Part 1.
The rumors are true, I was borne of actual flesh from an actual mother. She would not be the first unfit mother, the last, nor the worst, but she might be tied with the worst. What I mean is, there are generations of horribly afflicted children via their parents. Some grow up fine and have great relationships, children, jobs, lives. Most scrape along. Some don't.
My mother didn't love me. She was not capable of love, but also she didn't love me.
She was deeply abusive physically, verbally and
psychologically, and after each bit of this she would declare, "I love
you," but those of us who knew better knew better.
The last straw: One day she said to me, "I don't feel I should have to look at
you
any longer." I thought, Well, that can be arranged. She called after
me, my way out the door, "I love you." And then it was over. This
was thirty years ago. I suspect I am also incapable of love, though I'm
unsure of what
it is I am incapable.
But the first straw, I was four years old. I am
standing on the landing upstairs holding onto the railing of the
stairway. Downstairs my mother and father are fighting. She is
crying. I am scared. I feel bad for her. I start crying. For her.
The argument ends. She storms up the stairs. She sees me on the
landing, she sees me crying. She yells at me, "Why are you crying?!?"
She hauls off and slaps me across the head. She continues off to her
bedroom and slams the door behind.
It all went downhill from there.
Brother Number One left at 16 and never looked back.
Brother Number Two left at 18 and after some push-pull eventually didn't look back.
I, Brother Number Three, the eternal peacemaker, left finally and forever at 21.
Brother Number Four never left.
My father speaks of my mother ne'er-too-fondly. When her final statement was issued me (they'd since been long divorced), he firmly declared her a bitch. I was very pleased by this moment, it was my saving grace.
And so would remain the prevailing and satisfying sentiment: my mother was a bitch.
Part 2.
It took me many years and many missteps to understand what I was finally forced to learn, that it matters not at all the damage you carry in you. It matters to no person and no lover. Our lives are our burden alone. We have zero right to expect anything from anybody, no matter the anguish our hearts. You sink, you swim, that's it then. Boo-fucking-hoo.
I speak to my father once a week. I've maintained this tradition thirty
years or so. Of his four sons, I've been the only one in constant contact, most probably because there was that little chapter in my
life when my mother rejected me finally, I did massive amounts of drugs, ditched college in the middle
of a semester, and fled town on the QT. In the end I would move in with
him, by now a virtual stranger, sleeping for a year on his couch
in the living room of his one-bedroom apartment while simultaneously attempting to salvage this thing called life. I do not lie, my father saved me.
Every Friday. I get up at the crack of dawn to call him because once I didn't and when I got up, my usual time, there were
no less than four messages on my machine from my very panicked father
afraid I was in the emergency room or otherwise dead because I didn't
call him at the right time. Yes, it's true, my WASP father has turned
into Nancy Walker via the TV show "Rhoda." And every week, now, he asks me if
I've called Brother number two.
(Unless there is a god, you may recall Brother number two.)
Brother number two saw all the attention and all the sorrow Brother number one got by the mere act of dying and decided to cash in on some of that. His internal and eternal anguish has become his career. Because Brother number two wears it on his sleeve, he garners all sorts
of sympathies. He has a wife who serves him, he has health insurance,
he has many, many doctors mulling his mystery illnesses, some of whom
have suggested a psychiatrist and anti-depressants because they can't find anything wrong with him. He is on disability, he watches TV all day, he posts shit on facebook all day, and there is no attention that is enough attention. THERE IS NO ATTENTION THAT IS ENOUGH ATTENTION.
Brother number two is a black hole of need and dearth. Me, I am merely a black
hole of need and dearth, but I keep it to myself. I learned this. Love is never having a public problem. I feel for his ruin, but ruin is a luxury and he's living large.
In the meantime every week my father is on my back about my continuing disinterest in contacting Brother number two. It's my new sport and my new entertainment. Brother number two can call me any time, I've no prohibition on him, I simply have no reason to call him. He's not fucking dying, for chrissake, he's merely a pussy. I need to call him for this? But my father lost one son and now another is playing him, and his anger at it all comes to me weekly. But this Friday...
...this Friday, post the weekly guilt trip on the matter, my father said to me for the first time ever, "You are your mother's son."
Whoa, and whoa again.
Since Brother number one died, sigh, my
father wants a different family. Brother number one was simply and
honestly an extraordinary human being. Nothing to do with his being my
brother, it's just the way it is. Also, he was my father's son, meaning
he was The One. I've never had a problem with this reality, a person of great presence deserves to be
recognized, all egos aside. My Brother was a person of much greater
presence than I or most other slobs on earth. After his departing
earth, my father has become increasingly disturbed by my existence.
Our visits and our weekly phone calls reflect this, but this was a moment of him I never anticipated. Somewhere in him lived that truth all this time, THAT truth was there, for years hushed and calmed but now so irritated in the tissue of his being to deny it was no longer essential. All along, all these years, it was evermore. The Truth. I AM my mother's son. Not only the verity of that truth, but in his waning years the need for my father to have me know it, that it be my legacy.
Boo-fucking-hoo.
chapter 3.
