, anymore.

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When I think of the delicacy of the human heart, I like to think of the Egyptian mythology of, when one dies, that one’s heart is measured against the weight of a single feather. I do think that the human heart is just that light, just that easy to shatter. But, the other side of the coin is that we, too, are remarkably resilient, like the trees that I spend so much time gazing upon. Despite the myriad fractures and sometimes breaks in the surface of the heart, we keep on keepin’ on, living from day to day, month to month, year to year. Perhaps the scarification of those fractures are what the defense mechanisms are, the fears, the caginess, the aversion to risking one’s poor, suffering heart.

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It is like crystal, like the petals of a poppy: translucent, and easy to bruise.

I think the sadness of being out of touch with one’s emotional pitfalls comes from the realization that most people are genuinely good, and want to love and care and protect and enjoy one another’s company. It’s almost as if adults live in the center of a long, winding labyrinth with doors along the way. All the doors must open, eventually, and whatever obstacle that lays beyond them must be acknowledged and explored. For if not, I would imagine, you end up rather like someone whose fears have become her/himself, and the real person inside is just lost.

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“An unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates