Finally Found You, Part 2

From the moment her information appeared in front of me, glowing on my computer screen, I knew that I would call her. I knew I would hear her voice, and learn things, whether she answered my questions or not. My mother’s best friend and my aunt were both shocked that I was prepared to be so brazen; concerned about who this woman was, and what I would learn. There was no choice for me. I had to contact her.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous. My hands shook and I paced in my tiny apartment for almost a half hour before I got to courage to sit on my bed, pull the phone from my nightstand, and dial the numbers. My heart was pounding. I didn’t know what to expect, but I had to know something.

Someone once told me that it’s the unknown things that tear you apart. You can deal with what you know- good, bad, horrible- you can find a way to make it through. The unknown leaves you no path, no light at the end of the tunnel. That made sense. The need to know. The need to fill in the missing pieces of my father’s life, the mysteries of his anger and dependence on alcohol. Dialing those numbers felt like I was turning the dial on a safe, getting ready to pull open a heavy door that would help me understand.

What I didn’t know was that I was opening a door to 30 some-odd years of existing on secrets, lies, and facades. I didn’t know that opening the door to the truth could shatter my foundation instead of strengthening it. I had no idea.

I was ready for her to answer the phone. His mistress. One of many, I suspected, but the only one I knew of for sure. The only one that was real to me. The phone rang three times and the voice on the other end was not at all what I was suspecting. A small child sang the word hello to me, dragging out the multiple syllables while rustling the receiver. I froze. I asked if his mommy was named her name. He answered yes, and told me she was in the next room. Should he get her? Yes, I answered, listening to his clomping footsteps carry the phone to her. In that moment, I was counting the years back to Atlanta and the years in between, trying to see if the age was right. Trying to reconcile the fact that I might have been speaking to a half brother. Still digesting that, I heard her voice.

“Hello?”

Very southern. The unmistakable drawl of well-bred, old money Atlanta. Now in Florida.

“This is (I said his name)’s daughter.”

Her response was all I needed. It told me everything.

In a panicked voice she asked, “Is he alright?!? Is he OK??”

Not the response I expected. But what had I wanted, really?

Did I want her to say Who? Whose daughter? Who is this? Who is he?

Did I want to then wonder if she was just a good liar? Or did I really not want it all to be true? In theory, that would be great, but then, what would that mean to everything I thought I knew? All the hunches, suspicions… and all the fallout of living with a father who had chosen someone else and something else instead of being with his family. Really with his family.

No one asks if someone is alright like that unless they care, unless they are involved.

I assured her he was just fine. So was his wife.

She was momentarily stunned, which didn’t seem to be a far distance for her to travel. Not speaking out of ill will, just the facts, she was not the sharpest tool in the shed. I remember picturing a younger Rose Nyland from the Golden Girls in my head as I talked to her. Only maybe not so innocent. Or maybe she was.

I clarified a few things for her. He had another daughter (she only knew about me). He was not single, he was still married. He was not the age she thought he was, he was about 10 years older than that. That seemed to be the thing that concerned her most of all, but none of it seemed to really be getting through. It just seemed like new information, nothing damning to her, nothing that really changed anything.

The damning things came from her direction.

How he spoiled her. How he drove to her house to pick her up and wouldn’t ever let her walk to the car, he had to carry her. How gentlemanly he was, opening doors for her, taking her places. I had to lay down. I was nauseous. This man she was describing, at great length, was a man I had never met. And my mother for damn sure had never met him. Never once, ever in my life would I describe any of his actions toward my mother as spoiling her. This was a man for whom I had to buy my mother’s birthday and Christmas gifts, handing the greeting cards to him for his signature. This was a man that never, ever, thought of my mother first, or celebrated anniversaries or special occasions unless friends prompted and arranged everything. I was seething and sick at the same time. She continued to blather on, Rose-Nylund style, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was giving details to the daughter of a married man she was sleeping with, details she shouldn't be sharing. Details that were turning my insides and breaking my heart.

