Nearing the End

I write this as my father lays dying several states away. The hospice care workers tell us that they would be surprised if he lasts until the end of the week. You do not need to know how he got here. You do need to know how I got here, to the point of wishing no suffering on my parent, but not wishing to see him, either.

My father is over ninety-two years old. How he has survived to this point is a mystery, given his alcoholism and Type A personality. Maybe just an angry personality. He was never satisfied with his life throughout his marriage to my mother. After the death of his second wife, his life began to deteriorate. He is not able to function well on his own. That is one trait for which I still take after him, much to my dismay.

Dad and I on July 25, 1966

The things I learned from my father I have had to steadily unlearn. Anger used to be my ruling emotion, too. He demonstrated that rage is how you get your way, how you assert yourself, how you express your pain, but it really just makes people hate and fear you. Dad never learned about empowerment, just power. I would cower as a child during one of his outbursts. Rarely were they directed at me, but threatening my mother has the same effect. Doing damage to property creates an atmosphere of constant anxiety, if only because every day you see the hole in the closet door, the hole in the screen door, or some broken object. He drank, too, of course, and so when I became of age and struck out on my own, that is how I began coping with emotional pain and insecurity, despite the fact I have never really enjoyed alcohol.

Here we are, miles apart, and I am told that I should hurry to see him. Why? I have spent the majority of my life doing what other people have told me I should do, and resenting them for their "advice." No more. They do not deserve my animosity, for they have a right to their sentiments. I have a right to make decisions on my own, though, and I have concluded that it is in my best interest to await his passing from a distance. I could justify a case for either course of action. I could claim that I would rather not remember him on his deathbed, barely conscious let alone coherent, perhaps not even recognizing me. On the other hand I could secretly enjoy seeing him in a position of utter physical helplessness, his power over me vanquished at last.

The last time I spoke with my father was over the telephone, many months ago now. He had made a habit of calling me to tell me goodbye, that he was happy with the life he led and was now ready to surrender. This particular conversation took a different turn when he once again started making derogatory remarks about my mother. I do not hold either of my parents in high esteem, but my mother made untold sacrifices to get me to adulthood, and despite her shortcomings as a parent, I deeply respect her ability to succeed at that with limited resources as a single mother. I told my father that he needed to stop his defamatory tirade. Twice, at least. Because of his near deafness, he could not understand what I was asking. Ultimately, I hung up on him.

How does one honor their parents when they never honored each other? Thankfully, I am learning what real family life is all about through visits with my in-laws. My wife's parents are the polar opposite of my own. Sure, they have their moments, sigh and raise their voices in exasperation when they have to repeat something because the other one can't hear. They overcome their physical limitations through determination and sheer discipline, adhering to exercise regimens that would tax most teenagers. My mother-in-law swims daily, and gets in something like 100 miles each year. I would have drowned before a quarter of one mile. My father-in-law walks seven miles a morning. Pretty sure. All of this is because they recognize they need to do it for each other, their kids, their grandchildren. They share a devotion to God through religion, but never admonish me for not being so devout myself. This is in spite of the fact that their other sons-in-law are both pastors.

I honestly look forward to being myself full-time in the judgment-free zone. That is what my father's death will be: liberation for him from his failing body and mind, liberation for me from my parents' expectations and as a source of disagreement over my future. I will make no apologies for my reality. You did not live it, and I have no siblings to bear witness. Likewise, I have no control over your relationship to me, or to anyone else.

Free yourself from bad relationships, bad habits, and rewire your mind, through whatever channels help you. That would be my advice to others. But really, who am I to talk. I am still a work in progress, but it is finally my own mind and soul in charge.

Book Review: Wait Till it Gets Dark

The subtitle of this wonderful 2017 book is "A Kid's Guide to Exploring the Night," but parents, naturalists, camp counselors, and other adults will find it a captivating read; and it is full of activities designed to enthrall children of all ages. This book is a perfect vehicle for leaving no child indoors, no matter where you live.

Wife and husband authors Anita Sanchez and George Steele, with the help of illustrator John Himmelman, examine life after dark through the heightened senses of a variety of non-human animals. The writers invite the reader to become the eyes of an owl, ears of a frog, nose of a deer, and so forth, chapter by chapter. We are invited to embrace our own animal-ness and train our senses and faculties to become more acute. It is an ingenious strategy for any book about natural history.

The layout of the book is occasionally difficult in that one never knows whether to continue from one page to the next and then go back to read the "You Can Do It" activity box, or stay on the page and then pick up the storyline after reading about the activity. This minor drawback does nothing to compromise the quality of the text and illustrations; and there are few other bones to pick at all.

