Front & Center

Growing up as the eldest child in a dysfunctional Brady Bunch clan, I was expected to be available when called upon--a sort of Johnny-On-the-Spot.

"Doobie!" The King of the Mountain bellowed. "Front and center!"

I dropped whatever I was doing like a hot potato, and hurried to obey his summons.

"Change the channel," he commanded from his reign on the living room couch. Or, "Pour me another glass of iced tea."

The demanded action was something he could easily have done himself, had he been so inclined. My time, though, as well as my energies, belonged to him. I was always on the clock; there was no time card to punch to record or validate the end of another work day. Even sleep didn't absolve me from my duties. I received another kind of summons in the middle of many nights, unspoken, awakening me in a state of terrified confusion.

Recently I've pondered what it is that compels me to be all things to all people. In the process of making myself accessible at all hours (regardless of my health issues) I'm like the organ grinder's monkey in my ridiculous hat, scrabbling into the role expected of me at a moment's notice.

At the slightest articulation of a want or need, I'm off and running: mending a torn stuffed doggie, searching for a lost shoe, throwing a load in the washer for the morrow.  No one has to ask me outright to do these things; I'm programmed so deeply to respond to the needs of others that I spring into action in response to the mere inkling of a need.

I've begun to feel resentful, and no wonder. My first conclusion upon realizing how much I'm depended upon was that my family consists of incredibly selfish individuals. But I know better than to accept conclusions arrived at off the top of my head, especially when I'm emotionally distraught or flustered. Certainly no one bellows, "Front and center!" Far from being too lazy to do things for themselves, my sons do plenty for themselves and their clans, as well as for me.

Do I need help with a computer issue? I've several sons with the know how and willingness needed to get to the root of the problem. Car trouble?  Just weeks ago my mechanic son fixed the car Sissyface gave me, which had suddenly refused to run. Yesterday he fixed the driver side window which was stuck halfway closed. Another son contributed nearly $200 to getting my car registered and legal.

I don't necessarily have to ask for these types of help. If they know of the need they are more than willing to apply their knowledge and skills (or money) to whatever monkey-wrench I'm currently dealing with. Why the resentment then when I feel depended upon?

I'm beginning to see that I'm not so much resenting being needed, so much as I resent the attendant feelings invoked by the needs of others. The sudden pressure to do something to help fills me with anxiety, the same anxiety I experienced everytime I received a summons from my abuser. I never knew what he wanted, what it would cost me to give him what he wanted. A glass of iced tea was nothing, just a mild irritant because it interrupted my alone or play time. When the summons involved something more sinister my heart dropped to my feet, and I blanked out. Just blanked out. Sometimes when a need in my family arises I begin to blank out, to freeze. Something is being required of me (or so it seems) which I don't know if I'll be able to give or accomplish. The freeze is short lived, for these are my loved ones I'm dealing with, not a sicko, sadistic stepdad. Once I come out of the freeze is when I scurry into frenzied action.

Now that I think about it, when I'm the one with a need my sons don't necessarily drop everything to accommodate me, unless it's an emergency. I may have to wait until one of them has some free time, after following up on a promised activity with one of my grandkids, for instance. Though willing to help, they don't disrupt their lives in a groveling need to please. I'm the one who does that.  I'm the one who will drop just about anything on a moment's notice in a desperate need to please. But . . . my need to please is at war with my resentment at needing to please. It's like can't I ever just be? Must I prove myself over and over? Oh, but no one is really asking me to prove anything; that's the baggage I've packed and brought with me from my childhood sojourn.

My willingness to make myself available never got me anywhere with my abuser. He never stopped raping me because I was so helpful. He never cut out the sarcasm and mockings at my expense because I consistently responded immediately when summoned.

I begin to see that my so-called obedience was really nothing more than a learned outward compliance. Inwardly I fumed, and felt rebellious and greatly exasperated at never having a moment to call my own.

My issue, then. This is my issue, which I need to own and find a way to work through.

Lately I've begun noticing this outward compliance of mine, learned by rote during the wilderness of my childhood. I learned it out of necessity, just one more survival technique among many others. It served me well then, for any disobedience on my part would have had dire consequences. That easy compliance isn't serving me so well now.

I see myself, then, overly compliant, like an eager puppy dog. I cringe a little thinking how it would pain me if one of my grandkids were so well-trained to instant canine-like obedience that they lacked the ability to do otherwise. It's been said that one's "yes" is meaningless unless one first has learned to say a sincere "no."

Often it's only in imagining what it would be like to see one of my grandkids having to act as I did as a child that I am able to rightly perceive my muddled thinking.

