Читать книгу From the Dark Domain - Keith Potter - Страница 12

“You did this to me!”

A hundred times she’d told me the same, though now hardly seemed the time. We were racing to the hospital on a wet March night in San Francisco. When we reached the hospital, Alice gave one last hateful glare from the wheelchair and disappeared into the delivery room.

Oh, she was transformed that night! Her baby boy transported her into euphoric womanhood. No post-partum depression for her. Instead, she tapped from some unknown source of affection and spilled it out on you. She adored you.

She ignored me. Even my weak attempts at participation in ordinary matters of diapers and bottles were greeted by hostile words. “That’s not how you do it, you idiot!” Or, “Give him to me. Give him to me!”

I retreated. Oh, I am so sorry for how far I retreated. And dear Donnie, I fear that I’m only now returning from that desolate place to be a shadow of what I could have been for you.

But again, she loved you. She did.

Between seminary in San Anselmo and a part-time ministry position as an ill-fitted youth pastor at Village Church in Mill Valley, there were more than enough distractions. I poured myself into Greek and Hebrew, and then into bored teenagers who regarded me with some disdain unless I planned mission trips to Mexico with Disneyland tagged on. The hours are brutal for youth ministers and Alice punished me for my absence even as she despised me in my presence.

And this about you—you were a beautiful child with a temperament that brought relief to a stricken household.

Finally, dear Donnie, Mommy could not sustain her interest or affections beyond infancy. Her muscles for a life of generosity simply had not the mass or endurance. The more you became a little man, the more she applied her subtle hatred of the male gender onto you. I doubt it would have been much better if you’d been female, for she would have loved a girl in a twisted way. But, alas, you are male. As am I, or I should be.

As a protector, I failed beyond measure. Mommy had no capacity for you. I had no practice at parenting you and no spine for policing her. So, you learned to take care of yourself and I learned to respect you for it. All the while, I pretended not to notice how badly she was hurting us both. And by my cowardice I brought us all great harm.

“Your son messed up my house!” she’d say, after you’d make a toddling foray into a cupboard and clank pots and pans onto the floor.

“I’m sorry, honey.”

“You know I hate it when you call me honey!”

“Yes, dear.”

“Are all men so destructive? All you do is create messes.”

“He’s a boy,” the strongest defense I could muster.

“God help us, do I know that.”

“I’ll take him for a few hours.” I offered.

“And do what? Teach him Hebrew? Just let him be.”

God forgive me, I followed her orders. To say that I placated only and always is like pronouncing that the Beatles had a few hit singles in those days. Today, therapists would call me a codependent and teach me skills for loving my wife by standing up to her and refusing to be her doormat. In those days, people only joked about domineering wives and dishrag husbands, and men went bowling and worked long hours and teased about “the old ball and chain” in the most general terms to release their animus; and finally died young of hardened arteries.

Of course, I don’t bowl. And pastors aren’t allowed to utter ill words about anyone, especially their wives. Therapists were unheard of, especially for pastors, and my advancement in the pastoral ranks required a combination of performance and the projection of health in my household—which no one ever probed for fear of striking hard truth.

“Aren’t you going to do something about your son?” she asked, the first time you were in trouble for smoking cigarettes.

“What would you have me do?”

“Discipline him.”

“Should I ground him?” I asked.

“And have him underfoot all hours? You’d be punishing me! Make him go to church with you. That’s punishment enough.”

So even church became an exile and not a land of promise. Your disdain for my weakness, well deserved, took form by subtle rebellions against all authority. You hardly harmed a soul, but your disregard for teachers and coaches and, well, parental figures, translated into greater isolation.

You became a loner. A bright, talented, contained and self-assured island. My feeble paddlings out to your little sanctuary were received with legitimate indifference. I remember asking permission to come into your room, praying for an opening. You’d turn up the volume on your stereo and I had no more authority to dissuade you than I had in Mommy’s life.

Even that name. She insisted on being your Mommy, though she quit playing the part as soon as you learned to talk and walk. And I called her Mommy, since no other term of endearment fit the shapes and angles of our relationship.

I’ll ask you this question many times, Donnie. If you cannot answer me, then know that I’m not blind to my shortcomings. Will you forgive me? Ever and only for yourself, so that the chain of bitterness and neglect can be broken in the family line, and so you can be free to love well.

Perhaps you’ve already learned. Maybe your life is marked by solid friendships and generous graces. Has God already intervened, or was God forever your quiet friend on that island retreat? I hope you have stopped guarding yourself against the pain of relational investment and have dared to expose yourself to another. If you haven’t, I’d understand. But I pray ‘til my last breath for you to know a trustworthy friend, and even to risk a love-worthy woman.

By the way, I loved Mommy. It was a sad love. Far less brave than agape and much too frustrated to be eros, and not reciprocated enough to be philos, it was the love of a beaten dog with no bite, and a ridiculous brand of deep-seeded loyalty. For better or worse, it was the only love I was able or allowed to give.

Not to help you forgive, for I am without excuse; but to help us both understand, can I indulge in some speculation on my own childhood? As my father was an alcoholic before I knew the term, so I was a dry alcoholic before the label had been invented. I escaped into studies and work rather than a bottle, but still ran hard from real issues and into a safer form of anesthetic. My codependence I learned from both parents who never confronted each other. Mother’s chronic self-pity festered as completely unchallenged as Father’s drinking. I never learned from them how to say the hard words, though I would have learned harsh words, if not for a rabid allergy to harshness that developed early in me.

Your childhood spooks me like a ghost haunting his old domain. You withdrew to your room and to rock music the way I had once fled to the safety of the ballpark lawns and the urine-smelly dugouts, and then to church.

To his credit, Father might have succeeded as a parent more than me. To her credit, my mother had more obvious reasons for misery than your Mommy did. In this way, your parents failed to accomplish what everyone in our generation sought—to make the world a better place for our children.

Imagine all the people.