Off Limits

One winter there were several stories in the newspapers about the slaughter of baby seals and I wrote an angry letter to the editor. That Christmas, my friend Pat gave me a framed charcoal drawing of a baby seal and in front of a roomful of people, I cried. At the time, I had mixed feelings - half of me wanted to choke her for hitting a nerve, the other wanted to hug her for the very same reason.

I cried for Magic and Josh and all the ones that came before and after and there is one note that Aj plays in "1510 Fairfield Blues" that brings tears every time I hear it. I cry each time Cary Grant opens that bedroom door and sees the painting in "An Affair to Remember" and ten minutes into "The Bridges of Madison County" I was crying too hard to hear the dialogue. And as I stood at Ran's grave, unable to pick up and lay down a rose, the tears came. But for the most part, tears are best left to those who cry easily. Emotions were off limits in my family and tears were a manipulation technique used when sulking and threats hadn't worked.

So I was pretty much caught off guard as I was reading my cousin Linda's email this morning. We've been corresponding a lot lately about our family and I think we are each taken aback by how different our memories of the same people are and by how our experiences of those people can be so far apart. She wrote about my daddy, "I know he loved you more than anyone else in the world" and "that when he stopped calling you, he seemed to call me more and more often." And I began to cry.

Until my mother was hospitalized, I had felt the love of one parent even if I'd rarely heard the words or seen much physical evidence. Afterwards, as I watched the wagons being circled around her and knowing that I was on the other side, I felt he had made a choice between us. I suspected it hadn't been entirely voluntary - the woman was dying, after all, that much at least was real and what an edge that gave her - but instinctively I knew that dying or not, she wouldn't miss one last opportunity to try and drive a wedge between father and daughter.

This morning, through long overdue tears, I learned a little more about Dad. He did make a choice between us although I doubt he felt like he had any other option. I made a choice as well, between him and myself.
I'll never know if he ever understood or forgave me but at least I know he loved me in spite of it. And maybe that's the first step in my forgiving him.

We are, as Linda reminds me, a stubborn family with a long tradition of addiction, enabling, suffering in silence and making drink the devil's work. Oh, yes - we had our anti-addictionites as well, cards, dancing, alcohol, all products of the devil's workshop - my Uncle Ernie took me fishing once and unintentionally taught me a cussword which I made a point of sharing with Ruby. It was the first time she ever told me to "go get her a switch." But we survive, my cousin and I, miles and much lost time between us but still each on her feet and moving in the right direction.

A day without either laughter or tears is wasted.