Inner battle
Grappling with myself.
Photo by my husband, taken from the vast Santa
collection of my father and
stepmother.
The things I am supposed to be
doing and don't want to do, the shoulds, they
sometimes control me. They become obligations
body-checked by anger. Or maybe it’s the should nots,
the tamping down of what rises up naturally: I should
not be feeling angry. I have no right to be upset.
This is not supposed to be a blog about current angst
(except for the mundane, piles of laundry, sick kid,
dog-walking variety). Most of the anger I carry
around is the nostalgic sort, dealing with that stuff
that happened when I was a kid, the things I can’t
change and must make right in my mind in order to
live a full life. It’s been working, for the most
part. I’m letting go.
Yes, I have complained about my current relationships
with my parents, have brought up marital discord from
the not-so-distant past, but most of this has been in
the context of grappling with painful memories,
revealing old scars to healing light.
But I haven’t talked about my stepmother. Part of the
reason I don’t talk about my stepmother is that she
is practically a saint. She is my father’s total
champion, and if anyone needs a champion, it’s him.
My father has treatment-resistant depression, a
condition he has been grappling with from the time he
entered college. It was because of depression that he
stopped working in his early 40s. The man has been on
many different varieties of medication; he’s been
through research studies; he’s done electroconvulsive
therapy (ECT) and lost a chunk of his memory in the
process. Eventually the drugs lose effectiveness, the
troughs get deeper, he stops functioning.
There are physical problems, too. Diabetes. Obesity.
Arthritis. Within the last two years my father has
developed debilitating back pain and can barely get
out the door. At the age of 57, he is practically
housebound, a predicament he and his wife have taken
on with characteristic stoicism. Throughout it all,
my stepmother has been a rock, always supportive,
never complaining, a breadwinner, maker of meals, and
vacuumer of a four bedroom house.
Why am I angry with this woman? Why am I carrying
around this stupid useless feeling? Because I am
invisible to her. Because when I was pregnant with my
second son, she talked about it being my first baby
(perhaps a teenage stillbirth doesn't count). Because
– stupidly, since I really should let go of this one,
but couldn't they have waited a week? – she got
married to my father two days before my fourteenth
birthday. Because she never even so much as e-mails
on my birthday. She has no idea why I might be
feeling pain and apparently doesn’t want to know.
Perhaps she feels she might be implicated in some
way. I don’t know.
My father loves me, but he has not been a very good
father. It's just the truth. Four years of every
other weekend visits does not a good father make.
Financial support for one's child – which I do
appreciate – doesn't make one a good father either,
though certainly there are many absentee fathers out
there who don't even do that. He laid the foundation
for distrust early. A little recognition of this past
and his part in it would make a huge difference.
After he read
the blog,
he acknowledged it in a general way, though we've
never talked about it. But what about her?
I know she thinks I'm a bad daughter and in many
ways, I am. Phone calls sometimes go unreturned for
days. I'm late with birthday and father's day
greetings or send a lame e-card. I put off making our
travel plans to see them and have been absent for
multiple surgeries. I avoid discussions of Christmas,
a holiday that is an obsession for them. The guilt
floods over me, paralyzing and cold, and I feel a
surge of preemptive, protective, useless anger.
What am I supposed to do with this anger? What do you
do when you can’t talk to someone about your
feelings? How do I do the right thing while honoring
how I feel?
So many questions. Does anyone have answers?
(And when this particular angst is out of the way, I
have many awards and other kindnesses to acknowledge.
That's the next post.)
Another existence to be denied
So there my mother and I sat, sunk into opposite ends of a comfortable couch, leaning forward to tell the social worker our feelings, sketching out my genetic profile. We filled out reams of forms, information about family health problems, questions about my diet, my drug and alcohol use.
Who knew what mysterious weaknesses I might be carrying? My father’s side of the family had endocrine problems, heart disease, diabetes and a tendency toward dark moods. When the veil of depression fell, some family members took to alcohol or other substances with an addict’s zeal. An affinity for darkness and a desire, a need, to obliterate myself in its face are part of my hardwiring.
What about my maternal lineage? My mother’s family history was a big blank, an open field where the quality of the soil and provenance of the plant life was a mystery. Like my biological grandmother and my mother before me, I had gotten knocked up young and out of wedlock. Only my mother had chosen to marry, to keep me in the fold. This predilection for teen motherhood, the easy and careless ways of our womenfolk – did that count against me?
