Dogs Of Chaos

 

There are days and then there are days you wish you could live without.

I’d been at work less than an hour when things began to go downhill and I could feel chaos nipping at my heels like a pack of wild dogs. It was already nearly 90 inside and the humidity was like a sauna. The animals were restless and underfoot, snapping at each other and picking fights. There was no Sweet’n’Low for Michael’s coffee and having slept badly, he was already in a temper when the ADD/HDD commenced and he couldn’t find any of his diabetic testing supplies. He began a frantic search of his landfill of a desk, snatching up piles of paper and empty cigarette packs, notes scribbled on matchbook covers, half full coke cans, assorted cables and wires, unopened mail with sticky notes attached, samples of cologne, unpaid bills, and the ever present clear makeup case of several dozen prescription bottles. Manilla folders went flying, a new pair of shoes tumbled into the trashcan next to the desk, packing material and cellophane wrappers from God knew what were swept to the floor. Somewhere under this mountain of debris, his cell phone began ringing and he let loose a stream of colorful cursing. In the midst of all this mayhem, there was a knock on the door and the dogs erupted savagely and made a charge for the front office. They hit the door en masse, a snarling tangle of howling hounds with saliva dripping jaws and mad eyes and the startled UPS driver dropped his armful of packages and fled. I could now feel the chaos like canine teeth gnawing at my ankles and I envied him his freedom.

“ENOUGH!” I screeched like a fishwife and slammed my fist onto my desk, “GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THAT DOOR AND CARRY YOUR SORRY, FLEA BITTEN BUTTS OUTSIDE BEFORE I BEAT YOU SENSELESS!” And amazingly enough, perhaps sensing that an invisible line had been crossed, they did. Which left me free to deal with Michael.

“STOP!” I shouted at him, “SIT!”

He looked at me, wild eyed and frenzied, then dropped the fistfuls of trash he was clutching and dropped to his chair. He looked undone and defeated and very angry, exactly the way I was feeling, but someone in this house had to be an adult, I reminded myself. Clearly, it wasn’t to be Michael or the damn dogs. I forced myself to take a breath and chaos relaxed its grip just a fraction. My rule has always been that this madness stops at the door of my office. I can’t change what he is or how he is but I don’t have to be sucked under and drown along with him.

As usual, we got past it and things settled down. Keeping the chaos at bay is becoming a full time job.

An Offer of Grace

 

During the last conversation with my daddy, I was only dimly aware that I was being manipulated. He had fallen into his speaking with his bereaved voice, kind and understanding, a little reverent and a lot empathetic. It was so effective that I very nearly missed hearing the ultimatum.

“Your mother is dying,” he said with a comforting reasonableness, “Nothing else matters. You have to make peace with her. If you can’t bring yourself to see and talk with her, neither your brothers or I will be able to see or talk with you.”

The words were so calm, so measured, so deceptive. I heard them but it took several seconds for me to comprehend that I was being disinherited. He was offering me a way back in, a path to grace and forgiveness. All that was required was for me to accept the terms.

“Nothing else matters,” he repeated ever so gently, “Please say you’ll come and see her before it’s too late.”

I knew two things he didn’t, first, that it was already too late and second that he was wrong. I stumbled through some half assed version of I’m sorry you feel that way and then heard him sigh deeply, just before he hung up. I never spoke with him again.

I never regretted my mother’s death and I didn’t know either one of my brothers well enough to miss them but much as I tried to deny it, the realty of not having my daddy in my life haunted me for years. He had taught me to love satire, crossword puzzles and Dixieland jazz. He spent hours teaching me to ride a bike, helped me to sell my Girl Scout cookies, was almost always there to supplement my allowance and more often than not, stood up for me against my mother, at least in his way. He was handsome but never minded looking silly – I remember in the winter, he slept in a knit woolen cap and heavy socks and when he dressed up in full masonic regalia, somehow managed to retain not just his dignity, but his sense of humor as well. He played piano by ear and despaired of my ever learning to play bridge. He could make one scotch on the rocks last for an entire evening, smoked Lucky Strikes for most of his adult life, helped me with my homework and never missed a parent teacher conference.

He also protected and enabled my mother and grandfather from the consequences of their drinking for decades. He worked far more hours than were necessary so as to avoid coming home. He had a long term affair with the widow of a close friend. He was a peacemaker, a negotiator, an enabler and unless absolutely cornered, would always choose flight over fight, a habit, I’m sorry to say, he sadly passed to me so that even now, just the thought of a raised voice can send me running for the nearest exit. He was neither a perfect man nor a perfect parent and it took me most of my life to realize he had his own demons but at the time of my mother’s death, all I could see was that he abandoned me. He changed the rules of engagement and tried to blackmail me with the threat of permanent estrangement.

When time didn’t heal the wounds and distance didn’t bring any peace of mind, I was forced to look elsewhere for help. My Al Anon group was a source of support and serenity and it helped but the guilt continued to gnaw at me. I turned to books and read everything I could find about addiction, co-dependency, adult children of alcoholics. I learned the language of recovery and how to detach, build self-esteem, look inward for solutions, not people please. I recognized my near obsessive need to control my world and those in it and tried hard to accept the things and the people I couldn’t change. After 10 years of being married to an alcoholic, I even realized that I shouldn’t judge my daddy for being in the exact same situation. He had 3 children and 30 years of marriage on me and was, estrangement or not, doing the best he could. As improbable as it seemed, we shared the same guilt, weaknesses, fears, flaws, struggles and desperation. The knowledge didn’t resolve anything. The time for reconciliation had passed and my mother died in 1991. To my absolute astonishment, I learned that my daddy re-married just two years later. It eased my mind considerably and I was very glad for him. Although their time together was brief but I’m very sure it was right, peaceful, and long overdue. Through my one cousin still speaking to me, I learned that my brothers did not share my opinion and were not kind about it. Neither their resentment nor their cruelty surprised me. Ours was a family of strangers, not given to thinking outside of our own space and our worlds were very small.

It took just over a month of twice weekly sessions with a therapist to clear my mind and make me see that I hadn’t been wrong to choose self preservation over forced compliance.

“After denial,” the doctor would tell me repeatedly, “Guilt is the most powerful force in the world. Don’t feed it.”

Sometimes unlearning the lessons of childhood takes a whole lifetime. Forgiveness takes even longer, if it comes at all. Maybe it’s enough to get to a place of understanding, even if you find yourself alone there.