The way I see it, the story is about anger.
My mother and father had a dinner party when I was a preteen. I can’t remember who was over but it was some helpless couple who were having marital problems and the woman was depressed. My mother was also depressed or at least unhappy. She was a lot of things.
Suddenly the house got lively with a lot of yelling and people were leaving. The couple with the depressed woman were in their car and my father was standing by the passenger door telling her that she was going to be ok, she just needed some help.
Then my mother got in her car and started driving down our driveway. I was looking out the window of our house, right down on the driveway. My father was asking my mother not to leave, that they should talk about it. Suddenly, I saw him on top of the hood of the car, riding down the driveway. My father was attempting to get her to stop but my mother hit the accelerator. She stopped long enough for him to get off of the car but then kept going.
I don’t recall when she came back or if my parents spoke to me about it but it was the most egregious display of anger I had ever witnessed.
Or perhaps it is about narcissism. My mother was having an argument with my father about something and was very unhappy. I was perhaps 12–13 years old so I reckon she had already been unhappy for going on 15 years. She needed to have a fight in front of her children, in front of the neighbors, in front of the couple who was visiting and drive away angrily, potentially running over my father and make a massive scene because she has zero self-reflection that this behavior is inappropriate and narcissistic. Then I think a little more about it, and hundreds of instances of my mother being a narcissist come flooding back, enough to keep me in therapy for an eternity, enough to give me topics to write a book about, enough to bore the shit out my friends for years.
It might in part be about two people who met when they were young and stupid. My mother was so beautiful and helpless and my father, nine years older, was single and thought, she’s an ok catch. They got married, my mother got pregnant right away, they had no money and life was hard. Then it occurred to my father that marrying my mother hadn’t been a good idea and he was regretful. She resented him. They continued on with their first born. Moved across Canada for work and had their second, moved to US for another job and had their third. This charade lasted 27 years. I’m calling it stupidity and lack of experience and horrendous lack of self-reflection.
It might, too, be about fate. Two people against all the odds get together and work out their karma from their already sad lives and bring 3 more people into the world. I wouldn’t be here, my children wouldn’t be here. Same for my siblings and their kids. I wouldn’t be related to a bunch of really great cousins. I wouldn’t be from Canada and Germany and have a unique voice. There are even more stories from my ancestors than there are from my parents. Endless challenging relationships which flavor life and our world.
Inevitably, though, as I set out to tell what happened, the telling is also about this author’s voice and setting it free. Silence has not served me. Being meek and conciliatory have not served me either. Waiting for the memories to become so old that they no longer matter is stifling me. Life is about being open and honest. Transparent. I don’t have to see my mother if I don’t want to. She sucks the life out of me.