“STOP!” I said, louder than I meant to.

She did. Sensing I was now upset, she began backpedaling, saying it was over now, and had been for some time. I told her I found that a little hard to believe since my father was now moving to Florida, her state of residence. She stumbled and made explanations, assured me I was wrong.  When I asked when it had ended, she couldn’t answer, laughing nervously and changing the subject. She wasn’t quick enough to answer my accusations. She didn’t need to be.

I ended the call, hung up the receiver and stumbled to the bathroom to throw up.

My mother’s face kept flashing before me. I should have told her years ago, back in Atlanta. It had gone on forever. I never imagined he was having relationships with these women, real relationships. I didn’t know he was capable of it. Only, he was. Just not with his wife. Not with his family.

Not with us. Not with me.

My mother’s best friend reassured me about my decision not to tell my mom years ago. She knew why I had made the decision back in Atlanta. Even though others didn’t know for sure about my father’s infidelities, there had been suspicions. My mother was always so fragile and innocent, so dependent on my father. I had tried in the past to ask her about their relationship, even broached the subject of him cheating. She would not discuss it. Not in an angry way, she just changed the subject and slipped into the comfort of denial. It was maddening. No matter how you pushed, she blankly stared back, refusing to acknowledge any words she didn’t want to hear.

I had a new decision to make now.

It was one thing to live in denial, to make choices based on turning a blind eye, but it was another to be pulled from everyone and everything you know and be taken somewhere strange and new for someone else’s selfish reasons. I imagined her withering away, being abandoned even worse than before. I had to tell her. I had to make her listen to these words, to what was happening. Jolting my mother into reality wasn’t going to be easy. Or without pain.

I took a few personal days from work and made the seven hour drive home, practicing my speech along the way. My father was going to be out of town working, and she and I would be alone. No plans, just a visit, I told her. She was thrilled that I was coming to see her, to spend time with her. She always was. It broke my heart.

I was struggling with everything, but at the same time, I felt so strong. I thought that maybe, for that for the first time in my life, I might be able to change the family dynamic- extract some of of the dysfunction somehow.

I imagined my mom on her own, finding strength she never knew she had, surrounded by friends who would support her and love her and help her build a life she could count on. I saw her living in the present instead of in denial…nothing to hide or be ashamed of, no secrets or betrayals.

But, I knew her, I knew how emotionally frail she was. I knew how devastating it would be to hear this from her daughter. I knew how private she was and how this would feel so invasive.

Usually, the seven hour drive home seemed endless. This time, it was too short. I was pulling into the driveway before I knew it. Sitting in my car, hesitating to go inside.

How do you begin the conversation that will change your mother’s life?


For Part 1 in this series of posts, click here.

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Finally Found You, Part 1

For most of my life, my mother’s happiness was my main concern. I have fretted over what she doesn’t have, what she has lost, and what I wished for her. So much so, that I ended up sacrificing my own happiness at times. In the mixed-up maze of my family background, I felt the only way I could come out safely on the other side was to see her happy.

It’s not her fault. She didn’t set out for that, it wasn’t her goal. At times, she has asked too much of me, but only because she has felt so little true love in her lifetime. She cried out for me from a place of great loneliness and disappointment.

I have always tried to answer. Only when the weight of everything threatened to drown me did I finally realize that the balance was truly off. I always thought making your mother happy couldn’t be wrong. It wasn’t wrong, it was just overwhelming. Too much. Too much from a person whose own sense of being was hanging from very delicate threads.

My mother married at 16. In the photos I remember of her wedding, the photographer is too close to the bride and groom, obviously cramped in a tight space--the tiny living room of a relative. Their faces are blurred, too indistinct to see their expressions. My mother wears a simple dress, my father in something like a suit. The flash is too bright, the images overexposed.  They are figures in a room of onlookers, taking part in a sweet ceremony somewhere in the hills of rural Kentucky—coal mining country—where marrying at 16 wasn’t unheard of, or even unusual. They had no money, no idea what was next.  My father was 20 years old and became my mother’s future in that moment. For better or worse.

