Day 360 - Courage to be the Fall Guy
I had an ugly argument with my mom today.
She is a calamitous Jane, always in a lurch, never her own fault, scraping the bottom of the barrel.
She's almost 60 and here we were, yelling at each other on the phone like I was 14 again instead of nearly 40.
She hates rules and damn anyone who tries to tell her "no" when she has the "yes" already fully justified in her own mind. Don't box her in - she'll only unravel with all of the irrationality of a caged creature. There's no reasoning with that.
It's times like this that I wonder if she'll ever have the courage to tell the good of her story, if she'll ever believe it for herself. But then I hear my own story echoing in my head, this story that I've bitterly repeated over and over and over for the past 20 years. And I know...
The apple doesn't fall far to the same bottom of the barrel as the one before it.
Parents are the easy fall guy.
I know because I'm a parent myself and I muck it up on a daily basis.
Like bad muck it up.
Like swap-out-the-M-for-an-F-uck it up.
Yeah, I don't know why my parents moved us around so much. I would say that it was a tad excessive and a bit unstable...but it was also a lot courageous.
They both grew up in very *conservative Mennonite families. My dad started questioning the community beliefs around 15 years of age and he could never just not think. Mom was a closet rebel and she naturally bristles at every boundary.
She is a calamitous Jane, always in a lurch, never her own fault, scraping the bottom of the barrel.
She's almost 60 and here we were, yelling at each other on the phone like I was 14 again instead of nearly 40.
She hates rules and damn anyone who tries to tell her "no" when she has the "yes" already fully justified in her own mind. Don't box her in - she'll only unravel with all of the irrationality of a caged creature. There's no reasoning with that.
It's times like this that I wonder if she'll ever have the courage to tell the good of her story, if she'll ever believe it for herself. But then I hear my own story echoing in my head, this story that I've bitterly repeated over and over and over for the past 20 years. And I know...
The apple doesn't fall far to the same bottom of the barrel as the one before it.
Parents are the easy fall guy.
I know because I'm a parent myself and I muck it up on a daily basis.
Like bad muck it up.
Like swap-out-the-M-for-an-F-uck it up.
Yeah, I don't know why my parents moved us around so much. I would say that it was a tad excessive and a bit unstable...but it was also a lot courageous.
They both grew up in very *conservative Mennonite families. My dad started questioning the community beliefs around 15 years of age and he could never just not think. Mom was a closet rebel and she naturally bristles at every boundary.
While they failed miserably at being lovers, it turned out that she and my dad made the perfect Bonnie and Clyde for getting out of Dodge.
After they were married (at 18 and 21 years old), they ditched church often enough that the elders grew concerned and came to confront their waywardness. Then, when they lost their first baby, some cautioned them that maybe God was lovingly correcting their unfaithfulness.
I was born on a Wednesday, 11 months after Jensen died.
I slept in the cradle that my dad had made for him.
And my parents were excommunicated from the church that spring.
What can I say?
I am a child of woe, born under a cloud of grief.
What can they say?
They were only 20 and 23 years old when I was born.
That's the way it is with parenting, no matter how old you are: you have a child and you realize that you yourself are still a child. You are trapped because you know you can't grow up fast enough to help this child grow up without turning them into a painfully familiar mess.
But that's the courage in it too.
There's no way that my story would ever have included the adventures and wonders of life that I experienced if my parents hadn't left behind the only security and truth they knew.
I'm sorry, Mom, that you and I are still growing up...I do love you...and I need your stories...even if they do seem suspiciously wormy sometimes.
*Our brand of conservative Mennonites is like the Amish except that they have liberties regarding electricity, family photographs, cars, and colorful fabrics. They are pacifists. They don't join the military and they won't take a job as a lawyer or a police officer. Most don't even go to college - too much of the world there. They don't go to public schools either. Instead, many homeschool or go to their church school which is basically a collaborative homeschool. Usually, they garden, farm, learn trades, build houses, have babies, sew their own clothes, and go to church.
After they were married (at 18 and 21 years old), they ditched church often enough that the elders grew concerned and came to confront their waywardness. Then, when they lost their first baby, some cautioned them that maybe God was lovingly correcting their unfaithfulness.
I was born on a Wednesday, 11 months after Jensen died.
I slept in the cradle that my dad had made for him.
And my parents were excommunicated from the church that spring.
What can I say?
I am a child of woe, born under a cloud of grief.
What can they say?
They were only 20 and 23 years old when I was born.
That's the way it is with parenting, no matter how old you are: you have a child and you realize that you yourself are still a child. You are trapped because you know you can't grow up fast enough to help this child grow up without turning them into a painfully familiar mess.
But that's the courage in it too.
There's no way that my story would ever have included the adventures and wonders of life that I experienced if my parents hadn't left behind the only security and truth they knew.
I'm sorry, Mom, that you and I are still growing up...I do love you...and I need your stories...even if they do seem suspiciously wormy sometimes.
*Our brand of conservative Mennonites is like the Amish except that they have liberties regarding electricity, family photographs, cars, and colorful fabrics. They are pacifists. They don't join the military and they won't take a job as a lawyer or a police officer. Most don't even go to college - too much of the world there. They don't go to public schools either. Instead, many homeschool or go to their church school which is basically a collaborative homeschool. Usually, they garden, farm, learn trades, build houses, have babies, sew their own clothes, and go to church.
No musical instruments in church either because they don't want their own flourishes to detract from giving God his utmost deserved glory. Men and women sit on opposite sides of the church and the men collectively teach the Scriptures. Women come with their heads and elbows covered (depending on the church), wearing the appropriate color of stockings (again, depending on the church), and their children meekly obedient - to listen and to learn in quiet godly submission. Mennonites only marry other Mennonites and they usually live in their own communities, unless they are proselytizing in Puerto Rico or Kentucky or Nova Scotia.
They are very intent on being in the world, but not of the world.
