It’s hard to dance
With the devil on your back
(“Lord of the Dance,” trad.)
- Easter Monday, April Fools’ Day.
We got back from Sophie’s late last night and I’m still frustrated about our time there.
I brought a copy of the last letter that I wrote to Jean for Sophie to read. I wanted to speak to her of what happened. I’d finally found the courage to break the silence around Claire’s death and ask about some of the details – to try and see those days from an adult perspective, as the adult I am today, through the adult eyes that Sophie had then.
It was difficult to find the right time to bring up the subject. When I mentioned to Sophie that I wanted to talk to her sometime over the weekend of those times, she brushed it away saying that she didn’t remember much. All weekend she seemed agitated, like there wasn’t enough small talk to fill all the quiet moments that I might have taken to approach the subject with her. On Saturday afternoon Danny made plans to meet with an old friend in the city and I thought that this would be the time for Sophie and I to talk. I took Jean’s letter with me to the kitchen, the same kitchen where Sophie sat pulling the napkins apart as mom took us from her so long ago.
I told her that I’d been continuing with my writing, that the last letter I’d written dealt with the time right after Claire’s death until when she, Sophie, came to be with me later that summer. She stood up suddenly and started cleaning the lunch dishes from the table. I asked if she remembered those days and I told her how much her presence had meant to me then. She filled the sink with hot soapy water.
I said how I wished that we had been able to talk about what happened, among ourselves. She mumbled reassuring comments into the sink: “Yes, it was a difficult time,” “You were such a sensitive child,” “Bill was so upset,” – as she rinsed the dishes. I got up and took a tea towel to dry them but she shooed me away saying that I should just relax, that there was no need. I had the feeling that she wanted me to stand away from her.
I left the copy of the letter in a folder on the table, beside the stack of weekend newspapers. I told her that I’d be happy if she would read it sometime. It lay there undisturbed until we left on Sunday afternoon.
And the silence in my “family” lives on, reinforced by time and distance, powerful in its ability to keep us isolated from any healing that we might offer each other.
On the Friday afternoon, I went to a church in Sophie’s neighbourhood; a modern building with white stucco walls between dark wooden beams stretching like giant fingers to the high peaked roof. They read the story of Jesus’s last day as he appeared before the authorities who were to condemn him. And I was struck again by the evil power of silence, turning this gentle preacher and prophet into an almost willing accomplice to his own destruction.
I was so disturbed by the story, heard now in the fresh light of recent events and my examination of unnecessary deaths. Jesus was a profound teacher whose words have had the power to survive and come down to us through thousands of years. He was the child who held wise men and teachers enthralled with his arguments when he was twelve years old. Why would such a man remain silent in the face of his own demise? What could have been his intention? I wanted to slap him and yell: “Speak up! Speak up for yourself, but also for the weak, the lonely, the lost, the abused, for those who can’t speak for themselves.”
But the story never changes; he remains mute and submissive before the authorities and dies…for what purpose?
The main reason why I wanted to speak with Sophie about Claire’s death is that I’m at a point in the writing process where my curiosity and sense of self lead me to ask about certain missed details. It’s become a research question, a writer’s curiosity, wanting to fill in the blanks of what I may have missed in the narrative.
Yet there are other areas of my life that I prefer to leave in silence. Those darkest corners, the ones where my mother’s madness lurks, where her indifference and selfishness abide, I feel are better left undisturbed. Now that I’ve opened the door to my childhood and have worked so hard to clear out some of the garbage that I’ve been lugging around, I’m too exhausted to deal with that last trunk of destructive junk that sits in the attic of my psyche.
Every time I try to look at my feelings about her I can’t get past the list of hurtful things that she did to me. The academic in me wants to list what my mother did and put all these events into categories: insults, physical abuses, indifferences, pettiness, acts of omission, acts of pure evil.
And I can’t seem to get beyond rearranging them. I don’t know how to separate them from each other. I have a feeling that if I were to take out a single scene, to examine it in the process of doing away with it, it would latch on to all the other scenes and drag them all out of the memory trunk too, leaving me surrounded by an ocean of writhing bits of pain that would be impossible for me to deal with. I prefer to leave the trunk in its darkened corner, sealed and hidden.
In writing this, I understand that the frustration that I brought home from our visit with Sophie is probably tied to the anger that I have in realizing that despite all the emotional excavation that I’ve done over the past few months, despite all the things that I’ve acknowledged and accepted about me and my life, that these things are not quite enough.
But damn it, it’s going to have to be enough because I’m too tired to go on digging. I have no more energy to deal with someone who means nothing to my present life. I’m going to leave my mother and all she has meant to me locked far away, in that emotional trunk and someday, maybe, I’ll take her down to the curb to be put out with the rest of the garbage.