My destiny was also carved in that tiny living room. Their paths created mine, setting in motion years of pain they couldn’t imagine, standing there taking vows, ready to escape their own histories and lives of poverty and longing.

None of the pain was planned. No one like this sets out to hurt everyone, to abandon their vows and promises. No one strives for alcoholism or regrets. Yet, choices are made and the line between destiny and choice grows blurry. What kind of fate has this kind of outcome? Whose destiny does this all benefit?

My mother is now heading into her seventies. Her hands look frail; her eyes look tired to me. She still carries a beauty with her that I would be grateful to see at her age. She still sees only what she wants to, deals only with the superficial, and somehow looks the other way when something too painful to handle occurs. I marvel at her denial, and at times rage against it, demanding that she admit to me that she remembers things that haunt me in dreams and waking hours. These things truly happened, but somewhere in the world she lives in, they are locked away permanently. It took me so many more years to heal because of her locked away secrets. But, it is also the only way she knows to survive.

In my first years out of college, I finally landed in Atlanta, Georgia with a real job and hopes of a career future. The distance from my family-about a five hour drive- had honestly been good for me. I was finding my own way, still uncertain, so much more to figure out, but I had a little space to clear my own path. My father’s job led him to Atlanta from time to time, and he called while he was in town, and occasionally, we would meet somewhere for dinner, usually under my mother’s encouragement, both of us only getting together because it made my mother happy, and quieted her demands for it to happen.

A new feature was being introduced in the market where I lived for residential phone service. It was called Caller ID. My apartment complex was taking part in being one area of a test market. The little cumbersome box sat next to my phone in the bedroom, the readout offering the end of the mystery of who was calling. The phone rang, and instantly, the caller’s name and number appeared.

My father had arrived in town one week, and my mother had let me know he would be calling me on a Friday morning. Around 8am that morning, I was still in bed, and the phone rang. I picked it up, and heard my father’s voice, but saw a woman’s name scroll across the caller ID screen. I was distracted, and my father’s words pulled me back to the conversation. I hadn’t heard a word he had said, and I interrupted. “Where are you?” I asked. There was a pause. “I am at the Holiday Inn in Buckhead”. My turn to pause. “Can you call me right back?” I asked.  He agreed.

Maybe this Caller ID thing was faulty. Maybe it was a glitch.

The phone rang. The same woman’s name appeared. I picked up the phone and acted as if nothing was wrong. He planned to come by my apartment that day. Mom had sent some things for him to deliver to me. We settled on a time, and hung up.

I laid in bed for a moment, and then went searching for my phone book. First, I scoured the hotel listings and called every hotel in Buckhead, GA after not finding him at the Holiday Inn. No one with my father’s name at any one of them.

Then, I grabbed the Caller ID box and scrolled through the names of recent callers. I settled on the woman’s name, and scribbled it down on a piece of paper along with her phone number.

I turned to the residential listings in the phone book and found her. Right there, staring back at me. Her name, her address.

When the time came for my father to visit, I was ready. Palms sweating, heart racing, but I was ready. It was no secret to me that my father wasn’t faithful to my mother, but I had never had any kind of proof. It was always just something I sensed, even when I was little. Even before I really understood what it all meant, something in me just knew it. It was never spoken about or discussed. But I knew.

Even though a large part of me still felt fearful of my father, I felt a need to do this—to confront him. To hear his answers. I was ready for a fight. I was ready to remind him that the betrayal went beyond his marriage. He was also betraying me—our family.

He arrived and I didn’t even let him set the bag down that my mother had sent. I asked him where he was staying. He responded with the same hotel. I told him I had called there, and everywhere else in Buckhead. He didn’t miss a beat. He almost looked amused. His response was that he traveled so much in this area that sometimes he forgot where he was. He said it was a Holiday Inn in a different location.

I said her name.

I asked who she was.