Adoption was a closed affair when my mother was born. In 1950, the presumption was that a “chosen baby” would grow up satisfied, would never want to know the story of her beginnings. The privacy of the birth parents was paramount. Mom, however, did want to know and set out in adulthood to find her birth mother. Through a third party the woman revealed the depth of her silence: she hadn’t spoken about her first child at all, even keeping the secret from her husband and subsequent children. She wanted no further contact, no dramatic revelation, no recognition of reunion. When pressed on the name of the birth father, she was especially vehement. She would “never, never tell.” It stung.
In private, we speculated, joked about the freedom bought by ignorance. Her missing history provided a unique vantage, a way to step outside of the American obsession with ancestry. We could build a story about her origins outside of the confines of family fact, but the story never got very far. Polish or German? (My orthodontist, after assessing her facial structure, was pushing for Polish.) Catholic or Protestant? (Well, she did seem to have a thing for Catholic guys.)
To imagine too much seemed self-delusional. Of course, her parents might have been love-struck, two highly intelligent beauties who consummated their love after much deliberation in a sacred act of commitment and rebellion. Imagining what could be the truth – sex forced upon a young woman not ready or pregnancy as the inevitable result of one night between two clueless teenagers – led to a sense of hopelessness. Her birth father was the silent partner in this transaction. A ghost.
The adoption process had changed in 36 years. My child would know my name, would be able to trace his genetic strengths and frailties back a generation or two. His new family would send me pictures. I would be permitted to write him letters. But when we were in those Golden Cradle offices, he was another existence created to be denied. I was young and angry, and what was happening didn't seem real.
My biological grandmother, my mother, me: we all played a role in the conspiracy of suppressed connection. It was a gift passed along the generations. A present for my firstborn.
The home of permanent in between
When my grandmother started to show, her parents sent her to the city. They dropped her off at the Florence Crittenton Home for Unwed Mothers. I imagine her emerging from the black car alone, tattered suitcase in hand, looking nervously up the set of granite steps. Inside, somnolent girls in the late, leaden months of pregnancy, inward, deliberate, walk slowly through the gray halls.
It is the home of permanent in between; the suppressed energy of smothered potential thickens the air. The girls, all going by pseudonyms, make very little small talk. In the nursery, rows of bundled babies silent as dolls wait, neatly packaged in individual bassinets. Once retrieved, the babies seek out their mothers’ faces, liquid newborn eyes encountering guarded glances. Both mother and child have learned not to waste energy on tears or outward displays of emotion. The bonding and the break are inevitable.
This is how I picture my mother’s birth: hazy trauma of labor, discovery delivered as flat fact – “it’s a girl.” They undo the straps, let the drugs wear off. Hours later, my biological grandmother holds her swaddled daughter, names her Lois. Lois is tiny – less than five pounds – too little to be released to her adoptive family. Over the next six weeks the pair are entangled in the monotony of new life, the seemingly endless cycle of feeding, diapering, and sleep. They calm to one another’s warm, familiar scent. Their gazes become intimate. Bone-deep.
When the six weeks are up, Aunt
Ruth, a go-between, my adoptive grandmother’s sister,
comes to take the baby. Waiting in the home's
entrance, the young mother frantically bounces her
silent infant, dreading the break. Finally, Aunt Ruth
appears, says her hello, and waits.
“It’s time.”
The mother hands over the baby. It is as clean as a
guillotine strike.
Before she has time to reconsider, she races inside
to the central staircase and runs up two flights of
stairs to her room. Her breathing is contained,
shallow, a precaution against tears. She’s been
trying to memorize every inch of her daughter, the
moon face framed by white-blonde hair, her blues
eyes, dainty toes and impossibly tiny hands, but
already the image is fading. She reaches her room and
slips inside, leans against the closed door taking
short, sharp breaths. A glass baby bottle sits on the
bedside table, a remnant from the final feeding. The
girl eyes it, finally reaching out. Then, the
satisfying sound of glass irrevocably broken, the
implied threat of jagged shards.
Taking several deep breaths, the young woman calms.
She begins to push the glass into a pile with her
shoe and decides to find a broom and dustpan.
There will be no tears.
That was then, Part II
October 1972, Hollywood Beach, my 3rd birthday?
The above photo was taken at my grandparents’ house
during the John
the Murderer era.
Christmas 1976, Wilmington
Jim, the future and former
stepfather,
took this holiday shot. Memories of this apartment:
no car; no money; asthma attacks; three dead cats and
one poisoned hamster; the bus ride to a movie theater
showing Star Wars; juicy cherry tomatoes straight
from the garden out back (the garden that also
contained a kitty graveyard with little wooden
crosses); iced chamomile tea; hot carob instead of
hot chocolate. For my mother, it was a time without
hope. A year later she returned to college to
complete her bachelors degree, thus solving the
hopelessness problem for a time. This is now:
August 2008, Berkeley
My son and my mother, having a good time. We had a great visit. And yes, no one ever seems to look directly at the camera in this family. (That was then, Part I can be found here.)