What does perplex me is the chapter "A Tongue Like a Gila Monster." Nowhere does it mention that this is a venomous lizard, not to be approached or handled. That this warning is absent when the text is discussing organs inside the mouth of the reptile strikes me as not just an oversight, but highly irresponsible.

One other thing I would appreciate clarification about is the chapter on the ability of many animals to perceive and utilize the Earth's magnetic field with "The Mysterious Sixth Sense." When mention is made that perhaps human beings may have a latent ability to relate to the magnetic field, this becomes "A Seventh Sense?" Considering that Homo sapiens is also an animal, I fail to see the distinction.

Again, these are rather minor quibbles considering that this is otherwise an excellent 60-pages of exciting natural history observation and exercises. The back matter talks about the need to preserve true darkness, general safety precautions when doing the activities, and citizen science projects that the whole family can participate in. There is a glossary (omits defining GPS, though), and valuable bibliography to conclude.

Wait Till it Gets Dark would make an outstanding holiday gift to any young naturalist in your life, or anyone who works with children in an outdoor setting. I can hardly wait for the next book by Sanchez and Steele, courtesy of muddy boots™, an imprint of Globe Pequot publishing.

The Life Sentence of an Unhappy Childhood

© Teach-through-love.com

The other night I stumbled upon the movie White Oleander airing on television, near its beginning. I cannot say I like films like this, but I admire the writers, directors, cast, and crew willing to take on the subject of psychological cruelty, and the agony of undoing the hell that parent-child relationships can often bring. The ramifications of one's upbringing are profound, and so variable in their outcome that stereotypes are useless.

Children are unable to stand up for their own right to peace, quiet, dignity, and love that does not come out of parental selfishness. The result is denial of their situation, and latent hostility towards others. By the time they are teenagers "acting out," or twenty-somethings bobbing and drifting in the debris of their past, the damage is done. When strangers, or even friends, ask what happened, or how did you get here, your response is to ignore them or change the subject. Then you hit thirty-ish and you begin to recall the past with the clarity of an unsubstantiated alibi. After all, up until now you had been conditioned to believe that you murdered your own childhood. Suddenly you cannot help but tell your story. You become the crusader, but you still couch your own pain in a "desire to help others." As the battles dwindle and the war wanes, you are left with a vacancy unfilled, and go back to the flat-line flow that is your life, punctuated here and there with good times and devastating bouts of depression, for your remaining days....or until your parents free you by their own passing.

This perpetuated, and perpetual, guilt, vindictiveness, distrust, and dishonesty is the legacy of generations upon generations of parents ill-equipped to raise a healthy child because they were not brought up in a sane environment. The coping skills of blame, shame, withholding of love and affection, infliction of punishment, and the examples of smoking, alcoholism, and other behaviors are handed down time after time after time.

We have been instructed to believe that the hallmarks of a broken childhood are reflected in the adult child through substance abuse, and indeed the twelve-step programs and anonymous groups can be places to begin silencing the echoes of the parental recordings playing endlessly in your mind. You finally begin to see the "buttons" and start the long process of rewiring or disconnecting them. You react with a little less intensity when one of them is pushed.

Still, social dysfunction, in all its many forms, is the overwhelming result of following the patterns set forth like the ruts from wagon wheels lifetimes previous. Maybe you never have an enduring, loving relationship with someone else. Maybe, like me, you become unemployable, because you see the social structure of the workplace for what it is: every employee's attempt to make up for their childhood of want, woe, and war....and that includes yourself if you are not wary, or willing to expend the enormous amount of energy to just "deal." Lather, rinse, repeat.

Our childhood senses and minds lack the filters that come with maturity, and we accept everything our parents dole out as fact and reality, not the products of a disillusioned personality, itself the victim of its own trauma. There is no end to the insidious strategies invented to insure that a parent maintains control of their child. Surely the world would fly apart if the chain of child-rearing incompetence were ever to break. We cannot afford, hell, survive, the exposure of our flaws, nor properly articulate their origin. We were just kids when we learned how to parent.

At the end of White Oleander, the mother marches into a life sentence at a real brick-and-mortar prison. She finally relented from pressuring her daughter into testifying, thereby setting her offspring free from the prison she created in the girl's mind. Rarely is it that easy, that metaphorical, that decisive. Most of us still spend our days methodically sawing through the bars with mental files, provided we even recognize the cell that we are living in.