Читать книгу NORMAL Doesn't Live Here Anymore - Barb BSL Owen - Страница 16

After spending the summer months absorbed by the writing process, the doll making book became a reality. Putting my energy into writing helped diffuse my overpowering emotions as I anticipated our son, now grown, preparing to leave the safety and familiarity of home.

Simultaneously, my aging parents were needing additional attention which resulted in them absorbing larger and larger blocks of my time. Within me I could feel a dormant rebellion stirring. I loved and respected my parents, but I couldn’t help recalling their disdain from long ago when I married. They vehemently disagreed with my choice of husbands who was, “too old and only wanted me to take care of his daughter.” They were so opposed to him, that my father refused to escort me down the aisle and made certain that I understood their disapproval with his conversation and letters. When my parents finally appeared at our wedding, I saw their choice of seats—the back pew. I was their last child to marry, but they chose the back row in the church to put an exclamation point on their aversion to my action.

Reflecting on my parents’ appearance that day, I suppose that I should have been able to give them the benefit of the doubt as they had buried their second-born daughter, killed in a car accident, only a few months before my wedding. Their grief convinced them that when I married someone other than their choice, they would be losing another daughter. Our marriage was still strong after more than thirty years, but reliving my parents’ rejection of long ago still stung. Struggling with their increasing dependence, I experienced conflicting emotions every time they needed me. I wanted to reject them as they had rejected me, yet somehow I couldn’t. My conscience convinced me to set aside the old anger and wounds as best I could. I knew that none of us could go back to hit the re-do button, and I certainly didn’t want to spend the time I had left with my son swallowed up by resentment toward his grandparents.

In late October, 2000, our son began his journey from the Midwest to California. I rode with him in his classic Mustang as far as a friend’s home in Colorado and then through a flood of tears, bid him good-bye and Godspeed. To see him drive away was nearly more than my heart could bear. For my only son to find the courage and self-confidence to build his life in a place completely unknown to him, filled me with myriad emotions. I was elated by his courage to pursue his dream, followed quickly by my fear of the future and a longing for those years when his tiny hand always found its way into mine. I could barely take it in. All the years… all the feelings… all the love… Everything was acute and unfocused in the same instant, punctuated by the searing pain in my heart as I watched him leave.

But, the clock never turns back and watching my best launch into adulthood, without looking back at me, happened whether I was ready or not.

In a full heart there is room

for everything…

− Antonio Porchia

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