It is my nemesis, this unwritten book. The wild story that might not sound polished and eloquent. It may upset Catholics and Evangelicals alike. My siblings might think I’m not being fair to my father, or too dramatic and I understand their point of view. My story may upset people who don’t realize the “before” me, and think I’m betraying them because of the truth of my past. I’ve already lost two girlfriends who were with me during those lost years.
They were inseparable girlfriends during one of the hardest parts of my life. Now I was a new person, and wanted to confess to them the junk they didn’t maybe know. I wanted them know. So we had wine and I shared the ugly. But instead of providing the safe landing I had read about in Jesus’ examples, they were judge and jury to reject me. The silly part is I didn’t realize it until years later. Only many years later, after a slow drip of cold shoulders did they tell me “that’s why.”
It’s ok. I can walk away from those women. Though I grieved terribly, they can be counted along with the other religious ones who take it upon themselves to be judges. There will be more.
My complete flip from being self-reliant, perfectionistic, promiscuous girl into a healed and whole, mostly-healthy wife, mother and leader is the very truth that makes me eager to love others no matter where they are along their life’s journey.
Understanding is my superpower.
(Understanding with healthy boundaries.)
It’s all connected to craving the storybook love from my father. Every boy and man who came along in my life was a failed attempt to fill a hole.
We were little girls delighting in the fun parts of life in the Detroit suburbs in the 60’s and 70’s. I see pictures today of mom, dad, the three of us older girls and Dad’s smirky smile. With today’s perspective, as I look at the date long the side of the picture, I calculate what might have been in his head in that picture. Anything after 1966 and I know he was elsewhere in his mind and his heart.
As we grew older Dad was not around much and mostly we were ok with that. It’s a twisted conflict in a little girl’s heart to crave her Dad, but the actual dad experience is… uncertain. We wanted our “Dad” home, but when Dad came home, things often got tense. Dinners were simpler when he wasn’t around. Today as a grown woman I have pondered how mother must have managed her expectations during those years. Was she cooking with the hope that he’d show up…sober? As she prepared creative and colorful meals for a bunch of picky eaters, did she wish she had a loving partner who could pour her wine and laugh with her about the frustrations and joys of their days?
But in fact, mom didn’t know that kind of life as a child either. Her mother didn’t know the love of a husband who took care of her needs. My mother didn’t know her father at all. My grandfather had left the family – and started another – during the global crisis of WWII. Even his second family didn’t seem to enjoy an attentive father. Perhaps men in those days just didn’t have a clue what to do with family.
Both of these men were creative and delightful people. Both driven to producing creative works and having adventurous, extravagant lives. They were social butterflies and dialed-in with the cutting edge trends of business and media. But it seems they both missed the actual point of life entirely. As a parent, our most important role in the world is to send our children off into their adulthoods with the confidence of a father’s unconditional love and solid foundation of their place in the world, in whatever way we’re able. My mother’s first two primary men, her father and her husband, seemingly could not settle their own hearts.
So while my parents had a few good years of making babies and building their American dream, Mom’s life of being a single mom was very familiar territory. The most reliable source of love and support for her was the same as her own mother’s – the Roman Catholic Church.
I love writing the story of my mother’s superpower – a true and loving God. And what a great story it is!
