The Eldest Child - Session 3

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My mother didn’t really like talking about my father after she remarried. For the longest time, I thought it out of loyalty to my stepfather or something like that. That she wanted us to be a family or something adjacent to a family, which couldn’t include my dad but is also what anyone in her situation would have wanted. But as to why I thought she specifically wanted that, I didn’t have an answer so much as suspicions. 

On one hand, there’s the fairy tale aspect of it. There’s the romance of a second love, of belated soulmates, or of a beautiful happily ever after rising out of the ashes of tragedy. But my mother was never like that. She was never romantic, so it couldn’t have been that. On the other hand, emphasizing the ‘family’ in a blended family makes living together so much easier, doesn’t it? I mean, you’re just borrowing an established philosophy, right? You don’t choose your family, but you have to live with them, through highs and lows. That’s what we needed to do, and all things considered, it wasn’t always easy. Then again, as a third hand, if you will allow it, she always had a looser definition of family than other moms did. Or than anyone did. It was never all about blood and blood ties to her. 

And how much of that had to do with her father, I don’t know. I think it was, in part, a survival impulse. A lot of my mother’s worst traits boil down to her survival instincts, which were definitely distorted and heightened by experiences she refuses to tell me about. Being widowed young will do quite a bit, though. And that part I do know. But to get back to the point, that’s a better way of explaining why she didn’t like talking about him than anything I came up with as a child. Survival in her mind meant… Well, it meant not being sad that he was gone. It meant being… not numb but not harboring the bad emotions, many of which come with death. 

Don’t get me wrong, she always cherished his memory in a way, but she wasn’t going to deny that forgetting about him meant forgetting about her hurt, meant forgetting about why she was sad and maybe even losing the reason to be sad. 

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But she couldn’t really do that with me, around. Hence some of her resentment.

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It wasn’t until recently that she changed her mind on things. It was around the time she divorced my stepdad. Or former stepdad. We didn’t really talk about it when it was over, when she first filed, or anything in the process. But sometimes I think it was all because she finally accepted that you couldn’t run from your past or your heartache. Even under the guise of parenting. Not that the damage wasn’t already done. 

Maybe this is the sort of informed perspective that can only come from losing a parent, but I never need her to be anything but human, specifically a human that was there with me through the good and bad. And that means having emotions. But good and bad. But especially bad, though. Because you know what she couldn’t change for all of her efforts? That I was grieving, and I never understood what I was grieving for. A part of me was just missing. She knew what that part was, but it was a card that she kept close to her chest. And why? I still don’t fully understand.

My dad’s friends were the ones to tell me about him, but there were things they couldn’t add to the conversation. Like how he cried when I was born but not because of love at first sight or anything else other parents talk about because it couldn’t have been that. I mean, it wasn’t… It was more complicated than that. He loved me before then, is the story I want to believe In a rare moment of openness, my mom told me about that; she told me how he just knew the entire time she was pregnant with me that they were having a daughter, even though I wouldn’t cooperate during the anatomy scan. She told me that while I was misbehaving for the technician, he fell in love with me and my spirit. From that moment, he loved how stubborn I was. And I know that wasn’t her projecting because she hates this part of me. 

That’s part of a father’s love, I thought. I thought part of being a father was loving all of the inconveniences of your child because–admittedly–it was going to be hard for your kid’s mom to do so. And of course, that’s entirely dependent on out-dated gender norms, but I grew up in a fairly conservative area, and we’re talking about the thoughts I had when I was a child, which is the current hurdle you have to clear. Or the one you’ll have to clear in a couple years.

The good news is that the hurdles start out low, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. It’s possible but not easy. 

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As I grew up, and my notions of parenting shifted into a more genderless mass, I wondered if regret wasn’t a part of parenting too. I mean, sure, it’s a terrible part. It’s an unfortunate part. Maybe even the worst one, but I don’t think there’s any harm in the mere desire for better, as long as you don’t let it consume you. But that’s from a biased perspective, I know. Because I always wondered how Dad felt when he found out when he was dying. And I know it’s selfish, but I wondered if he thought of me in that moment. If he wished that things could be different, that he could have had more time with me. And what would that have looked like? You know? I always thought that that was the type of regret that proved what really mattered in the world. But then again, I guess that doesn’t really answer what I need or what I needed from him. Or if it does I don’t like that answer. 

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Because I swear, what I needed was him, right? I needed my dad. That’s all. But that isn’t a simple thing, is it? He couldn’t just coexist in that space with me. Mom did that, and I’m bitter. I’m bitter because I can recite a long list of things she wasn’t to me. I see glimpses of what I should have had all the time, things that I needed her to give me, and things that I had to go without.

I’ve grieved for both of my parents, you know? 

You know what all that means. You know what grief is, and I can commend you for wanting to protect your child from it, but you can’t. You know that too. You also know what you have to do. You’re making progress. It doesn’t feel that way because it’s a small steps, and you were never good at giving yourself credit for the small things you do. You just feel a nothingness because you’ve told yourself to feel that nothing. 

The why is a bit harder to understand in a classic sense. But there’s some logic to it. It’s a way of avoiding that sadness. And you can try to run from it, like my mother did, but I need to tell you that when you do, you’ll be stepping on your child’s heart as you go. 

Which I get sounds super-counterintuitive. I know running like this seems like the safer option. You’re distancing yourself and your child from it, right? That’s what you mean to do. I’m sure that’s what she thought would happen or what her survival instincts promised her would happen. I’m sure she thought she was protecting me, but she wasn’t. Children aren’t as dumb as you think. They know there’s an elephant in the room, or a ghost if you will, and they’ll turn back to look at it as you go. They will point, and you’ll angrily tell them not to. But they won’t understand why you’re so harsh with them about it. At least not at first. 

And when they’re old enough to  understand, who knows how they will feel about it, if they will think it’s enough to lock you out of their lives. I mean, it is a betrayal after all. And I’m sure that’s a controversial opinion, but I’m speaking from experience here. I feel like I can’t have emotions around my mother. Like they’re some sort of forbidden, taboo thing. But of course I was around her all the time as a kid. I was around her so much that my attempts to stifle them in her presence have led to an overall stunting. Certainly you’ve noticed? Everyone notices. That’s one item of my list of things she took from me. This and a great many others are things that I think are unforgivable. 

If you don’t take this from your child, you’ll be better as a parent than she was, and I’m sure that is not as comforting as I thought it was, but I need you to understand that surviving doesn’t mean thriving. Pushing through emotion is surviving, I will grant you that, but living with it, truly coexisting where you don’t let it consume or hurt you, is thriving. Or it’s something you need in order to thrive, to be well- adjusted. Something that I know all too well, I am not.

I didn’t need it thrown into my face, you know? Not by you, of course. You’ve been angry but kind. Just don’t worry about that part, okay? Don’t worry about me. I don’t want anyone to worry about me. 

(Music fades out. Beep)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?