wordsworth

It is a little noisy here right now; Dad’s watching TV, and Mom is on speaker phone.

One of the things I do around here to keep … it’s too loud … I’ll write more later.

This is a busy place around here.

Trevor is standing three feet from the wide-screen chewing on one of Mom’s walking canes. Cute.

Anyway, Helen and I talked tonight in the parking lot of the Unitarian Church after the 6 o’clock meeting. I was feeling sick, sunken, tired, and wanted to leave or sit down. But I pushed myself and pulled at whatever she might have that would help me. She said, “It sucks standing in the hall.” She explained that standing in the hall, seeing all the doors, watching them open and close, but not knowing what is beyond them, not knowing which one to enter – sucks. And she’s right. I don’t know whether to wait for you two, or move on, and it sucks. When I told her that I’d enrolled in a batterer’s intervention program, she gave me a little homework assignment. She asked me to do a fourth step on anger – or put another way – she asked me to ask myself why I get angry. Everybody’s asked me the same damn thing, and I told her so, and I told her the question wasn’t good enough, wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t pointed enough – I told her that I needed another quesion because my answer to that question hasn’t helped me. Then my thoughts jumped back to that night and the drive home from dinner. In my mind I could see the Honda crossing beneath the traffic signal of Lakemont and Glenridge. And I said to Helen,”My father refused to let my mother work in the office! And he fired me!” That’s not what I wanted for us; the opposite is what I wanted for us; a never ending group hug is what I wanted for us; doing and being everything together is what I wanted … even before there was an us … when the us was me and my mom and my dad. “But that’s too ‘controlling’. To want to have a family business is too controlling. To want to homeschool my daughter is too controlling.” Helen said I was being too hard on myself. I told her she was a regular nun. “Fuck no,” she said, “Would a nun use language like that?” Even nuns have their moments I told her. “Student counselor, military officer, AA regular – you’re a nun!”

Once upon a time I lived in a little house, no bigger than the one we shared. It was on a two lane street – though there’re few who’d remember that today, or how long it took for the work to finish making that two lane street as broad as it is today. Twenty nine thirteen Corrine Drive. Three steps lead down from the kitchen to the office where my Dad was a “Good Neighbor” to the whole wide world. That was his job being a “Good Neighbor” to everyone in the whole wide world. I would remind myself of that, crawling down those three steps, everytime I went looking for the little musical car that sat in the front window of the good neighbor’s office. With every turn of its old-fashioned crank starter, that musical car would play the tune I love to hear “Like a good neighbor, my Dad is there.”

You, Jen, are the manager your mother wanted your dad to be. Ever think of that? When I see my own history, and discover ways it may motivate me, and when I care to empathize with you and what you do, I can imagine that you, like me, do what you do, not to sabotage me or yourself, but to fulfill what you imagine will give you the marriage your parents had when you were young and desperately in love with them; I can imagine that you, like me, remember the fights they had, the exact words they used, and precisely how each described what they thought would fix the love you felt had been broken. “You should have been a manager, Art!”

Tomorrow I hope to get up early and go to the Wetland Park.