Relating the Past to Present Day, part 2

Relating the Past to Present Day, part 2

Notes on Seven to Fourteen

I have been invested for most of my life in the image of my mom as the "heroic single mom". She moved mountains in order to get me to a good school. She went beyond the call of duty every day to get food on the table and read me a bed time story.

There is a deep desire within me to buy into the myth my mom has been spinning about me most of my life. Her myth makes me look really good: well adjusted, successful, a fine specimen of humanity. The myth naturally traces said success back to how she battled long odds to nurture me into the fabulous person I am today.

The problem is, it's a myth.

The reality can be much more painful to look at. The thing is, parenting really matters. You can't just neglect the kid and then expect good results. If parents feel they must do certain things in order for the family to make it, they should at least be honest about the effects on the kids. Creating an alternate mythical reality just adds insult to injury. From the kid's perspective, first comes the hit of the initial neglect or other damage; and second the much longer term process of untangling the myth that the adult put in place around the damage.

The discrepancy between myth and reality is something the kids have to bear into adulthood. If they're lucky they get some therapy help and sort out what actually happened. Not very efficient, really. Much better to acknowledge what's happening at the time so that at least there's clarity. It's really hard to heal something when the whole area is obscure.

It's hard for me to criticize my mom. Like her, I am also invested in "everything being just fine." There is a big part of me which would be happy to limp along and cover up all the messy bits. Perhaps luckily, life doesn't allow an infinite amount of that. The piper gets paid one way or another. And personally, I'd rather pay him consciously than unconsciously. The former is painful but the latter is far more so.

I believe that focussing on one's painful past without clear purpose, though understandable, is of questionable value. Looking at the past traumas of one's life should be done with a clear eye to understanding and transforming them. If we are just bathing ourselves over and over in painful experiences we're pulling ourselves out of the present time and what we are called to do out of our essential self. If we are focussed on the past we are much less likely to be helpful to either ourselves or anyone else at the time when life takes place, the present.

So part of my healing is being honest about the mistakes my parents made. Not in order to skewer them, but in order to cognize the damage I'm dealing with on the way to healing it. I'm not a moral relativist. I believe there is a sort of natural law in the universe which encompasses all of our thoughts, feelings and actions; while at the same time leaving us free. The law has a fundamental relationship with Love. Situations where any of us act lovelessly create a relational space which requires healing in some way.

Nelson Mandela seems to me a person who understood this at a very deep level. The Truth and Reconciliation Committees in South Africa in the nineties had a lofty goal in mind. It was to list the crimes of individuals during the apartheid era, to come to a level of clarity of what the person had done, and then to grant amnesty. One could see the crime and also the context in which it was committed. People were acting under orders, within a given system, and may have made different choices given different circumstances.

I can see the context of my mom. And my dad. I see where the choices they made came from, both in terms of their brain disorders and family backgrounds. But I guess I am not yet ready to truly forgive either one of them. I have to come to clarity first. My own personal "truth and reconciliation" process is obviously quite different from the context of post-apartheid South Africa. Neither of my parents committed crimes that would be punished in a court of law. I don't need to expose their deeds in public, just to myself. I need to acknowledge the individual pieces of my own pain and the actions to which it is connected.

I must be truthful in order to reconcile with my own self. If I can do that, whatever healing needs to happen between my mom and I (and my dad, for that matter) can unfold in its proper way. A major stumbling block for my healing is that I have bought into my mom's myth about what life was like for me as a child.

So here are some truths which need to be told:

First let's talk about my mom's actions around the pets I had between the ages of seven and fourteen. Unless you count a pair of lizards, there were two during that seven year period: a dog and a rabbit. The dog was named Amanda and I don't remember the rabbit's name.

And secondly, let's say a few words about dad.

Amanda was a little dog my mom got at the pound when my cousins were visiting. It was at a time right after I had been molested and right before my dad was leaving. She was a small, white, high strung mixed breed who was also very sweet and affectionate. Amanda would watch our cat jump out of a second story window and go off into the trees nearby. One day, while we were out somewhere, the dog followed the cat out the window and broke three legs. Very expensive free dog.