The thing is, at least I can see now my tendency to be on automatic pilot; can see, and recognize, my deeply entrenched automatic responses to the needs of others for what they are. I'm learning through this discovery process to not be so quick to offer my services.

"Aren't you cold?" I might once have asked a son or grandchild in short sleeves, as the temperature dive bombed. Now I remind myself they are perfectly capable of figuring out if they need warmer clothing. I'm drawing lines, not willy-nilly all over the place, but as needed, and in a reasonable manner.

Am I too tired to cook? No problem. We'll either have a fend-for-yourself night, or someone else can play Betty Crocker.

Here's another thing, a different kind of conclusion at which I've arrived. The world can run just fine without me. The well-being of others is not up to me--echoes of The King of the Mountain's teachings notwithstanding--and it never was.

Does She Remember Me?

My little granddaughter was asking me if my dad is still alive. I told her he wasn't, and she wanted to know if my mom was. I said yes, and she said, "Oh, well where does she live?" I told her Arizona; she pondered this and then said, "Nana, I don't think your mom remembers you anymore."

Huh. What a random comment. It kept pestering me as she rattled on about other things. Remember me? I wanted to say with great disdain, she never even knew me so how could she remember me?

Perhaps she never knew me as I grew from childhood into adolescence, and then into adulthood---but does she remember my infant self? I wonder if she ever broods on my earliest years, of the babe she held her arms, the baby cutting teeth or the toddler being potty trained. Had her first flickerings of love for me fizzled by the time I became the eager first grader, thirsty for knowledge? She once told Sissyface that she had no trouble feeling affection for her babies, but by the time they began walking and talking, and expressing their own unique personalities, she couldn't really relate to them or feel that same affection.

What goes through the mind of a mother who fails to protect a daughter? It's easy and tempting to demonize my mother; but, I have to wonder, did she ever experience moments of maternal love? Did she ever smile down at me as I drank from my bottle, or cuddle me as much for her own pleasure as for my comfort?

Years ago she mentioned that when I was a baby and toddler she would sometimes dance me around the room to whatever was playing on the radio. I don't know if my expression betrayed my sense of disbelief, but I could hardly imagine such a scenario. Did she really do that, or is this just another lie she's told herself in order to hold to her self-image as a loving parent?

I would like to think that she had her better moments. I would like to believe that, for all her moral failures in my later childhood, she did experience moments of tenderness for her firstborn daughter. What caused her to fail me so abysmally later on doesn't have to mean she never felt a natural human love for me. Does it?

A Decision Made

And just like that, I decided to have my youngest son move in with me when I get my new place.

He asked today where I planned on moving to. I told him I didn't know, then we discussed his options, which basically means no options at all. I've been sitting on the fence about taking him with me, but as we talked it just felt right to tell him that he could stay with me.

I'm immensely relieved. I won't go into the whole I-can't-live-alone routine--my readers and I have all heard it too many times. But it's true, and you know, I'm letting myself off the hook. I'm always coming up with new methods of testing my nettle. If I can do such and such, which I couldn't do last year, then I've grown, and healed a bit more. But if I can't, well how pathetic, and what is taking me so long?

I've decided that it's okay if I spend the rest of my life living with someone. Are there any rules about this?  Not that I know of. Look, I tell myself, if you were physically crippled in some way you would be greatly limited in some areas of your life. So your crippling is more mental and emotional, so what. Stop forcing yourself to prove to everyone how brave you are!

So there we are. I'm not shoving myself into the discomfort zone any more. Maybe in smaller matters I will, 'cause we all could use a good shake up from time to time. But when it comes to the bigger issues, well who am I proving things to?

I've about a month and a half to find my new home. Excitement is beginning to override my fears. I'll love living in my own place again, fixing it up just so. I read some of my old posts, published when I moved into my last apartment. How fun it was settling in! Reading about it made me nostalgic. I didn't realize how much I've missed my very own space.

So off I go to begin this new chapter of my life. This is the year I turn 60. A new granddaughter is on the way. Who knows what other great things life holds in store for me? Though I've plenty of sorrow and such to weigh me down at times, there's a counter balance.

It feels good to have something to be excited about; it's been too long.

Wary

Somewhere between the shadows we reside, loitering away the unbearably long days and hellish nights, waiting. We don't know what we're waiting for: some change, maybe. A twitch of hope, a gasp of barely breathed joy. We wait, we don't expect. We've learned not to: not to expect or hope. It's better this way.

