Daddy and Mamma married barefoot in the living room.
Mamma was beautiful, Daddy was stoned.
Daddy didn't know too much about making money
So he learned how to beat the casinos.
That worked for a while.
Then, when he became too much to bare, (I was eight years old), Mamma dreamed of another life.
She left Daddy.
Daddy begged me to move West with him.
When I close my eyes and remember my childhood -
I can hear the *bing bing bing* of the casino
I can smell the recirculated air.
I can feel the heavy bucket in my hand
Maybe my stomach turns - remembering those long drives cross-country in a UHAUL. Vegas, Back East, Reno, Back East. I used to get car sick.
Apartment living. Five schools by the Sixth grade. New friends. Dirty Dresses. I never could fit in.
My Best friend was the original Nintendo. By 7 years old, I had beat Super Mario Brothers forward and backwards. No one to play with.
Once, I invited all the neighborhood kids into the house and they stole all of Daddy's $2. bills. I told them where to find them. I was tired of being alone.
We just moved. again.
Then, Poverty.
When Daddy couldn't afford an apartment anymore, he lived in the casinos.
And, I lived with any kind hearted friends willing to take care of me.
Fortunately for me, I learned Korean. And, Russian.
As an adult, Daddy was mad.
He was Mad at Mamma. Mad at his parents. Mad that I went to a "Liberal" University. Mad I moved to Italy. Mad that I had a Baby. Mad that I wasn't Jewish. Mad that I didn't respect him, didn't need him, didn't love him. ENOUGH. Mad. No. Matter. What. I. Did.
He still didn't have a job. Didn't have anyone to love. Poor Health. Aggressive.
But, he put all of his money into beating the casinos. And now, the Stock Market.
He hit on all of my friends. Asked them to come to the casino with them.
He hired a 29 year old Russian prostitute, to be his girlfriend.
He pushed everyone in his life away. He claimed he found God, but I didn't believe him.
When my baby grew up, Daddy tried to control her, like he controlled me as a child. I did everything I could to protect her.
Daddy sued me.
He told the court that he had a right to spend as much time as he wanted with his blood grandchild.
They threw Daddy out of the courtroom.
I almost lost my house to Lawyers fees.
I haven't spoken to my Father in a year.
He spends all of his time telling everyone who will listen how much he is mad at me.
Someone told me the other day:
"You will be sorry when he dies."
______________________________________________
That might be true. From where I stand, I cannot tell you what I will feel when that day comes.
But, I tend to think I will feel relief.
I have been grieving the slow and inevitable death of my Father for years. I am bereft of a Father.
There is a gaping whole in my heart where there should be: a hug, and advice. Words of endearment. Wiping tears from my cheeks. Encouragement. Helping me move into my new house. Guidance. A dance at my wedding. Rocking my baby on his knee. .. Loving me. A Father's love.
When he dies, his suffering will end.
I will never have the Father I have been longing for my entire life.
But God grant him peace and an end to his suffering.
Yes, at my Father's funeral I will rejoice.
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationships. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
And Then There Were Five
A lot has happened in our little family over the last year. God is really working out the identity of who we are, and who we are to be to fully tell His story.
On Good Friday (after a period of fasting, and repentance) on a hunch, I took a pregnancy test. We were shocked and in awe that it was positive. I spent the better part of the first trimester in disbelief, and now it is becoming real to me. In December, we will be a family of five. God providing, God willing.
Our lives are a story. The story begins the very moment we are conceived and God begins knitting us together perfectly in our Mother's womb. We draw breath, and then that story continues until our last breath. The bookends of our lives here on earth contain so much possibility - the is, the was, and the everything.
I am in awe that everything my little child is to become, he already is. I stand in wonder that his gender, his identity, his DNA, his features, gifts, abilities, talents, fears, and the arc of his entire life all are already defined. He will have choices... many... but who he was always meant to be, he is.
Now, 11 months after the beginning of what I so affectionately coined "The Chaos Period" the dust has begun to settle. I am learning to love my Husband as a part of myself. Learning to lean on him as the head of our family, and allowing our unit to settle into our rightful places. We are all learning to be a part of something greater than us. It isn't always graceful. There are tears, and tempers, and resistance and grit as we figure out where we fit in, and in some cases, unlearn what we thought we were wired for.
I mess up. A lot. My expectations are high, and my energy levels are low, and that doesn't always give me the tools to be gracious, as we work vehemently to keep the day fitted around our too tight schedules, while we manage our children, their interactions, their relationships, and our own.