I expected an explosion. I expected him to be defiant and tell me what was and wasn’t my business. Instead, he fell into an abyss of a million excuses. She was the girlfriend of a friend, he was staying at her house with this friend to save money. He asked me to please not tell my mother, she didn’t like when he and his friend did things like this.

I bet not.

He had only stayed there last night and would get a hotel tonight, he promised.

This new side of my father was hard to take in. I had never seen him weak before me, but my ambush and information had caught him off guard.

He mumbled a few other excuses and promises and got out of my apartment as soon as he could.

I remember that I had a date that night. A second date with someone I liked.  I had contemplated cancelling, but had waited too long to decide. He showed up a few hours after all of this had taken place and I was in a fog. In a weird (for him) scenario, he showed up to take me on a second date, and I blurted out everything that has just happened, warning him I might not be myself for the evening. Great set up, I know. Predictably, the evening was short, and I was home, still in my fog, by 9:30pm.

I called a close friend and updated him on the events of the day. I told him I wanted to go and drive by the woman’s house. Just to see, I wasn’t sure why. He offered to go with me. I told him I wanted to go by very late, like 2 or 3am. He was in.

We took the phone book page with us in the car, and drove around, finally finding the neighborhood she lived in. My hopes were dashed when I realized she lived in a gated community. We sat in the car, staring at the gate, with an attendant inside. Somehow, my friend came up with a story to tell, and a few fibs later, we were through the gate.

Her house was on the back end of a cul-de-sac. It was massive-- a huge, gorgeous house in one of the most exclusive areas of Atlanta. And there, at 2:30am in the morning, in her driveway, sat my father’s car. The house lights were dark. No other cars but hers (with Georgia plates) were parked near the house. I knew the friend my father had spoken of, the one who supposedly was the real reason he had stayed at this house. I knew his car. It was nowhere in sight.

My friend reached over and took my hand. “I am sorry, Kim”.

Me too.

In the strangeness that is my mother’s mode of survival, in the weirdness that you can only understand if you come from a family where alcoholism, codependence, and denial are considered “normal”, I didn’t say a thing to my mother. Or to anyone else in my family. I knew my mother probably already knew. If she didn’t, it wouldn’t change anything. She wouldn’t leave. And to be honest, I didn’t know if she could handle knowing that I knew. It may sound bizarre reading those words. I can promise you that it is even more bizarre writing them.

Years passed and I moved a few dozen times—all across the country and back. Every time I unpacked, I came across an antique wooden box where I kept a few special papers and mementos. The page from the phone book was folded neatly and tucked inside. Every now and then, I would pull it out and look at her name. It wasn’t circled or marked, but I was drawn to her name every time. That phone book page was a symbol to me of all the things I had guessed but never been sure of, all of the things and people my father chose over my mother and our family. At least I wasn’t crazy; I hadn’t imagined these things were happening.

Fast forward seven years. Abruptly, out of nowhere, my mother and father announce they are moving to Florida. What might have seemed like a normal migration after retirement rang false with me and my mother’s sister and closest friends. It was normal for my mother to follow suit and do whatever my father said, but my father’s choice to move was odd. He was desperately close to his two grandsons, my nephews, really playing the role of doting father in their lives. My mother had a job and a close, protective circle of friends. It was hard for my mother to make friends due to her shyness and insecurity, so the few close friends she trusted were precious.

I spoke with my mom’s best friend, whom I was also close to, and we fretted together. We worried about the real reasons behind the move, about how my mother would fare in a place where she knew no one and had no real outlet to meet and befriend people. We worried about her moving to a place far away from everything and everyone she knew-and where my father was truly her only lifeline.

Something in my gut told me there was more to the story. And somehow, instinctively, I went to the antique wooden box and pulled out the yellowing, tattered phone book page. I went to my computer, navigated to Google search and typed in her name. Her name from all those years ago in Georgia. Her name and information magically popped up. Her new phone number and address, readily available on the screen.

It was too easy. It was too awful.

