Читать книгу The Myth of the Shiksa and Other Essays - Edwin H. Friedman - Страница 6

Nobody ever liked my father. He had such a polarizing effect that people either adored and revered him or were appalled by his often maverick theories. But he was as irreverent about ideological popularity as he was about his trademark fashion sense — white socks with an ill-fitting suit. “How can I make an impact on society unless I turn it on its tuchous?” he would implore. It was all a puzzle. Each idea led to another and my father was just piecing it all together. He insisted there were no new ideas, just new pairings of them.

This made him a landmine of paradox: a minister’s rabbi, a therapist’s ego, an enemy’s friend. If you meandered unsuspectingly through his thought process, something would surely detonate. He would drop ideas into conversation, ideas he was often just trying out to see what they’d ignite.

I once found a collection of written evaluations of some of his lectures. They began as complimentary: a visionary, great use of the human condition, my favorite seminar. As I poured through these responses, I was bathed in naive pride. And then, without warning, the father I knew reared his shiny head — I found the presenter arrogant, confusing, politically incorrect. Ah yes, this was the father I remember! This was the father I spent my childhood and young adulthood trying to impress, the man for whom I selected a career in writing and traveled the world to prove my sense of adventure. Bold, irreverent, unafraid. He brushed with fate, did not adhere to rules he did not personally create, and loved to provoke — thoughts, anger, joy, just thinking differently. The man who could write “How to Succeed in Therapy without Really Trying,” interview Satan as “The First Family Counselor,” and dare to challenge Jewish lore with “The Myth of the Shiksa.”

I used to think my family was typical. Didn’t everyone discuss the dysfunctional relationship between a football coach and his wide receivers at the dinner table? And what is so surprising about a rabbi who zips his sports car into his allotted parking spot at Temple with a handful of speeding tickets and skid marks in his wake? It was as if we had our own Commandments with the “original sin” as the seduction of self. Our edicts included directives like: Thou shalt not blame others for your own insecurities / Thou shalt learn and grow from challenge / Thou shalt not will change. And the ever popular, Thou shalt make an impact on society.

I had my first encounter with Dad’s thought process while preparing for my Bat Mitzvah. Left alone to write my speech, I thought the Encyclopaedia Britannica could say it much better than I. My father might have ignored this brush with plagiarism, but it was my perspective on God that got him spinning. He sent me back to my desk, armed with a pencil and a heady conversation, to write my unique views. Today, I can trace my ability to take “facts” and bend them into new forms to that thorny encounter with my father, who taught me to be more concerned with critical thinking than with data.

Retrospectively, it now seems obvious that my father was grooming me to be a writer. Not only did our family mix metaphors, we also played an endless round of the “synonym and homonym game.” I don’t exactly remember what the prize was, but I was so conditioned that whenever I came upon words that sounded the same, I would burst out of my room chanting my discoveries out loud. A well-injected curse word was also quite acceptable when it came to verbal expression. I seem to recall that “bitch” was the highest compliment my father could pay me — it meant that my progression of thought had mixed with sentence structure to render him speechless. Ultimately, it meant I had one-upped him. A lifetime goal, I suppose.

But responsibility trumped words. As so many of his writings show, from “Empathy Defeats Therapy” to A Failure of Nerve, my father was resolute in his assertion that words are empty without the motivation to elicit change. Still, one can imagine what it was like trying to sneak a sweet but superficial liaison into the family only to be met with responses like, “Sure, go ahead and marry him. But you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to define yourself to such a no-self !”

Early on my father worried that perfect little Shira, so concerned with following the rules, would turn out lawless as an adolescent and young adult. So at the age of five, when I decided that the living room drapes would be far more efficient for someone of my height with a small hole cut in the center, my mother hollered at the discovery, but my father dripped relief. In his mind, through that small hole in the curtains an encouraging future came pouring in. A future packed with missteps and exploration.

But then came adolescence and a gravitational pull to fit in. With his natural penchant for individuality, my father could not understand why I was suddenly altering my very core to blend in with the other teenage lemmings. Although I knew he was right, a date for the prom was far more crucial than my personal growth. Undeterred, he was constantly at me to define myself. At first I learned to just “talk the talk” to get him off my back, as I told my fellow lemmings — until years later I realized I was living the talk as well. I had created my own being.

As college loomed, it came to my father’s attention that he didn’t know many of my girlfriends. Since I had few secrets from him, I openly explained that our evenings usually revolved around André pink champagne and a drinking game of “Quarters.” As he wrote in essays like “Secrets and Systems,” my father was adamant that the truth hurts less than the anxiety of not knowing. So he processed this information for about a day and then offered up our home as the new site of our gatherings — provided cabs were called when everyone had to leave. Although secretly fearful that our alcoholic consumption seemed a bit gluttonous, he never let on but maintained that nonanxious presence that became his trademark phrase.

It was not the first time I had met with real-life application of his theories. Years earlier I experienced his use of paradox, or what he learned as “reversal” from his mentor, Murray Bowen (see “Mischief, Mystery, and Paradox”). In an effort to get more attention at home, I tried my hand at shoplifting. Although I was successful in getting caught, my father saw through my ruse and, when he came to spring me from the store, insisted I go see a lawyer friend of his. For a moment I had visions of juvenile detention, until he announced, “Shira, I want you to go see Paul. He can introduce you to some real hardened criminals, so you can learn how to steal without getting caught.” Needless to say, my father’s well-timed injection of paradox and reversal gave my new hobby less appeal.

Essays like “The Birthday Party” illustrate that my father also practiced family of origin work at home. Cousins would often emerge out of nowhere, packing stories of other random relatives that I would later meet. Perhaps because my father was an only child, a second cousin once removed had as much clout as a niece. It was about relationships and a continuing connection from generation to generation.

I didn’t know how important I was to my father until I first introduced him to my husband. Back in the days when you could actually greet people as they hobbled off the plane, my father emerged wearing a trench coat, a tennis sweater, his beloved New Balance running shoes, and his famous comb-over. My husband-to-be stood immobilized, trying to ascertain whether he was in the presence of Einstein or the Jewish Mafia. When I later told my father that my boyfriend had been nervous about the meeting, he replied, “Me too!” But there was more. My mother later told me that he returned to Maryland, proclaimed that he had just met his future son-in-law, and commenced to cry. After many boyfriends, thousands of miles, and twenty-seven years, no theory could fix the feeling that he was losing his little girl.

When my father died suddenly in 1996 of a heart attack, I had no regrets and no issues to resolve — just a huge, painful void that showed up in my mitral valve as a heart murmur. Of course, if my father had known of this physiological outcome he would have said to me, “Oh, Shira. You have got to differentiate yourself. I’m just too important to you.” But in truth, I think he would have been delighted how much I miss him.