But we are here. By God's Grace. And I have to remind myself often that we are not just managing the logistics and operations of little lives, but we are raising human beings, who are also in God's image. Since the moment Phil and I became Phil and I, we knew that we wanted to try for a large family. We trusted God to lead us, and we have to remind ourselves daily to continue to trust in Him to lead us, and provide for us, and call us to actively unfold the story of who we are.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
The Love Triangle
Last night I received an unwelcome email. In a moment of pain and desperation, the sender blindly reached out to me for (hopefully) some concrete answers as an objective outsider in their rather tumultuous relationship. The email was relatively brief, but chock full of dirty little secrets. There was no disclaimer. There was no gentle approach, and certainly no soothing invitation for me to come in. With one click of my little finger, I was force fed an entire meal of discontent. I was quickly stripped of the freedom to choose whether or not to be involved in this dark little web of lies. I couldn't have stopped it if I tried.
Reading the note was a mixed bag. I felt confusion, no longer sure what to believe, as appearances collapsed into lies. I felt guilt for now being privy to all of these awful things, without anyone else's knowledge or invitation. I felt angry that the writer of this email would be so selfish in unloading these intimate details onto a stranger like me, who happened to be closely connected to the targeted parties of the email. But mostly, I felt empathy. I connected instantly to her confusion and frustration. In an ugly, but painfully raw delivery of the truth, one couldn't help but acknowledge the dark and cold place that she was reaching out from. It was just a brief moment that the familiar feeling came over me, and the passing nod of recognition turned my spine cold.
Looking back on the archives of my own love history, I know now that I was lucky. The men that I shared my life with were generally good people. Sure, there were differences (many). And yes, I am confident in all cases, that the eventual parting of ways was the right thing to do. But, to my knowledge, no one ever vindictively set out to hurt me, or set me up. If anything, we loved too deeply, mostly quickly, and had an intense inability to let go, when it was clear that things were not lining up. The end result of that kind of equation is that many good years passed, and passed, and passed. We had fun, and we learned a lot, a lot, a lot. But, also a great deal was lost in the dwindling investment of time, and feelings, as these sort of love-relationships would never produce any fruit.
And I don't mean this kind of fruit.
It's clear to me now, that choosing a life parter is both equally more and less simple than we make it out to be. On the one hand, the search is an intense overkill. I mean, all we really need is a good person, who can hold a decent conversation, make us laugh once upon a while, and who will tolerate our idiosyncrasies, and sometimes poor behavior. Possibly, someone who shares similar values, and dreams as us, and who is willing to invest the time and where-with-all to go the distance. Believe it or not, there are PLENTY of people in this world who want to both give and receive that. So, partner up, people!
I am reminded of my homecoming to the United States, after living in Italy for several years. A leisurely stroll down the cereal aisle left me spinning into sensory overload. There were so many choices, and so many different categories, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed. Essential Minerals, check. Fiber, check. Low sugar, check. No unnecessary additives, check. What should have been a simple check list left me frozen in a 45 minutes stalemate of indecisiveness. Analysis Paralysis.
On the other hand, I know it is really not that simple. Not, in modern, western culture anyway, where we are always constantly craving MORE. We, as a general people, are mostly sadly unfulfilled in our daily lives. We are relying on the next thing to happen to us, and in our lives, to lock in that forever happiness that will lead us to feeling elated and connected as humans. And when we can't find it, we just fill it up with more stuff. We create this search for that other person who will complete us, like the 2 halves of an enlightened whole. And, in that search, we determine ourselves, to never, ever settle for anything less than completion. And then maybe we do anyway. And, we spend the rest of our miserable, married years, questioning whether or not this is was the right choice, the right person, the right life.
Last nights email was certainly a fresh jolt out of the dreamy wedded bliss set-up, that we convince ourselves only the "real thing" can look and feel like.
We want to have so that we can be. And I know that innate feeling is a complicated puzzle that we set out on solving from the earliest moments of our existence. Loving other humans is so natural, and so complex and it is a long and sometimes convoluted journey to monogamous, and fulfilling partnership, if we ever get there at all.
I don't pretend to have all the answers. I am still on my own personal journey as well. I have had failed relationships, and many losses. I have been on both sides of the love cloud. I have love and lost, and fought and forgiven, and I sit here today, a single 31 year old mother of one, albeit, very, very fulfilled by my life as it is right now.
