Crossfire

We're in a giant car headed toward a brick wall and everyone's arguing about where to sit.
David Suzuki


My mother - no fan of civil rights, sex education, legal aid for the poor or any other so called liberal cause - believed that the moon landing was a hoax, dreamed up by NASA scientists in collusion with a leftist government and the media elite. She would've laid down her life for Glenn Beck and had Rush Limbaugh to supper. I imagine if she could've foreseen the possibility of a black president, she'd have packed her things and moved back to Canada. Nixon was her salvation and redemption and she'd not hear a word against him. She had, Nana once let slip, Worshipped that damn fool Joe McCarthy, a vicious indictment from my entrenched republican grandmother.


It's sometimes hard for me to comprehend from whence I came and how, more or less intact, I escaped. I remembering praying daily for my mother and daddy to divorce and move on to different places as if time and distance could actually change the landscape. I would listen to them rage on and argue until my daddy took flight and wonder how it was that they didn't simply kill each other. But of course it was not to be - he was too responsible and she was too out of control. They fed off each other's emotions and misery, unhappy and confused and deeply, deeply troubled but set in concrete by their choices, unable to imagine or even dream of a different life. I learned early that you can never fully trust an addict - it took much longer to understand how foolish and dangerous it is to trust one who enables, especially with good intentions.

Caught in the crossfire of this sad and sick relationship, it took considerable time for my brothers and I to catch on and catch up. Overprotected and relied upon on one hand, resented and unloved on the other, we drifted in the wind. I buried myself in books and my imagination, they discovered fast cars and petty thefts - all three of us sought out bad company. As adults, I don't drink at all and they can't drink enough. Children of alcoholics aren't taught moderation or reason or confidence and we are all inclined to search out what we know and live on a sometimes desperate edge - afraid to fall off, more afraid to jump. We long for the short term fix and get stuck quickly and far too easily.

As useless as it is to speculate, I have my idle moments and I still wonder if divorce might have changed anything anything but the view.