This
is the first such milestone that mother isn't here to convey her
remembrance of that Sunday afternoon so long ago now when she
struggled to deliver and I struggled to survive. At the old hospital
on Washington Avenue, overlooking the Marquette river and across the
place where the revered priest died those many years ago, she
struggled to give birth. I was born two months premature with an
undeveloped respiratory system and with some circulation problems and
was immediately whisked off to an incubator. Because of the size of
my head and delivery issues, mother was quickly sedated and stitched
up and would spend weeks in recovery, as would I. It was a trauma we
both shared and, besides being the firstborn, created a special
relationship beyond what the birth order is normally accorded. I
remember a decade or so ago, she sent to our residence in Athens,
Georgia a card upon which she had written “I miss my first-born”.
I know.
My
relationship with mother was a many-layered, complex, and at times
difficult. But we understood each other as perhaps no one else. I,
perhaps alone, could speak truth to mother, and there were times when
truth was painful. There are things your children can say to you
that even your spouse cannot, and this was certainly the case here.
We had been through too much together to bear false witness.
So
when she divorced my father and coerced me into signing the papers of
adoption and changing my last name I told her then that I would
change it back when I reached the age of majority. She thought I
wouldn't and when I did I reminded her of what I had told her all
those years ago when I was but ten years of age. She disowned me.
Told me that I was not longer her son. But I knew she couldn't
divorce her children, especially me. We had struggled together, we
had suffered together, we were bound together. It took a couple of
years but she came around. Eventually, one April afternoon in 1987
we would find ourselves on the phone talking about it, confronting
once again the pain of childhood. She would relate to me what she
had been through; I to her what she and father had done to my brother
and I. We both wept openly.
You
see, mother was mostly facade. Under the tough, cold exterior was a
frightened little girl. I had always known it, always felt it, even
as a boy. Often, as a young boy, when going through the awful
nightmare of the turbulence of school and home, I felt like I was the
only adult in the room. To me, mom seemed lost—a frightened girl
lost in a terrifying wonderland. I told her that and, for once,
there was no denial. Just tears. I told her I understood and for
the first time I truly did. I understood for the first time what is
meant by social fabric; that some things—indeed most things—are
intergenerational. We are all caught up in social dynamics that span
the generations, and while one can be critical of failures to seize
the opportunity to address what is wrong—the dysfunctions about
us—one must understand that they are often bigger than we are. In
that understanding comes forgiveness.
Two
months ago I watched the worn and wrinkled vessel that carried me into this world pass
into eternity. It has been three score and ten and for the first
time I cannot hear her voice, only silence returns my call.
"Momma
don't goooooooooooooo!
Daddy
come home!
----John Lennon
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