(“Lord of the Dance,” trad.)
- Easter Monday, April Fools’ Day.
We got back from Sophie’s late last night and I’m still frustrated about our time there.
I brought a copy of the last letter that I wrote to Jean for Sophie to read. I wanted to speak to her of what happened. I’d finally found the courage to break the silence around Claire’s death and ask about some of the details – to try and see those days from an adult perspective, as the adult I am today, through the adult eyes that Sophie had then.
It was difficult to find the right time to bring up the subject. When I mentioned to Sophie that I wanted to talk to her sometime over the weekend of those times, she brushed it away saying that she didn’t remember much. All weekend she seemed agitated, like there wasn’t enough small talk to fill all the quiet moments that I might have taken to approach the subject with her. On Saturday afternoon Danny made plans to meet with an old friend in the city and I thought that this would be the time for Sophie and I to talk. I took Jean’s letter with me to the kitchen, the same kitchen where Sophie sat pulling the napkins apart as mom took us from her so long ago.
I told her that I’d been continuing with my writing, that the last letter I’d written dealt with the time right after Claire’s death until when she, Sophie, came to be with me later that summer. She stood up suddenly and started cleaning the lunch dishes from the table. I asked if she remembered those days and I told her how much her presence had meant to me then. She filled the sink with hot soapy water.
I said how I wished that we had been able to talk about what happened, among ourselves. She mumbled reassuring comments into the sink: “Yes, it was a difficult time,” “You were such a sensitive child,” “Bill was so upset,” – as she rinsed the dishes. I got up and took a tea towel to dry them but she shooed me away saying that I should just relax, that there was no need. I had the feeling that she wanted me to stand away from her.
I left the copy of the letter in a folder on the table, beside the stack of weekend newspapers. I told her that I’d be happy if she would read it sometime. It lay there undisturbed until we left on Sunday afternoon.
And the silence in my “family” lives on, reinforced by time and distance, powerful in its ability to keep us isolated from any healing that we might offer each other.
On the Friday afternoon, I went to a church in Sophie’s neighbourhood; a modern building with white stucco walls between dark wooden beams stretching like giant fingers to the high peaked roof. They read the story of Jesus’s last day as he appeared before the authorities who were to condemn him. And I was struck again by the evil power of silence, turning this gentle preacher and prophet into an almost willing accomplice to his own destruction.
I was so disturbed by the story, heard now in the fresh light of recent events and my examination of unnecessary deaths. Jesus was a profound teacher whose words have had the power to survive and come down to us through thousands of years. He was the child who held wise men and teachers enthralled with his arguments when he was twelve years old. Why would such a man remain silent in the face of his own demise? What could have been his intention? I wanted to slap him and yell: “Speak up! Speak up for yourself, but also for the weak, the lonely, the lost, the abused, for those who can’t speak for themselves.”
But the story never changes; he remains mute and submissive before the authorities and dies…for what purpose?
The main reason why I wanted to speak with Sophie about Claire’s death is that I’m at a point in the writing process where my curiosity and sense of self lead me to ask about certain missed details. It’s become a research question, a writer’s curiosity, wanting to fill in the blanks of what I may have missed in the narrative.
Yet there are other areas of my life that I prefer to leave in silence. Those darkest corners, the ones where my mother’s madness lurks, where her indifference and selfishness abide, I feel are better left undisturbed. Now that I’ve opened the door to my childhood and have worked so hard to clear out some of the garbage that I’ve been lugging around, I’m too exhausted to deal with that last trunk of destructive junk that sits in the attic of my psyche.
Every time I try to look at my feelings about her I can’t get past the list of hurtful things that she did to me. The academic in me wants to list what my mother did and put all these events into categories: insults, physical abuses, indifferences, pettiness, acts of omission, acts of pure evil.
And I can’t seem to get beyond rearranging them. I don’t know how to separate them from each other. I have a feeling that if I were to take out a single scene, to examine it in the process of doing away with it, it would latch on to all the other scenes and drag them all out of the memory trunk too, leaving me surrounded by an ocean of writhing bits of pain that would be impossible for me to deal with. I prefer to leave the trunk in its darkened corner, sealed and hidden.
In writing this, I understand that the frustration that I brought home from our visit with Sophie is probably tied to the anger that I have in realizing that despite all the emotional excavation that I’ve done over the past few months, despite all the things that I’ve acknowledged and accepted about me and my life, that these things are not quite enough.
But damn it, it’s going to have to be enough because I’m too tired to go on digging. I have no more energy to deal with someone who means nothing to my present life. I’m going to leave my mother and all she has meant to me locked far away, in that emotional trunk and someday, maybe, I’ll take her down to the curb to be put out with the rest of the garbage.
Copyright 2003