The pain that is invisible
In a conversation last night, she casually tossed out a line that I had to follow up with, because it indicated how bad things were for her at a couple points in my childhood. I’m sure she’s dropped this line with insouciance before, and I’ve just followed her laid-back lead. But it’s deadly serious. And frightening. And sad.
Of course, my mind is buzzing with thoughts, about secrets, about forgiveness and the pain that is invisible when you are growing up, the pain of the depressed, hopeless parent. Maybe not totally invisible. I was a sensitive kid, the little mother, always worried. Part of the worry, however, was about me: what was going to happen to me if something happened to her? Today I feel mainly empathy for her pain and sad that she’s felt so hopeless.
I’m sure she’s awake downstairs, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the New York Times. So, off I go to start the day ...
From the inside
Part of what unsettled me was the link back to my own words (which I’ve changed to better reflect my feelings). The “why” of writing to survive was initially a rather bleak description of what life was like for me for the first two years of my son’s existence. This was a difficult time with many struggles to maintain eveness. I lost a lot of myself, my marriage changed, and I’d have to say there was some depression tossed into the mix, too, though I was never treated.
So. I love my son. I am lucky to stay home with him. He makes me laugh. We dance and sing and talk and read together. He has also been an impetus for change, a reminder to slow down and enjoy. With him I am able to remake my own childhood, borrowing the good bits and discarding the bad. I am lucky to be able to do this AND write.
Which brings me to my husband, an amazing man who is my biggest supporter. When I need reassuring about my parenting skills, he is quick to soothe. He loves to read my work. He gets take-out when I am tired of cooking. He understands when I use naptime (when naptime happens) to write instead of clean. We are truly a team. I love you, H.
There are nuances to this angst, and as I’ve been writing here and privately, the angst shifts and dissipates. The words have saved me.
This is writing to survive.
Louise Peevish
"Oh, Louise is being peevish again," we'd say. "Louise Peevish."
It was the move back to Maryland that did her in.
There were stories of other dogs that had cracked
after hearing the tests at Aberdeen Proving
Ground,
dogs that pushed their way through second story
window screens, desperate to escape the sounds of
the bomb and munitions tests across the river. The
aural bombardment contributed to Louise’s general
nervousness, but now when a thunderstorm blew
through town, she was absolutely inconsolable. No
drug calmed her. By the time you got the pill
down, the storm had passed.
One afternoon, my mother drove with Louise to the
local grocery store. Mom rolled the windows down a
safe distance, locked the doors, and entered the
market.
She was filling a plastic bag with green beans when
she heard a little girl’s voice. “Look, Mom, there’s
a dog shopping in the Acme.”
“Not my dog,” thought Mom, as she weighed the beans
and continued to the toiletry aisle. The little girl
spoke again. “Look, Mom, the dog is still shopping in
the Acme!”
“Not my dog,” thought Mom again. She glanced past the
row of shampoos to the plate glass windows – were
those thunderclaps she heard? – when she saw Louise,
panting heavily, on the run from one of our favorite
check-out guys, a kid who worked his way up from
bagger and always made friendly conversation. Louise
darted for the automatic doors, heading along the
sidewalk in the direction of the Chat-n-Chew.
Abandoning her cart, Mom also ran for the door.
Outside, storm clouds were gathering force. She
watched Louise scatter a school of carpenters, men in
dirty jeans and mud-caked work boots, as the dog
passed the restaurant and made a left into the
hardware store. Mom followed, pushing past customers,
until she found Louise in the back of the store,
trembling by the PVC piping.
My mother stayed there with her until the storm
passed, then walked her back to the car and drove
home, sans groceries. Apparently, the dog panicked
when she heard the approaching thunder, pushed
through an open car window and went looking for Mom.
We were grateful that she wasn't hit by a car.
About two years after the Acme incident, I came home
from grad school for a visit. Things were grim.
Kevin, my mother’s long-term boyfriend, had been
diagnosed with a rare bone marrow disease. My mother
was close to declaring bankruptcy. And Louise was
getting more peevish and skittish.
Her fits of panic weren't limited to thunderstorms;
now the dulled explosions from Aberdeen were having a
similar effect. She was terrified. If no one was
home, she would attempt to escape -- Mom was afraid
she would force her way through a closed window,
pictured a return home to bloodied shards of glass
and no dog. If someone was home, she would scratch
and pace, pant and whine. Louise was suffering.
I went with my mother to the appointment. We sat with
Louise, stroked her as the vet depressed the needle.
It was over quickly.
On the ride home, we didn't speak.
