Pamela's Blog 4

Published on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Is It Never Too Late to Be the Parent I Should Have Been?”

by Pamela Satterwhite

Be thirsty heart,
Seek forever without a rest.
Let this soundless longing
Hidden deep inside you
be the source
Of every word you say.
(Rumi)

...Philomene...seemed pleased to learn that she was finally to be married...[Her father] Maheu exchanged glances with his wife. Had she really consented? He grew quiet and smoked in silence. He too was caught up in the fear of tomorrow, and he brooded about the ingratitude of these children who got married, one after the other, and left their parents in wretched poverty. * (Emile Zola, Germinal)

I’ve been so angry at my son recently, and as is true with most cases of anger at a loved one, I’m really angry at myself. And what’s true about anger at oneself is that it’s really misplaced anger at a system set up for the few instead of the many.

I said to my son, “You’re so hard, so autocratic…” And he is, and I hate it.
But he replied, “I got it from you.”

And I realized that that’s what angers me most. He’s mirroring what I was when I raised him as a single parent, when I rushed him around and demanded that he fit in smoothly with my tightly-packed schedule, my just-in-time planning for survival, when I rationalized all the rush with the then incontrovertible truth that “work” demanded it, that because I “paid the bills” my schedule, my ‘need’ for a ‘plan’ that unfolded smoothly – no kinks, no unexpected tangles, no unruly human needs – mattered more than he did.

And now I’m getting it back. And I hate it.

Now that I don’t work for this system anymore, now that I’ve slowed down, now that I have different priorities, reconceived allegiances, I’m paying the price for my complicity with a system that uses us up like toilet paper.

My son’s the one slaving away now, rushing around with his just-in-time schedule, treating me like a brown smear on his shoe if I make his time lag for a second or two, as if that wage-slave matters more than I do.

And in that moment, when he’s succumbed to the Rush Demon, it does.

When he shows me what I was, what he is now, I just hate it – I feel my anger rise and my furies fly, and despair cry, “what to do?”

I absolutely despise what this sick system does to us all, how it pits us against each other, and causes so much stress in relationships that should be inviolate: our relationships with the ancestors, the earth, and each other.

George Eliot once said that, “it’s never too late to be the person you should have been.” That line has almost been my motto in life. I’ve taken it to heart and reminded myself of the truth of it over and over when people and institutions tell you the exact opposite.

Can we heal our relationships?

An old friend just told me that the word for “healing” in Gaelic also means “whole.” So the question restated is: can we be whole again?

I say we have a requirement as living things to demand it – to refuse to settle for anything less than ‘all.’

* 03.19.10 Addendum:

Making healthy, clean relationships with our loved ones...

...cannot be done...

...no matter how much we want them....

We have to change the system.

I think this mission's been calling me...
...a thickness swallowing me...

...from the moment I first breathed....

...Ruthless in its demands...

...I never could and never would withstand them...

...even if it made me unfit...

...to be a good parent.

But I do believe without doubt...

... this system must be called to account...

...for causing the divisions between us....

...requiring a mass movement to free us....

...So, to you reading this...

...if you feel the "restless responsibility" too...

...I hope you'll 'work' to make something NEW.

http://www.nas2endwork.org

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Pamela's Blog 4

Published on Wednesday, May 6, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“Is It Never Too Late to Be the Parent I Should Have Been?”