However, I know this: we are responsible for the quality of our own lives. Moment to moment, micro-second to micro-second, in every moment, the way that we are being will determine the outcome of what we have. Be and then have. And maybe, just maybe the very resolve that has brought me to that truth, will help me let go of any expectations that I have in a life partner, and what that may or may not look like in my life, when that time comes.
I can only hope, that when they do come around, whole person to whole person, that I am humble and grateful, and that I recognize them for all who they are and all who they aren't. And, that we love each other anyway.
Reading the note was a mixed bag. I felt confusion, no longer sure what to believe, as appearances collapsed into lies. I felt guilt for now being privy to all of these awful things, without anyone else's knowledge or invitation. I felt angry that the writer of this email would be so selfish in unloading these intimate details onto a stranger like me, who happened to be closely connected to the targeted parties of the email. But mostly, I felt empathy. I connected instantly to her confusion and frustration. In an ugly, but painfully raw delivery of the truth, one couldn't help but acknowledge the dark and cold place that she was reaching out from. It was just a brief moment that the familiar feeling came over me, and the passing nod of recognition turned my spine cold.
Looking back on the archives of my own love history, I know now that I was lucky. The men that I shared my life with were generally good people. Sure, there were differences (many). And yes, I am confident in all cases, that the eventual parting of ways was the right thing to do. But, to my knowledge, no one ever vindictively set out to hurt me, or set me up. If anything, we loved too deeply, mostly quickly, and had an intense inability to let go, when it was clear that things were not lining up. The end result of that kind of equation is that many good years passed, and passed, and passed. We had fun, and we learned a lot, a lot, a lot. But, also a great deal was lost in the dwindling investment of time, and feelings, as these sort of love-relationships would never produce any fruit.
And I don't mean this kind of fruit.
It's clear to me now, that choosing a life parter is both equally more and less simple than we make it out to be. On the one hand, the search is an intense overkill. I mean, all we really need is a good person, who can hold a decent conversation, make us laugh once upon a while, and who will tolerate our idiosyncrasies, and sometimes poor behavior. Possibly, someone who shares similar values, and dreams as us, and who is willing to invest the time and where-with-all to go the distance. Believe it or not, there are PLENTY of people in this world who want to both give and receive that. So, partner up, people!
I am reminded of my homecoming to the United States, after living in Italy for several years. A leisurely stroll down the cereal aisle left me spinning into sensory overload. There were so many choices, and so many different categories, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed. Essential Minerals, check. Fiber, check. Low sugar, check. No unnecessary additives, check. What should have been a simple check list left me frozen in a 45 minutes stalemate of indecisiveness. Analysis Paralysis.
On the other hand, I know it is really not that simple. Not, in modern, western culture anyway, where we are always constantly craving MORE. We, as a general people, are mostly sadly unfulfilled in our daily lives. We are relying on the next thing to happen to us, and in our lives, to lock in that forever happiness that will lead us to feeling elated and connected as humans. And when we can't find it, we just fill it up with more stuff. We create this search for that other person who will complete us, like the 2 halves of an enlightened whole. And, in that search, we determine ourselves, to never, ever settle for anything less than completion. And then maybe we do anyway. And, we spend the rest of our miserable, married years, questioning whether or not this is was the right choice, the right person, the right life.
Last nights email was certainly a fresh jolt out of the dreamy wedded bliss set-up, that we convince ourselves only the "real thing" can look and feel like.
We want to have so that we can be. And I know that innate feeling is a complicated puzzle that we set out on solving from the earliest moments of our existence. Loving other humans is so natural, and so complex and it is a long and sometimes convoluted journey to monogamous, and fulfilling partnership, if we ever get there at all.
I don't pretend to have all the answers. I am still on my own personal journey as well. I have had failed relationships, and many losses. I have been on both sides of the love cloud. I have love and lost, and fought and forgiven, and I sit here today, a single 31 year old mother of one, albeit, very, very fulfilled by my life as it is right now.
However, I know this: we are responsible for the quality of our own lives. Moment to moment, micro-second to micro-second, in every moment, the way that we are being will determine the outcome of what we have. Be and then have. And maybe, just maybe the very resolve that has brought me to that truth, will help me let go of any expectations that I have in a life partner, and what that may or may not look like in my life, when that time comes.
I can only hope, that when they do come around, whole person to whole person, that I am humble and grateful, and that I recognize them for all who they are and all who they aren't. And, that we love each other anyway.
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