I haven’t written a word of my novel for almost a week. Some people might accuse me of procrastinating, but I grew up in a household where we were taught to finish our work before we play.
Rather than waxing prosaic, I have been diligently wading through a sea of pre-hire paperwork. The Medicare packet alone is enough to drive me screaming to the head of the unemployment line in hopes of a job stocking groceries. I am also trying to dispense of the pile of personal paperwork that perpetually fills my inbox. I’ve cancelled the credit card I haven’t used for 15 years and gone ‘paperless’ with everyone from the bank to the royalties department of my textbook publisher. I realized that I hadn’t sent the publisher a change of address since 1999 and I’ve probably missed a few desperately needed royalty payouts since then. This was the incentive I needed to dump the whole lot upside down on the bed and start with the deepest layer first – right after I removed the cat from the new paper nest that she was working into the proper shape and consistency.
Several hours into the task, I had risen from the level of Abyss to somewhere just below the Twilight Zone. (If you are into oceanography, you know I’m not making this stuff up.) It was there that I found a dozen yellowed papers held together with coffee glue. I peeled them apart to reveal a very outdated copy of my last will and testament. It’s definitely time to rewrite this document, a task thankfully made much simpler now that my girls are older. Do you think it will be a binding contract if I merely write “scatter my ashes and split the loot” on the back of an envelope? I will, of course, get it witnessed and notarized.
My few pieces of costume jewelry and the world’s finest collection of pig paraphernalia strike me as a poor legacy to leave my daughters. Ego aside, I’ve always felt that passing to our children the wisdom gained from years of psychological toe-stubbing is a responsibility we accept when we decide to have children. It doesn’t matter whether they learn from our mistakes or successes.
Past generations have often been reticent to share the seminal events of their lives. They saw no need to burden future generations with their painful experiences or to brag about their accomplishments. How many medals of honor lie hidden in dusty drawers, and how many of our ancestors wear clothes to cover their tattoos and scars?
These days, children are often cursed with TMI from their parents (especially if they make the mistake of accepting their parents’ Facebook Friend requests.) But I’m not talking about mom winning the margarita drinking contest in Cancun for the third year running. I’m thinking about the fact that Great-grandfather smuggled people north in the underground railroad and an uncle was the town horse thief, or that Grandmother drank herself to an early grave after her mother died in a concentration camp. Those who came before us were as happy and sad as are we. Their lives were as complicated as ours, as full of confusion and suffering and choices.
As much as I loved my mother’s father, I hated and feared my paternal grandfather. I remember the foul smell of his cigars, his disrespect for my mother and disdain for just about every other person he came into contact with. He wasn’t all bad, but his anger colored my perception. And, as Alzheimers set in, he became more cantankerous and cruel.
He never spoke about his uninsured business burning to the ground during the Depression. I am left to imagine what it must have been like to shoulder the burden of supporting a young family, including a disabled son. He never mentioned the pain and guilt of his youngest child’s polio. He never mentioned his struggle to hold his head up when he went to work for the Sanitation Department at the city dump. As an adult, long after he was gone, I made my own leap of judgment about what I suspected were mafia payoffs I witnessed him take to allow unauthorized trucks to roll through the gates under his control. He was a complicated man who never explained himself.
I felt the stain of his bitterness on me until a couple of years ago. A family member was researching our ancestry and came across a newspaper article about our grandfather who, as a “13 year old school boy,” was badly injured while wrestling a large knife away from a distraught family member. In the process, he saved his father’s life. With reading those words, I had to re-imagine my grandfather, not as selfish and mean, but rather as brave and loving. I have to presume how the fear born of that experience must have marked him. Only in my 60 years of hindsight can I come to understand how this fear generated his life long suffering.
I see hints of his bitterness trickling through our generations. His reticence or inability to share his pain only served to compound it. His behavior made it impossible for me, in my ignorance, to show him anything other than fear and contempt; and so, the tragedy has passed down the generations. There is a Native American belief that choices we make affect the next seven generations. I suspect our stories ripple much farther.
I will look both ways before I carefully cross the street on the way home from the coffee shop today. I want to do what I can to avoid being hit by the proverbial bus. I want to survive long enough to confess, preach, lecture and share more of my past with my girls. I want them to judge me and learn from me as they will, but with well informed consideration.
sarahat60 