“Dirt Water, dear. No place is safe for you.” That’s how the adult me was beginning to feel about my past. Mentally, it was like I lived in a bad, old western town named Dirt Water. Who would want to visit let alone live there?
* * * * * * *
One glowing ball of light said to another glowing ball of light, “So, what was your mother doing all this time?”
“She was avoiding me. She felt abandoned when I ran away and seldom spoke to me that summer.”
“What did you do?”
“I was angry with her and had almost no desire to speak with her either.”
“Why did she feel abandoned?”
“Because, she thought I ran out on her like my father did.”
“How did you feel?”
“Like we’d gotten a divorce and were living our lives separately now. Angry and hurt.”
* * * * * * *
Like dancing in a cool, flowing waterfall, the veil of deception gradually washed away from my adult eyes.
My mother. The Parent. All of this work had gradually returned to my mother. The pain I suffered because of my father had hurt no more than what I now dreaded feeling from my mother. Feelings that were better left unfelt.
Were it not for the Gentle Wind, I would hardly bother to touch the past at all. But, the treatment my mother had handed down to me had passed from her mother’s mother and her mother’s mother before that and probably the one before that too. I knew that there was little I could do to break the chain unless I faced it with both eyes open. I would not turn my head and pass it on to my own daughter without a fight. So, I started telling BJ about the intricacy that makes a daughter feel like she’s her mother’s lover whether they had sex or not.
Were it not for the Gentle Wind, I would hardly bother to touch the past at all. But, the treatment my mother had handed down to me had passed from her mother’s mother and her mother’s mother before that and probably the one before that too. I knew that there was little I could do to break the chain unless I faced it with both eyes open. I would not turn my head and pass it on to my own daughter without a fight. So, I started telling BJ about the intricacy that makes a daughter feel like she’s her mother’s lover whether they had sex or not.