9:16 a.m. - 2005-05-13
Falling From Grace Rant
So ... back to the wading pool. I can smell the plastic from here & see the small bits of grass floating on the surface of the never warm enough water. I am in a dorky one piece, no doubt. I have long braids & short bangs (early Pippi Longstocking, except that she was brave, proudly dirt-smudged and adventurous). I was shy, kinda clingy and often dozed off to sleep thinking about what I would take out of the house with me should I suddenly be awakened by a fire. Bingo, my ice blue parakeet, easily made the A list. But after him, prioritizing got trickier. Photographs were important to me even then. I always seemed to have a sense of time passing much like an elderly person. Whereas most kids wore those geeky pins that come on birthday cards boasting, "Today I am six", I cried on the evening before my sixth birthday. Although I had lots of stuffed animals & dolls, what do you think I pushed in my toy stroller? A 5 by 7 of me as a baby. Pathetic or a neophyte narcissist, you be the judge. I believe it is because, even at five, I got the 'subtext' message, "do not grow up". Stay dependent. Need us, pleae, and that will give us a reason to live, a life purpose. And, being sensitive & compliant, responding to even the successive approximation of guilt, I complied. Selling my baby soul, as it were, for the amazing love & security that I indeed received. My parents have always been there for me. Throughout my many mistakes and four divorces. Looking back, however, I think I was never really able to bond with a man because it somehow felt like a betrayal to my parents. Not to mention, how could I ever find the equivalent of their love? That self-sacrificing, complete focus on me. That is what I came to expect from a man. Only, I was the one who would sacrifice anything for his complete emotional focus and loyalty to me. "Wanted, man with no life and willing to recognize me as the center of his universe. Capable, responsible, self reliant men need not apply". My father would call whichever beau du jour my 'dependent' and remind me to add him to my tax return. But, if the whole process were to be accurately discerned ... I was the dependent. Dependent upon his constant reassurance of my desirability and intrinsic worth. And that is how the fall from grace occurred. Slowly. Patiently. Insidiously. I first married at eighteen. I didn't want to be married. I slept in a turquoise room cluthing a Pepto Bismal colored teddy bear until my wedding night. The way it all happened is starling to me now. There was this guy who worked at the MacDonald's that had just opened by my high school. I noticed that he liked me. I would be in line & he would switch lines to wait on me. I was kind of avoiding him. Then my eighteenth birthday was approaching and all my girlfriends had boyfriends & were unavailable to celebrate with me. So, I remembered the guy at MacDonald's, stopped by & asked him if he would like to take me out for my birthday. We went to Pacific Ocean Park. At the top of the Octopus Ride, he asked me if I was Catholic. Two months later, we were having a picnic at Brand Park and he produced an engagement ring from thin air (the last thing in the world I expected - marriage was no way on my mind) and proposed. Having been taught that the worst thing I could ever do in life is hurt someone (little did my parents know that the trait that had been cultivated to insure their always being needed would transfer to a 21 year old boy), I didn't know what to say and so I said what he wanted me to say, which was "yes". My parents were devastated. They tried everything to stop the marriage (little did they know that I was secretly on their side). They finally said that if we went to a priest & he said okay, they would give their blessing. I was sure this was my out. What priest in his right mind would approve this obviously immature union? Well, we got the one who did & the die was hopelessly cast. Their next move was to offer to give us a wedding if we would wait six months. I was hoping that, given that extra time, something would shake that would call this whole horrible nightmare off. They promised not to harass me, but to let me date Fred. Then one night I came home from a date to find my mother hurling Christmas tree ornaments against the walls and crying hysterically. My father was screaming that the vein in her head was popping & that if anything happened to her, he would kill Fred. My sane and wonderful parents. Home suddenly became scarier than the thought of promising forever. What did forever mean to an eighteen year old anyway. So we moved up the date. Less than six months from that fateful ride on the Octopus, we sullenly married on a Friday night in our Catholic church. The course of the rest of my life was set to try to undo what was done. To right the ship. To rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. And that, my friends, is how one falls from grace. More to follow.
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