sublingua

The heart with a mind of its own.

(Be present.)

The mind with a heart of its own.

(It's past.)

The dream that is your waking life.

(Go there now.)

One More Piece Of The Demon Brotherhood (And The Demon Who Isn't Ready To Speak Of It Yet)
Sunday, Jun. 06, 2004

Mother, Do You Think They'll Drop The Bomb?

I had lunch with my mother today.

(That's her, above, in 1971, the year I was born. Isn't she beautiful?)

I love my mother something fierce. My mother is the thing that tethered me to this life for years, kept me here, kept me alive through all the years when I couldn't think of any reason to go on, through all the years when I was tempted to just let go. She tied me to this life and did it without knowing that she was doing it. I never said a word to her about what I was working through. She never knew until today.

We were supposed to have lunch. She had just visited my younger brother and met me saying, "Your brother has something to talk to you about." I am wary of this kind of opening, wary of my younger brother's opening gambits. I asked what it was. She said, "We'll talk later." (She had my niece, my younger brother's daughter, in tow.) I told my mother that we'd talk now. (I'm not into the other shoe dropping on someone else's time scale.) She said, "He wanted to tell you that he was molested as a child."

I said, "Yeah. We all were. By dad."

Her mouth dropped open. She said after a moment, "No. By Jonathan."

I searched my memory for a Jonathan, found nothing. (She tried to remind me of my cousin Jonathan, a cousin I don't remember, probably because he never paid the least bit of attention to me.)

She said, "What did your father do?" I told her we'd talk about it later.

Mother, Shall I Build A Wall?

She said over lunch, "I asked you years ago about your father."

She had asked years ago. My niece was three or so years old then (she's almost 15 now) and refused, absolutely refused, to have anything to do with my father, her grandfather. She couldn't, at three years of age, verbalize why, but she wouldn't get near him, refused to sit on his lap, refused his requests for kisses. And my brother, her father, had no idea why. He only knew that it was an insult to my father that his only grandchild wouldn't get near him. So he forced her. He forced her to sit on his lap, to give granddad kisses, to spend nights at his house.

My aunt, my mother's sister, hearing of this, broke a self-imposed 25-year silence.

My aunt had been all of 5 years old when my parents were married. She worshipped my mother, who was ten years older. The novelty of a sister, newly married, must have been a draw to a five-year-old.

I never heard my aunt's whole story. All I knew was that her having finally told made no difference whatsoever in how my niece was allowed to interact with my father.

I hadn't spoken or had any contact with my father for over a decade when all this happened. But my self-imposed silence continued.

And I said, "I wasn't ready to tell you years ago."

Mother, did it need to be so high?

I told my mother that I was sorry for what had happened to my younger brother, but that it was his shit to deal with and, as far as I could see, he hadn't done any work on it. I told her that I was finished carrying other people's emotional shit. I told her that all she had to do was look at me two years ago to see that it had been killing me to do it. That fat suit I wore was largely made up of my own and other people's emotional baggage. And I was done wearing it. �Let the people responsible for the shit shoulder the shit, carry it,� I said. �I'm finished.�

She got tears in her eyes.

I can only remember seeing my mother cry perhaps once before, at the funeral of her older brother, my uncle, my uncle who held my abusive father by the throat in the street and told him that, if he valued his life, that his days as a wife beater were over. She had, in the days after my uncle�s death, refused to cry. Her lips broke out in sores. She couldn't sleep. She couldn�t eat. But she didn't cry. She never cried until they rang the church bells and she saw his coffin being carried to the altar toward the waiting priest by my brothers and me.

My aunt's secret had stayed a secret even after she told in part because my mother and grandmother were afraid that my uncle would kill my father if he knew. He would have too. (When I was a child, my uncle once sat me down�I must have been about eight�and told me exactly what he would do to any man that ever touched me in an inappropriate way. And I looked into his eyes and believed him in my heart. But at the time, I didn�t know enough to be able to say that it had already happened. I was still protecting my father then, protecting my own innocence in a way that only a child would do, and only do instinctively.) That's why I so fiercely loved my uncle.

Later: I don�t truly know where this entry was going to go. A million places, I suspect. I�m not ready to dredge up the memories of my father and don�t know if I ever will be. All I know is that I�ve made some peace within myself over what happened years ago, and that it has been and continues to be difficult. I know that my brother�s journey will be equally difficult and I have sympathy for him. But it�s his work to do, not mine.

retreat or surrender

More lies:
Waking Sleeping Demons II - Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011
Waking Sleeping Demons - Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011
time - Friday, May. 20, 2011
- - Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2010
The Return - Tuesday, Oct. 05, 2010

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