VirusHead

Saturday Slant (ok, yeah, a little late)

Defining Childhood Event
If asked to pick just one, what event of your childhood most shaped the person you are now? We are all the sum of our laughter and tears. As children, events occur in and around our lives that shape our world forever more. Which one event—for better or for worse—might you say shaped you? Why was it significant? How do you feel about it? How does the effect of that event reach across the years to influence your adult life now?

There are a dozen or so such events, having to do with being involved with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, with changes in socio-economic class and with important support and influences. If I were to choose the event that most shaped the person I am now, I would be hard-pressed to choose. I don’t think I can do it, really.

I’ll pick one that is in the top five – my parents’ divorce. It isn’t the most unusual or even perhaps the most interesting, but everyone needs to keep a few secrets.

My parents divorced when I was 9. I remember that my parents actually told me that they were getting a divorce, but I didn’t know what a divorce was – I had some idea that it was something like a business trip. One day, my father (who I feared and adored) was just gone – along with a lot of our stuff. For some time, I thought he was coming back. After a while, we started to see him on either Saturdays or Sundays.

We moved into a new apartment and I went to a new school. In place of a wonderful yard with lilac bushes and a big swing on a huge crabapple tree and wild grapes and the freedom to range around in the neighborhood, I looked out on a backyard that was simply a sandpit full of dog excrement. The neighbors were.. um.. less friendly. My imaginary world turned away from the extensive fantasies I had projected onto the outside world – no more worlds of the faery and the magical. I started to play the piano and to dance and to read, spending almost all of my time indoors. The public library was a block away, and I spent a lot of time there as well. My mother was working all of the time and we became latchkey kids. I took over responsibility for my two younger brothers – whether to the good or not they would have to say. Truth tell, I was a little bossy, when I paid attention to them at all. At 9 and 10 and 11 – I wasn’t ready for a parental role – I did my best.

My relationship with my father was troubled, partly because of his own problems and vulnerabilities that I didn’t grasp at all. Like many children, I felt that if I had been better he would still be living with us. This feeling was compounded by the complications of being a Jehovah’s Witness – a matter too convoluted to get into here, but suffice to say that the feeling of not being good enough was only amplified. My image of God became a lot like my “father” of the imagination (one more reason that I prefer other metaphors for God than that of the father). For many years, I had a very twisted idea of what had actually happened between my mom and my dad, and even now, even now, I’m not sure that it’s all settled inside me. The one thing that has become clear is that blame is pointless and that it takes two to make or break a relationship. My parents subsequently remarried, leaving me with steps (and later ex-steps, since they both eventually divorced their second spouses as well) that could be the topic of many more strange and awful posts of the future – unlikely that I will write about them, actually.

Between the divorce and my parents’ other issues, I began to feel that no matter how good I was or how smart I was or how well I did anything, that I would never be good enough – not good enough for anyone to truly care about me or love me, not good enough for God, not good enough for myself. I became at once tremendously insecure and extremely critical of others, holding them up as well to the impossible standards that I had internalized.

My orientation is still critical, and one of the things I’m always working on is to become more patient, welcoming, compassionate and forgiving of myself and others. That I am intelligent only makes this more difficult because I more easily slip into a perspective in which I feel I’m surrounded by idiots. Then I have to remember that I’m an idiot too and that there are many kinds of intelligence. To the extent that I accept myself I am able to accept others. It is surprising how long it took for me to reach what seems like a simple piece of wisdom.

My concern with contextual ethics – that all sides of a situation be voiced, and as many perspectives as possible explored before making judgment – stems from this stormy time. My lifelong insecurity and the nervous laughter that still infects me from time to time also dates from this period. I am thankful that I have finally understood some of the dynamics, but I also have many regrets, including the gap that was never entirely healed between my father and myself. He died in December 2003 and although I sought his love and acceptance all my life, I never really acknowledged the ways in which I continued to keep him distant until he was gone.

The divorce changed everything, everything. I think it has a lot to do with why I was a “serial monogamist” for so long, and with why I was in my 30’s before I was able to have a healthy loving relationship in which I felt confident and secure. My terror of abandonment, my feeling of being unlovable and my inability to allow love had complicated things for a long time.

I understand that some marriages are very destructive, but I also understand how profoundly divorce affects kids. I also understand how difficult it is to be all alone in raising a child or children – this very difficulty may well have influenced my mother’s choice for our stepfather.

Now, a mom myself, I look at our son and I can finally understand how wrong I was about myself when I was young. Ben has taught me more than any study or introspection or analysis.

In my imagination, I travel back to that little girl, hug her tight, and tell her it is going to be all right… and it is.