The holiday season is here. I am blessed with living parents, happiness and health under my own roof. Tonight I will fry potato pancakes, we will light candles, and usher in the 5th night of Hanukkah. My son will open a small present that may or may not disappoint him; Chanukah, after all, is not the Christmas blow-out. Even so, I try to get him stuff he likes.
I remember with too much clarity my childhood disappointment opening presents containing things I didn’t really like or want. I was told I wasn’t grateful, that I was selfish for wanting things other than what I received. I think I was merely disappointed and unknown by my parents; not cardinal sins, not enough to turn into a searing memoir a la David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs. Just the small, everyday failures of people who tried their very best and didn’t know what it took to parent me any differently.
They took me on family vacations, helped me pay for college, bought me my first car, moved to a safe and secure suburb, allowed me access to friends and activities, encouraged me to learn, dragged me through ballet and tap and piano lessons until the neighbors could hear my teeth gnashing to stop. This is exactly what good parents do, and my folks did it in spades. Home-cooked meals, shopping each fall for new school clothes and supplies, care packages at summer camp, holiday celebrations with friends and family. They allowed me to paint my room purple, and put up wallpaper on one wall that had huge pink and purple and white flowers that glowed in black light; my mother helped my aunt put up the paper which, if they were better parents, perhaps they would have prohibited me from choosing. They allowed me to get the puppy I begged and begged and begged for. And then my mother took care of the dog after my brother and I left for college.
The foundation they provided for me is substantial, solid, and unwavering.
Tell that to my psyche. The narrative I more frequently tell myself goes something like this:
They tried and tried and tried, and mostly they got it wrong. My mother bought me shirts with unicorns on them long after an adolescent would wear such a thing; dickies to wear under sweaters (and if you don’t know what a dickie is, thank your lucky stars – I’m pretty sure no one makes them any more); button-down blouses with peter-pan or scalloped collars. Yes, these are the crimes for which I hold my parents accountable: you bought me stuff I hated, wanted to dress me in clothes I wanted to rip off of me before I even saw my image in the mirror, didn’t seem to know that I was the one who wanted to look, feel, dress … differently.
I’m not alone in experiencing an endless array of parental wrongs. Most people I know spend a good deal of time coming to terms with their parents’ failings. In our current age, with step parents and live-in partners, children are exposed to the failings of numerous grown-ups. Maybe it makes for better conversation to discuss parental failures; maybe only when we have experienced a bedrock of parental nurturance and love do we have the freedom to focus on the minutiae of the moments when their love fell short.
I came across a quote the other day, giving voice to exactly this paradox. The character is a 61-year-old decent man, flawed no doubt, but overall a decent guy. Flawed as a worker, flawed as a husband (his wife is having an affair with an old colleague of his, which makes us assume he’s flawed as a husband, yet what about her flaws as a wife since she’s the one breaking the vow?), flawed as a father to a divorced daughter on the verge of remarrying a man who seems all wrong and a closeted gay son who doesn’t know his father has known forever that he is gay and is just waiting for the son to begin the conversation. This guy is no more flawed or limited than many; he makes an effort to bond with his son, offers up a conciliatory statement, and is met with his son’s face closing:
“It was true. There really was no limit to the ways in which you could say the wrong thing to your children. You offered an olive branch and it was the wrong olive branch at the wrong time.”
– Mark Haddon (2007), A Spot of Bother
As I peruse the memories of childhood, I can almost see my younger self, my face closed to the olive branches my parents offered. As I watch my son open his presents, I wonder how much longer his face will remain open to me, and flinch remembering the times when I get it so obviously wrong that he has no other choice than to close temporarily and ward off my failure.
May I find the way to keep my face open, find and accept any gosh-darned olive branch someone offers. Because the narrative of endless attempts to get it right is so much more sustaining than the litany of moments of getting it wrong.
Thank you, Mom and Dad, for all you offered, and the ways it is intricately woven into who I am today. May your holidays be blessed with light and love; may all our candles shine on open faces.
very powerful. xoxo kathy
This is a great post and I’m glad I read it just before Christmas. It made me give a little prayer of thanks to everything my parents and grandparents did ( and still do) for me.