My Mom is nice.
My Mom is unbelievably nice.
My Mom is pathologically nice.
In other words, my Mom tends towards co-dependency. I've had a hard time figuring out why. My Dad wasn't a drinker. Like any blue collar man of his era he enjoyed it. A night at the local Legion, or a house party with friends, was the safe space for men of his generation to talk about themselves and their feelings. But, he escaped the genetic disposition for a real practice of boozing. Basically, my Pops was a flyweight. From what I understand of co-dependency my Mom should have married to a serious drinker, a real bottle of scotch a day alcoholic.
Was she just lucky? Was I?
Not surprisingly, the answer is more complicated than Dr. Drew, Dr. Phil and the other t.v. doctors made me believe. My Mom is one of the many results of WWII.
No, seriously.
I don't think my Grampa was a real drinker either. He drank a bit when he was younger, but that is hardly evidence. Like so many men the war changed him. We went from small town British Columbia to big cities and front lines. He was one of the men who moved from heavy artillery to a place in the lead boats as the Allies stormed Normandy. Without being wounded in battle he was thoroughly scarred.
My Mom says he never talked about the war growing up. It is the job of parents to shield their children after all. But, when enough time passed he told us grandkids. We were privy to stories, now glorified, about the war. They were less gory and heartbreaking and more glorious--less Kubrik and more Hemingway. As a child, I was enthralled by his stories of close calls and motorcycle escapes. I marveled at scenes of death, implied to my childish imagination, never fully disclosed.
As an adult I began to understand. I don't mean an adult in the legal or biological sense. I mean a fully realized man who embraces, accepts and works on their flaws instead of hiding and denying their truth. I pieced together my Grampa's story. The war turned him, and a generation of men and women, into a mirror addict. Too many from his generation had signs and symptoms of the disease.It was a too real reflection of their experiences. Those, like my Gramps, without the genetic burden for alcoholism slowed. They returned, more or less, to the persons they were before.
Time may not heal, but it does provide distance from those emotional and physical scars. Time short-circuits the need to numb emotions with booze for those able to put the war behind them.
My Grampa's story, of course, is also my Mom's story. As the oldest daughter she became parentalized after the war. She had to take care of siblings and her parents more than was healthy. This isn't a story of blame. I only seek understanding and a realization of self.
My Mom's story is my own. I let myself be manipulated for a disproportionate amount of praise. I go out of my way for friends, or colleagues, in an attempt to overcome the feeling I'm not enough. I find too much self worth in others. I wasn't parentalized, like my Mom, but the war resounds in my story too. As my children grow, I'll keep looking in and back to clarify and understand my world.
I hope the echo dies with me.
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