We're a mournful lot for the most part. Even within Funnygal's witty remarks and howling laughter there is a sorrow so deep you could fall into it, and sink like quicksand. You could stare at it too long and become blinded, as if you'd looked too long at the sun. Unlike the sun, sorrow dresses in drab colors, reminding one of things rusty and abandoned, or blood, brown-dried, which could belong to anyone: a grown man, a teen girl, a helpless baby.

We reside in the shadows, hovering, balancing on our haunches, or pacing all fidgety, hollow with wanting. Our individual needs are as raw and stinking as gaping wounds. Collectively our needs are too much; they are a constant sense of mortification. We hold back, not expressing the worst of them, not even amongst ourselves. They are ugly because unnamed. They are unloved because they are the sum total of who we are, and we, as time has shown, are not loveable.

She fronts for us, dressing the body, preparing meals, smiling, cleaning, driving, grocery shopping. Our fears clutch at her in desperation; they weigh her down. She slogs through her days never guessing there is more to her exhaustion than Chronic Fatigue. We let her think it. We don't correct her, for we need her. If we contradict we might scare her into flight. She is feeble in many ways, though she is seen as strong. She bumbles along, but we need her, bumblings and all.

She is how we look from the inside to the outside. We need her eyes, her mouth, her hands, her sighs, her fleeting joys and satisfactions. She holds us captive, though she doesn't realize it. But we hold her captive as well. She relies on us, leans on us, cries out to us even when she doesn't know that's what she's doing. We should feel like kindred spirits but we don't.

We are wary of her. She is wary of us.

Wary wary wary wary.

My Delicious Respite

The grandkids have just been spirited away to their mother's for the weekend, leaving me with nothing I have to do. No demands on my time and energy. I can spend the next 48 hours in whatever fashion I choose.

What shall I do? It would be a great time to do some more sorting, and packing. But someone stole our air conditioner and this house is like an oven. I can't see myself doing anything requiring physical exertion. What then?

Perhaps a movie is in order. Maybe tomorrow when Tim comes for his weekly visit I'll see if he'd like to go with me. He's not good at sitting still for the length of a movie though, so a better idea might be to go on Sunday after he's left.

I've a blank journal just waiting for my 7 year old insider, Jenny, to break in with her earnest thoughts. She must be anxious about the upcoming move, so allowing her an outlet for her feelings would be a positive use of some of my time.

Yesterday Maddy, my 6 year old granddaughter, and I made cinnamon rolls from scratch. What fun we had making a big old mess. I got out the rolling pins and we rolled and rolled the dough, attempting to make it measure 30" x 10." The rolls turned out as delish as I'd hoped, and there's still another batch waiting to be baked. I could bake those, it would be something to do--but nah, there's that whole house-feeling-like-an-oven thing; imagine if I really did use the oven!

I should be getting a box of yarn today which I ordered online to make my new grand baby a blankie. I can't think of anything I'd rather do less than knit. No, that will keep. I must think sensibly and not let this heat cloud my thinking. No knitting, no sorting, no packing, no baking. What does that leave? Simply being.

I'm going to simply be, I like the sound of that. I'm going to piddle around doing next to nothing. I'll doubtless watch parts of TV shows and movies which I've recorded, changing to something else once I grow restless. I'll probably take a shower at some point, not having to hurry as I would if the girls were here.

I'll scribble a few notes for the writing I'll be getting back to once I settle in to the next step of my journey. I may clean out my purse, something I can easily do while watching TV.

I'll consider washing my bedding, but think better of it. Running the dryer? Uh uh.

My thoughts will scraggle to my childhood, pondering this and that memory or season. I'll wonder how I got to be nearly 60, marveling at the wonder of managing to survive this long.

Izzy, a bit lost without her cousins, will at some point make an appearance in my room, asking for my help with something. I'll spend time with her, both of us glad to have someone to keep us company.

I may change the litter box, but don't count on it.

I'll pray from time to time, silently, prayers that flitter from one topic to another in no particular order, like birds who can't settle on one particular branch.

When bedtime rolls around, if I can't quite relax enough for sleep, I'll put on Hitchcock's Rear Window, turn my back to the TV (so I'm not sleeping on my bad hip), and let its comforting murmur lull me into la-la land. I don't know why this movie does that to me, I'm just grateful it does. There's no sense in questioning something that works.

Thus my weekend will pass slowly, deliciously. Whether or not I accomplish anything can't matter for the next 2 days, can't matter a bit. Easing out of my tight, strident routine of meeting the needs of others, I'll fall into a state of constant sleepiness, for I can let down my guard. Relax.

I already miss the girls but oh, I was so ready for this respite!