Remembering my 23rd Spring season....

My father had a massive stroke in the Spring of my 23rd year and died later that season. He was almost 71. I didn't really know him at all. We never really talked about anything. Rather, in my experience he talked, I was supposed to listen. I avoided him for much of my life because he was prone to extreme moodiness and could be quite violent with my mother (she's another story, though). A traveling salesman gone for most of the week, I remember as a child, my little brother and I would miss him so much during the week, but as soon as he was home we wished he wasn't there. Too much fighting, too much stress.

When he was in a decent mood, life was much better. Still strange, but definitely better. He took us fishing and hunting, to at least one classical music performance, and on lots of long road trips around central Texas. We owned a small piece of land near Marble Falls and spent one entire summer camping on the property as we cleared it using axes and a lawn mower. My parents had a small travel trailer they named "Kopasetic" - it had a bed, a table, stove and refrigerator, all running off butane. They slept in the trailer while David and I slept outdoors. Most days my mother worked on the vegetable garden and cooked for us, while David and I chopped out huge cactus patches, dead trees, and other debris and mowed everything else flat. My father would be on the road during the day, usually returning around dinnertime. We'd eat a good dinner while listening to the butane lamp, then they'd settle in for the night. David and I'd go back outside, build a campfire, and watch the stars, listen to coyotes and the rustling of raccoons and rabbits. Those were really good times; too bad they were so infrequent.

I find it difficult to pull up good memories because of the very thick layer of painful and and fearful memories that are so much more vivid.

Roadblocks, logjams, tangled threads...

I have a million things to say but can't get the thoughts out. I feel like there's a block in my mouth, my throat, or in this case, my fingers - everything wants to come out simultaneously and the channel is just not wide enough, so they're all piling up, pushing on me, on each other. Like a logjam.

Or maybe it's like a huge tangle of thread. All I need to do is find an end to start with, and the rest will start to flow. Now, where's that thread end?

Frustrating.

Forgiving

Oscar Wilde wrote that children love their parents, then they judge them; rarely do they forgive them. I remember my childhood and was mostly unforgiving for so many years. All the pain, the blame, the grief I've carried around for so long, clouding everything in my life, and only recently has it . I've learned that as I come to understand them, and the more I'm willing to hold love in my heart, forgiveness eventually comes. Damn, though - the years pass quickly and forgiveness seems to take so long!

Now that my children are in their twenties I'm facing the other side of the coin - they're judging me. Ouch! Feeling that judgment from the other side is not pleasant. Karmic, maybe. I'm not finished forgiving my parents yet but I have a new appreciation for them and what they went through. The compulsion to understand and forgive is much stronger.

What can I do for my children so that they don't need to spend 40 years holding me responsible for their lives, wanting to hold me accountable for whatever I did, or didn't do? I believe that most kids have issues with their parents - things they blame them for - regardless the circumstances of their upbringing. It's not that I want or need to be blame free, I just don't want to see them suffer with blame and grief as I did. In retrospect it seems like wasted time, although I've learned much in the process.