She now lived in Florida.

To view Part 2 in this series of posts, click here.

The artwork featured in this post if from the Family Chic blog. To see this piece in more detail, visit Camilla Fabbri's blog by clicking here.

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Band of Gold

This past Christmas was special for many reasons. It was my first Christmas with my husband as his wife. We married on the one year anniversary of our first date, Nov 13. Holidays have always been a tough time in my family, and although I loved the traditions and spirit of Christmas, I was on my own during that time of year a lot before meeting my husband. Christmas with my family became a boiling point of emotions, and almost always, a showcase for my father’s alcoholism and anger. My mother desperately wanted me home each year, and I tried for many years to be there for her. But finally I realized that my self esteem was getting battered each December so much so that it took me months to recover. I quit going home and took solo trips or stayed on my own for Christmas for the last dozen years or so.

For our first Christmas together, my husband and I planned to enjoy it with each other and then spend time with his aunt and cousins who live here locally. It was special for both of us. Then, my parents announced they were traveling from their home in Florida to NC to visit our old hometown and to spend Christmas with my sister and her family. They said they would like to stop in for the night to see us on the way.

My husband marveled as I was immediately in knots after the phone call. I was worried about how they would interact with us for an extended period of time. I was almost sure the time would be uneventful, as it was only in private amongst our family that my father let loose on me—and a great source of his anger and my mother’s disappointment always seemed to be because I wasn’t married yet. It was odd that they so wanted me to enter into an institution that had seemed to have almost ruined their lives. Their marriage, for both of them, seemed both suffocating and a façade—in different ways. My father was unfaithful and kept our house in a state of tension and fear growing up. My mother lived in denial of all of his faults, but was also utterly dependent on him.

But the fact that they would behave and put on a front (as I saw it) around my husband was almost as upsetting as the alternative. While I have been so honest with my husband about my childhood, my history with my father, and their history together, it always seems so surreal to sit with them when they are on their best behavior, acting like the happiest couple in the world.

My mother later called back to clarify that they would be staying in a hotel nearby and would only really have time for a late dinner as they passed through. I was relieved, but still on an emotional roller coaster until they arrived the day before Christmas Eve.

We met at our house and then drove to a local restaurant. My father, as he always is in situations like this, was utterly charming, engaging and funny. He shared funny anecdotes about my childhood, and lovingly joked with my mother about her growing obsession with germ avoidance, a level of OCD that is quite startling. As he gestured with his hands, imitating my mother trying to avoid a public restroom doorknob, I saw it. A wedding band. On his finger. For the first time in my life.

My parents, astonishingly, have been married 50 years. When their last anniversary rolled around, I remember staring at the number in my mother’s email announcing it with much pride. Fifty years. I would never, ever have described my parents as being happy or well matched, or even in love. It has been quite the opposite, watching the fighting, the days and weeks of silence, and the violence on my father’s part. My father has also been unfaithful. Many times. I don’t let myself think how many times or with whom. I fully expect there may be half sisters or brothers out there that I don’t know and might never meet.

But in all the time I have known my parents, from the time I toddled around and inspected my mother’s necklaces and jewelry while being held, until the Christmas of last year, I have never seen my father wear his wedding band.

I knew he had one. I would often sit and rifle through my mother’s jewelry boxes-- she loved jewelry and had tons of costume jewelry as well as nice gold and diamond pieces that she often saved up for herself. I remember several times coming across his band and asking her why he didn’t wear it. I have tried to remember her exact answers. I know she seemed to always give a different one—it didn’t fit right, it hurt his hand, he just didn’t like jewelry—until I felt sad asking her, as I could see it bothered her.

About 10 years ago, my sister found out about a company that would take men’s wedding bands and stretch and mold them into the shape of a heart for the wife to wear as a pendant. Oddly enough, the company most often did this for the wives of deceased husbands, as a way for them to carry that part of him next to their heart, dangling on a gold chain. Although she had the best intentions, my stomach dropped when she told me what she had done. She had told my father about it, sneaked into the house when my mom was at work, and swiped his band to send it off. She thought that my mother would love it as a birthday present, a way to make use of a band that meant so much to her, but that my father never wore.

My mother’s reaction was not what she had hoped or expected. My mother called to talk to me later, and touched only a little on the gift- in her usual way of skirting around anything painful. She only said, I wish she had asked me first. But, to me, my mother’s voice was saying- “he will never wear it now”.  

Even when I was little, five or six, I remember knowing it was wrong that my father didn’t wear his wedding band. I didn’t fully understand the easily identifiable adult reasons for not wearing the band, but somehow, even then, I knew it was wrong. It was false. It was somehow lying.

What no one that cheats ever seems to understand is that you don’t just cheat on your spouse. Not wearing that wedding band was saying to the world—“I am connected to no one”. It was a betrayal of my mother, but also our family as a whole. As I grew up, I quickly learned the bigger reason he didn’t wear his ring, even though no one ever explained it to me- and my mother certainly never shared anything. If I believed her and her level of denial, my father was the best husband and father in the world. And I knew differently. On both counts.

So, as my father finished telling his story, I got lost across the table, and my husband took my hand and looked at me. I snapped back to reality and we finished our dinner with no outbursts or uneasiness. It was a perfectly normal dinner…from the outside.

My mother called on Christmas Day to wish us a good holiday and I asked her about the ring. She joyfully explained that she had bought it for him as a gift for their 50^th anniversary. She had been so excited by the tiny engraving on it, the style of the band, and the sale price she had found. She ignored my initial question of why he was suddenly wearing a wedding band now. 

And I am happy for her, that 49 years into her marriage, her husband, who has caused her a great deal of pain, is finally, in some way, honoring their union. I know that in their own way they have settled into getting older and realizing that they have reached the time of their lives where no one is leaving anyone and they are what they are.

But I hate that he has chosen only now to wear his wedding band. It took really having no other options for him to place a band of gold on his finger and say—this is my wife—this is my family. 

And for me, it will always be 49 years too late.

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Parts of a Whole: The Collage of Who we Are

I have written a great deal about the struggle I have with the relationship with my parents, my father in particular. A lot of the words I have written were almost therapy, a way for me to explore things I remembered, turn them over and over and try to make sense of them. It is easy in an overview to see things as black and white, with a hero and a victim. There are many reasons I have struggled over the years, battled depression, and questioned myself. I do believe with all of my heart that the foundation I was given led me to a struggle with my self esteem and gave me more obstacles to overcome at a young age. However, I do know I can’t blame everything on my upbringing or my father’s alcoholism. I know that I am still responsible for choices I have made, and paths I have chosen.

I have never been good with money. I can remember so vividly being in Mrs. McCune’s math class in middle school crying my eyes out because I could not balance my imaginary checkbook that was given to us as a class assignment. This wasn’t Algebra or Calculus. It was addition and subtraction. And I wasn’t a stupid kid. Outside of the checkbook register, addition and subtraction were easy. Put in the context of paying bills and shopping, I couldn’t make it work.

Some of my struggles over the years with money have been just not having enough of it, working three jobs trying to make ends meet, eating spaghettios almost every night to survive. But as I found career success and made a great salary, I still had issues. Some of it was due to retail therapy and comforting myself because other things were lacking, and some of it was just my lack of money management skills.

My relationship choices did have a predestination quality, we learn what we live—how we are taught to love. But at some point, you have to say to yourself people who hurt me are bad, those who don’t are good, and learn from it. I was a slow learner to say the least.

So, yes, I know that my childhood shaped me, maybe more than I would have liked. But even amidst the pain and at times, bitterness, I know I gained some things from my parents that are the better parts of me.

I have my mother’s heart. My mother’s compassion is a gift I am thankful for, even though it causes me to feel things 100 times more deeply than I should, causes me to cry over small injustices every day. I sometimes wish I didn’t feel things so deeply, and have, over the years, wished I didn’t form such intense strong attachments to people, but I know that the opposite would be worse. I have watched my mother love without worrying about anything in return for much of her life. Although I know it isn’t healthy, it is at times still amazing to watch.

I have my father’s wit and sense of comic timing. In times of stress, I learned to borrow this gift from him to ease tension, or divert everyone away from the negative forces in our lives. Though shy outside the house when I was younger, I could be a clown and a performer at home when I needed to be. Although the circumstances may not have been ideal to grow this trait, I am thankful I have honed my sarcasm over the years, and my ability to always laugh at myself. I think that in particular has helped save me at times.

The weird thing is, all of us grow up in completely different circumstances, some good, some bad, and you can’t ever completely predict how any one person will turn out. There are some psychological profiles that we can expect given certain things, but truthfully, it all seems like a weird lottery to me. Someone who grows up in a family of abuse, neglect, and horror can grow up to be successful, warm, giving, and healthy, while someone from a seemingly healthy, loving home can grow up and lose their way or worse, find a life of crime.

The best and worst of the two people who raised me is the collage of the person I have become. While some people deal with pain by withdrawing, I have expressed it openly in various ways including writing. And writing is like breathing to me. I cannot imagine my life without this need and love for words. I don’t know if I was born to write, or if my circumstances carved this notion into me. Probably a little bit of both. Out of everything I have and am, and even if I never find true success at it, I would not want to lose my love of writing or the ability to do so. Do I wish there were things I didn’t have to see, endure, learn or know to get where I am? Definitely. Are there things I regret and wish I could have handled differently? God yes.

But there is no way to pick and choose the parts you can delete and still remain yourself. Even in my lowest times, when the world seemed so dark to me—I would ask myself—do you wish you were someone else? And I could never answer that question affirmatively. I knew I didn’t want to be in the pain I was in, battling what I was battling, but at the core of it all, I didn’t want to change who I was. Sometimes that still amazes me. That even as flawed and hopeless as I have felt, I wanted this heart, this mind, this body, this face, these gifts, these burdens.

And today as I try to reconcile so many things, I still do. All the pieces, flawed and unblemished, broken and repaired, silent and screaming, loved and forgotten...are why I am here today, finally happy and whole. Loved by myself and others for all those reasons.

