What Remains?
I remember it clearly. As if it happened yesterday. I was sitting in a Friendly's in my hometown. I was maybe eleven, and I was with my grandparents, who were the most wonderful, kind, loving grandparents anyone could be blessed with. At another table, maybe two rows away, sat a boy, my age, maybe a little younger, face covered in freckles and cowlicks in his hair, and his very stern parents. His mother and father basically berated him the entire meal--not just berated, but abused . . . calling him stupid, useless, pathetic, disgusting. They wished he'd never been born. His "crime," if I remember it, was poor table manners. I felt so powerless. I wanted to call the police. How could these people speak to him that way? His expression was . . . flat, as if he was so used to it, he was like a beaten-down dog.
I looked at my grandmother, and she was clearly saddened. I remember asking her about it and her sort of shrugging that it was one of those horrible things. Some people just should never have children. We drove away after lunch, and I remember thinking I still wanted to call the police. I can remember looking back at that Friendly's and feeling that I had abandoned the boy. But there was no real crime, my grandmother said. It was terrible, she concurred, but the police would do nothing. Words were not a crime. Especially not then.
All these years later, that memory, like thousands and tens of thousands, shapes me. We all carry with us those things that remain: hurts, humilations, shocks, and the angst and pain of existence. The first time you realized people could hate their own child. The first time you saw a dead body. The first time you heard someone you loved had died. The first time you discovered you had been betrayed and the breath got knocked out of you. I remembering volunteer teaching ESL to a large refugee family, and watching one of the men slap his wife across the face so hard her head snapped back . . . because of her lowly status in that culture and his frustration with all they had been through. I remember being there in their house, trying to tend to someone's leg wound so open and infected that I could see bone, but they were too poor to go to the doctor. I was seven months pregnant, they all had T.B. I learned firsthand how being in America wasn't the answer to everything.
The good stuff, too. The first time you held your baby or heard your child's first cry. Your favorite Christmas, your most treasured memories. Your favorite comfort foods. WhenI am sick, I still crave ginger ale--but Canada Dry only because that's what my mother gave me.
The writer takes all that remains and processes it, trying to get at those "firsts," those raw emotions. What remains gets put on a page.
So . . . any memories? Any things that remain that somehow drift through all you write . . . and all you do? All that you are?
I looked at my grandmother, and she was clearly saddened. I remember asking her about it and her sort of shrugging that it was one of those horrible things. Some people just should never have children. We drove away after lunch, and I remember thinking I still wanted to call the police. I can remember looking back at that Friendly's and feeling that I had abandoned the boy. But there was no real crime, my grandmother said. It was terrible, she concurred, but the police would do nothing. Words were not a crime. Especially not then.
All these years later, that memory, like thousands and tens of thousands, shapes me. We all carry with us those things that remain: hurts, humilations, shocks, and the angst and pain of existence. The first time you realized people could hate their own child. The first time you saw a dead body. The first time you heard someone you loved had died. The first time you discovered you had been betrayed and the breath got knocked out of you. I remembering volunteer teaching ESL to a large refugee family, and watching one of the men slap his wife across the face so hard her head snapped back . . . because of her lowly status in that culture and his frustration with all they had been through. I remember being there in their house, trying to tend to someone's leg wound so open and infected that I could see bone, but they were too poor to go to the doctor. I was seven months pregnant, they all had T.B. I learned firsthand how being in America wasn't the answer to everything.
The good stuff, too. The first time you held your baby or heard your child's first cry. Your favorite Christmas, your most treasured memories. Your favorite comfort foods. WhenI am sick, I still crave ginger ale--but Canada Dry only because that's what my mother gave me.
The writer takes all that remains and processes it, trying to get at those "firsts," those raw emotions. What remains gets put on a page.
So . . . any memories? Any things that remain that somehow drift through all you write . . . and all you do? All that you are?
posted by Erica Orloff at 5:45 PM
2 Comments:
Erica -- your post made me very aware of not MY own memories, but the memories that my kids are starting to form now. Like any parent, I get extremely frustrated with them too, esp. with my son who loves to dawdle and smell the roses. I have to remind myself to use extra patience with him and not resort to name-calling or hitting like my mom did to me. He's also a very sensitive five-year old, can't stand to watch violence even in cartoons. Sometimes, it frustrates me that my son doesn't seem to be made of sterner stuff (unlike his 3-year old sister), and it worries me. Sometimes, I try to force the issue, like sitting him down and making him watch "The Incredibles" (FANTASTIC movie, great family togetherness lessons) despite the violence in the movie. It scared the bejesus out of him the first time and no doubt, he'll forever remember watching it with me that first time and being really scared of the big giant robot. But I *want* him to be braver. And yet I love the fact that he's not a violent person.
I'm just dreading the day when he blogs in his MySpace page about the day his mean mother made him watch "The Incredibles" and gave him nightmares to this day. Sigh...
Hi Karm:
I have a 16-year-old. She pretty much could not be more opposite from me. I am constantly saying, "When you're 25 and seeing a therapist about your wacky mother . . . try not to BLAME me for everything." LOL. Yet, she seems to "get" we're different. I think part of the process of parenting is realizing a lot of how they turn out is . . . how they turn out. I.e., they come out of the womb and a large part of them is predetermined--nature AND nurture. My younger daughter is very eccentric and artistic--more like me. My older son is very thoughtful and philosophical. My youngest . . . who knows? He seems very impish.
As for memories . . . I think my own kids will only grasp much later how different their childhood is. I don't think they "get" yet . . . and won't until they make their way more in the narrow-minded world . . . how unusual it is to break bread with people with AIDS or people of other races or sexual orientations on a routine basis, or to hang out with writers and artists, and all different ages. I have friends up into their 80s. They don't "get" when we go into the "'hood" to visit friends how that's probably not most kids from their background's typical experiences . . . how most of us live in a very narrow corridor of life, mixing and mingling with people who look like us, earn the same amount as us, worship like us. But my kids don't . . . and they don't understand yet how that will always be a different way to be, and will color their worldview. For them, it's "normal."
E
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