We moved to the new neighborhood and the dog, after several weeks, got the casts off. We settled into our new home and Amanda seemed to as well. It was, undeniably a lot for my mom to meet Amanda's needs in addition to all she was doing. Amanda's barking sometimes put mom on edge. She had a pretty high pitched yap.

I was seven, mom had her demanding professional job. The situation looked pretty challenging for pet ownership. Yet mom was the one who chose to get the dog.

Years later, when I was in my twenties, I had some friends over at my mom's house. It was summer and we were relaxing. Somehow the topic of Amanda came up. My mom said in a loud and enthusiastic voice, "I hated that dog. I took her to the pound and had her put down as soon as I had the chance." Then she laughed. I said, "No, you didn't...Amanda got lost in the neighborhood and we searched for her and couldn't find her" Mom got a playful look on her face that said that her version of the story was the correct one. I was appalled and expressed that. She brushed it off and didn't feel the need to say any more about it.

The next pet we had was a rabbit. We kept it in a smallish cage in the (unheated) and dark garage. I was nine. We got the rabbit in the fall and got everything set up for it. In retrospect it was a terrible life for the little creature. It was alone in a cage all day in a dark and cold room. Then, for a short while a boy would come and feed it and let it out. It's no wonder the little guy bit me every time I tried to hold it. This went on for several weeks. I don't remember mom really shepherding the process much. She told me what was needed and it was up to me to meet the creature's needs.

One day at school I was sharing with my teacher and classmates about how the rabbit always bit me when I tried to hold it and that I was sad about that. My teacher, who stressed outdoors survival skills at every turn, made a bold suggestion: Why don't you bring the rabbit into class and I will show the kids how to dress an animal and make soup.

I was shocked by the idea and didn't quite know what to say. I said I could talk to my mom and let him know. That night I told mom what the proposal was. She asked me if I still wanted to take care of the rabbit and if I was prepared to follow through over the months and years to come. I said probably not. At the same time the little creature was my pet. So I went to school the next day and told my teacher that they could kill and eat my rabbit but that I didn't want to be there while they did it. So I went to the library while the whole thing took place.

I was pretty numb to the whole process, to be honest. Today it seems to me appalling that 1) a teacher would propose such a thing and that 2) a parent would go along with it.

Initially, my mom was excited about the idea of having a cute little rabbit for her boy, the life lessons he could gain from caring for another creature. Then she facilitated how the little creature's life ended, as lunch for a bunch of fifth graders. All this happened over a span of about four months.

Essentially the primary experiences I had with pets in the central part of my childhood, the time when I was most a "kid", involved killing the creature because it was becoming a nuisance. Granted, I didn't know about about Amanda until I was an adult. Still, I am trying to get a handle on what the atmosphere was that I imprinted on.

What does it mean to me that my mom behaved in that way? That she had such a callous attitude about the lives of my pets?

"Hi Peter, this is your dad."

One phone call per year on my birthday. To this day I feel a sense of stress and antipathy as my birthday approaches.

"Have you been laid yet?" This is what he asked me on my thirteenth birthday phone call. I could have said "Yes, as a matter of fact a few months ago I met a girl on the city bus who was very drunk. We happened to get off a the same stop and as I was walking home she started throwing herself at me. Her house was on the way to mine and we went inside and had sex. I have never seen her since and I don't really expect to, and anyway she probably wouldn't recognize or remember me." "Oh yeah, and by the way, I got laid when you were still around, back when I was six years old. Although I'm not sure if I'd exactly call that 'getting laid'". More like "rape", really.

What I want to say to both of my parents at this moment is, "What the F**K were you thinking?" The obvious answer is that whatever they were thinking about, it wasn't me or my welfare.

Joseph Chilton Pearce speaks of the "model imperative" as a primary driver of neural development. The role models, ie parents/caregivers we have show us how to be human and facilitate our brains to develop in one way or another. There are aspects of my self which I highly value and which come from my parents in some way. There are also major deficits in my family inheritance.

These deficits create something like a large, dark vacuum in my soul. So far, I have been able to largely skirt this dark area, perhaps due to youthful energy and naivete. Well, like I said in my first post, I am now past the age when NBA players retire. And I am done being naive about who I am.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben