I've lived my life thus far, at least for the past 30 years, with the largely disclosed knowledge that my mother did not love me. The repercussions have been, to put lightly, staggering and the implications as they pertain to who I was and who I have become were something of a malevolent, smoldering forge; this knowledge become creation via crucible.
And I whipped the proverbial horse of this bizarre turn on into the depths, wrestled the demons of the fray, and emerged battered and less than victorious but never fully vanquished. As of late, and since my mother's passing more than a year ago, I've struggled much more privately, due largely in part to needing to be more 'complete' for my family, et al. Now and again my mind would wander the empty streets of the burned out boroughs that were those times remembering. Remembering and not understanding. And at times I would rack with wails and heave in anger and frustration, "how could you do that to a child? What would possess a person to behave that way? Why me? What did I do?" The synapses fired and the water frothed and the frenzy was soon underway. It took days at times to recover.
And very recently something tragic and beautiful happened. Marcy has taken a ten-week, full-time job in order to help alleviate some of the crushing debt we carry, and to help with the times that we gather change from the cars and the house to buy a loaf of bread. Glorious times, and I'm very pleased to say that as far as we can tell, the children have no idea whatsoever. But I digress. So Marcy began this job last Monday. Her mother and father have agreed to help by watching the baby during the day and picking the older kids up from the school bus. Very gracious, and certainly no cake-walk...they're in their mid-70s. I have been going to work a bit later so Marcy can leave the house at 7 a.m. and I can take care of getting the kids to school and the baby taken care of and all that. Poop diapers at sunrise, oh yeah.
And about midway through the week I became so depressed, so very down, and I couldn't pinpoint why. Seemed nothing was bringing me back to the surface, not even the old tricks. I was really struggling with the vortex of this new reality swirling about me, consequences and motives not of my devise, that everything that was now taking place as the new norm was counter in every sense to what I hold dearest in my life. I am a father and a husband, first and foremost, and I can and have become a mad bear when impeded in either case. The new scenario: we're dirt fucking poor and deeply in debt; my job keeps me from my family all but two days a week and doesn't even cover our bills; my wife is now away from our 8 month old daughter from sun-up to sundown; my kids tell me that life is so much crappier since I took this job and that they miss just having dinner with me.........
and there I was, driving my baby to my parents-in-law's house, and the emotions had reached the boiling point and were threatening to blow the lid off. Reaching back into the carseat I felt my baby's little hand grasp my finger and give it a kiss, cooing something all the while. I began crying. I thought, "It shouldn't be like this. I don't want it to be this hard, I'm doing so much that this shouldn't be happening...I just don't get it..."
Then the queerest thing happened.
I remembered something.
I was quite young, 5 at best, and my mom and I were living in Kentucky sitll. We had moved from a tenement apartment with no front door (someone even stole our dog one day) to the backseat of my mom's blue Buick Skylark convertible. It had no rear window, and once it had dusted snow in on us as we slept; I squealed with delight...my mom cried.
So I was maybe 5, and my mom was wearing a pantsuit, her hair down (I used to cry when she put it up). I didn't fully understand what was happening. I was put down in a room full of other kids my age on a floor made up of tan and orange stick figure people. My mother chatted quickly and nervously with one of the older women there, in their green aprons. She bent down and gave me a kiss and began walking out the door. Walking out the door! Well, that's crazy! Why would my mom leave me here? Must be some mistake. Holy shit! There she goes past the window!
And suddenly I remembered with frightening vividity the agony. The pounding on the windows, screaming. The aides pulling me from the window as I kicked and screamed. My mother, her pace quickening to a near run, her hands to her mouth. She was crying. And I just know that she sat in her car and cried till she thought she would die. Her heart broken, that would be the longest day of her life. And all this with the knowledge that this was life now, this is how it was going to be.
I caught a glimmer of that anguish, and I've begun to know the weight that is The Change. And with this pain and frustration, anger and sadness, comes the blossom that is the very genesis of it all, the seed that is Love.
Without some pretty intense love, I wouldn't have such a strong emotional reaction every day; without this love, I may not really care what happened as long as I was taken care of. But that's not how it is. My love for that baby comes from a place so much deeper than I alone am capable of generating that I am certain it is a pulse from the Universe, or, as I prefer to phrase it, the Love I have for that baby is a reflection of the Love of God. Way bigger than me, of that I'm sure. And likely just as big as it was unavoidable for my mom.
I don't relish in discomfort, and I don't look forward to hard times and harder lessons, but by God I'm grateful for the lessons that come with them. And by Grace and diligence I hope I'm able to truly learn these lessons.
Brothers and sisters, we'll never understand God so we may as well give that one up. Let's have Faith that we're not impossible coincidences and think, feel and act Love in this life.
The Love is there, it's just a matter of being open to it.
I love you and I think you're wonderful. Keep up the good work.
Post Script Oblige': A thousand thanks to my brother Adam, without whom I couldn't share this. Not only did he send along a functioning CPU, he paid for the freaking shipping. How cool is that?
Thank you, Adam. Thank you.