What a gift that is.

~~~
The amazing collage pictured above was done by Gloria Martin at
 http://barefootmuse.blogspot.com/2010/01/paper-collage-portrait.html.

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Borrowed Wings

When you look back
in the rooms of your past self--
were you ever not lonely?
Were you ever strong?

I see you at sixteen
vulnerable and afraid;
worried and tempted.
But is this your reflection?

Or were you defiant…
brave (you thought) beyond reason-
only weak and broken
after the vows and the exchange of rings?

No matter now.
Your life has nearly passed.
Fifty years with someone
who might have robbed you of your spirit and soul.

What a choice to make
at sixteen, so young
in the shadow of poverty--
the grip of seduction.

I imagine your life without him.
Another choice.
Anything but the one you made.
Anyone but him.

I see you courted and loved-
not the twist of temptation.
Someone seeing you
in the small ways that denote you are seen.

You never had that.
At least not within my lifetime.
Not for the many years
I have watched you wither.

My sorrow for that
runs deep.
But I keep it at bay
in exchange for the pain I have endured.

You had other choices
after that first one.
No matter how looming his shadow.
No matter how lost your soul.

You could have gone-
disappeared with me
into the dew drenched morning
before he woke.

You could have stayed
and fiercely protected me;
showed me and him your intentions
even if they failed.

At least the battle
would have been fought
instead of the immediate surrender
of all of your purpose.

I was a casualty-
thrown to the front lines;
sacrificed because your strength failed-
leaving me behind in ashes.

My foundation was gone-
blown into the cloudless sky.
My sense of self
scattered in places too far to recover.

The things you didn’t get to do
Or see, or know, or have...
or be--
there is no way to undo a lifetime.

And I can’t be your only joy-
the weight eclipsing my own choices;
the guilt of all you lost
wrapped up in my biography.

I have to fly with borrowed wings
far away from all the wreckage…
Viewing from a high safe place
the choices you made.

artwork by Kathleen Piercefield.

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Anniversary

My mother called a few days ago, with the pattern of random small talk that I recognize well. She was upset about something. While she chattered on about the weather or her recent purchase of new placemats for the kitchen, she was trying to find the courage to say what was really on her mind.

Finally, in a quiet voice, almost a whisper, she said: You didn’t send us a card for our anniversary. We have been married for fifty years, this was special. I was just surprised.

Fifty years. I knew when their anniversary was. My mother has never been subtle or able to hold back excitement for any holiday or birthday. She is nearly unbearable around Christmastime, walking around in holiday sweaters that embarrassed me growing up and even now. So, for the weeks leading up to their anniversary date, she was dropping hints and asking for my advice on a present for my father, all the time reminding me of the approaching day.

I should be a bigger person. It’s one day out of the year. I could drop a card in the mail with some simple sentiment, nothing too sappy, devoid of anything that makes me sound overjoyed about the occasion. I could send flowers and just sign the card with my name. But I never have been able to make myself do it.

My parents both grew up in poverty in an area of Kentucky that is still a bit lost in time. At that time, in that place, it wasn’t uncommon for people to marry young. My mother was sixteen when they married, my father was twenty.

From day one, and not just because of her age, my mother has been dependent on my father. She is and has always been painfully shy, and doubts everything about herself with such depth that I am shocked when she steps even a millimeter outside of her comfort zone. She didn’t have a driver’s license until the age of 29, and this was after years of marriage and success with my father’s career—and after having two children. They had money for her to have a car. Instead, she waited for my father to take her where she needed to go.

Their marriage showed no evidence of love or respect at any moment since I can remember-- since I knew even a little about what those words meant. My mother has always professed her love for my father. I know she believes that and means it. But how you can truly love someone who has never put you first, has never encouraged you or believed in you, who has belittled you, taken you for granted, ignored your birthdays, squashed your dreams, and expected in turn to be waited on hand and foot—is beyond comprehension for me. She was a child when she married him. He taught her his version of love and she was an excellent student.

Fifty years of marriage for my parents, to me, is not a cause for celebration or special recognition. If I have to label it, I would say it is an accomplishment at best.

My mother survived fifty years of never making a decision without deferring to my father. She managed to put a face on for the world that seemed together and content, when my father’s alcoholism and many affairs were the crippling reality.

I can’t paint her completely as a hero or even a martyr-- as she lived in such denial over the toll my father’s choices and behavior were taking on our family. She chose indifference over action. She chose denial over protecting me.

For the forty years I have lived with or known my parents, their marriage has confused me, saddened me, angered me.

When I was very young, caught up in my mother’s excitement of marking special days on the calendar, I would make homemade cards for their anniversaries out of construction paper and glitter—happily handing it to them on the morning of the big day. But even when I was barely out of grade school, celebrating that day felt false. Not marking that day with some gesture wasn’t done out of bitterness, it just seemed so much like a lie, a betrayal of everything I knew to be true. I couldn’t make myself encourage my mother’s state of denial.

I feel for her. I hurt for her. I wonder so often what my mother could have become, what she would have done with her life had she not married my father—or had she broken away from him when she was young. I sometimes imagine her with someone who would have seen her. Truly seen the person she is, the heart she has. She can’t even see it herself.

So, each year, I let that day in February quietly pass. The square box stares back at me on the calendar. I don’t have to mark it, I know the date.

It is the date that made my mother who she is, and me who I am.

It was the beginning and the end for all of us.

It is the loss of her innocence, the beginning of his betrayals.

It is a mix of love and hate.

It is a contradiction—wishing the union didn’t happen—but knowing I would not be here if it hadn’t.

And there isn’t a card for that.

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