by Jane Weiss
Reprisal
I was surprised when this letter arrived from Michael within a week after I sent my letter requesting a three-month reprieve.
Mom, to be as honest and concise as I can: I don’t get it. Now, I say none of this sarcastically, in a flip way, or in any manner that is meant to belittle your perceptions, for I know they come sincerely from you. However, while I feel some sadness and take some offense to a few things you’ve said, my primary response to your judgments of me is one of bewilderment. If this letter was dated 1984 or ’85, I would have more specific instances in which to relate to your accusations of me, as I’m not proud of everything I’ve said or done in the last six years.
But two and a half years ago, you told me that you weren’t perfect, and that you were under a great deal of stress then, and that I needed to forgive you, and, essentially, allow for the fact that you are a human being who has undergone a great deal of hard decision-making, and to make room for that. I ask for the same treatment now as you did then.
So it’s not 1985—it’s 1988, and since that’s the case, I read your letter as if it’s not to me. That’s how it feels; like you’re writing from yourself to someone you think is me, and you’re responding to what your sense of my perceiving you is. That’s a lot of convolutions to sense in order to come to your conclusion. Mom, it’s wrong. Your judgment of me is wrong.
Michael went on to address and refute several points in my letter. He denied having “built up walls” to punish me because I was in a same-sex relationship. Through his theater connections over the past four years, his circle of friends included straights, gays, lesbians, bisexuals—people he “didn’t even think of in those terms” because they were his friends. So he had accepted and had learned much about alternative lifestyles, even his mother’s. He also felt misunderstood in his prior efforts to communicate with me, stating that he had shared with me parts of himself, his work, his passions, and his life that no others had been privy to. So my accusing him of withholding himself from me and of disrespectful behaviors made him sad and angry. Most confusing to him was what I, as a mother, expected from him as an adult child:
My guess is that we don’t have the same perceptions of what you called your rightful place as my mother. In all sincerity, Mother, I ask you what is the rightful place of mother in the life of a twenty-four-year-old man? I don’t know what it is you want from me, Mom. Is it that you’re not getting anything from me? Not enough of one thing? Or is something missing? I thought we had a growing relationship, but your letter tells me that you do not believe we do, or that it is not enough, or that it is wrong. At the very least, I am sure you are not satisfied. I am a grown and growing man, and I have separated my world from yours and Dad’s. I will always carry you with me and you carry me with you, for we are Mother and Son. Our worlds overlap, Mother, and where they do, I am glad. So I ask that you nurture what I have already given you. Tell me how to nurture what you have given me. It will grow, I promise. But it will always be separate and together.
I was encouraged to have elicited such a strong, thoughtful response from Michael. And I admired how eloquently, passionately, and even tenderly he made his case and expressed his feelings. I wanted desperately to believe that we would once again “nurture what we had given each other,” and wanted to hold to his promise that our relationship would grow. But I was troubled by the discrepancy between what I believed about our relationship, and what he believed. Why wasn’t I more satisfied with it? Was I stuck in the past? Were my judgments about him wrong? What evidence did I have?
I could readily accept that his connections to theater had changed his view about same-sex relationships. I recalled a few conversations that made me feel that we were connecting more deeply. But my instincts told me that he hadn’t resolved his anger about my violating the family to the level he said he had. I sensed that what he wrote was what he truly wanted to believe, but that his views, feelings, and behaviors were not congruent.
He didn’t mention that the children’s bloc continued to avoid me when it came to family-oriented holidays, and that for several years, Michael seemed to be the bloc leader who arranged elaborate activities and events to preclude time with Bonnie and me. When Michael or Lynn came back to Minnesota to visit, they never stayed at our home, despite my requests to spend that kind of time with them. Neither Andrew nor Marie had been with me for more than a few hours at a time.
No, I wasn’t imagining that I had been relegated to a small corner of his and their lives. Their love was conditional—in order for me to have access to them, Bonnie was rarely included. Although their father had forbade them to be with Bonnie at our home, they seemed to get around his demands when it suited them. Couldn’t they at least give us equal time with them? How could we ever hope to develop new ways—and hopefully, equally rich ways—to be family if they wouldn’t come to our home? These behaviors are what triggered my letter to them and to him.
Also, I needed to consider that Michael had always responded angrily and with convincing rationale when he was confronted. Even as a young child, he stood up to me and vehemently stated why he should be able to do what he wanted. I believe he grew up knowing he could outwit and manipulate both Charles and me, as our emotional distance didn’t allow us to stand up as a parental unit against his strength.
I remembered Bonnie’s observations nearly eight years before after spending an evening with our family. Michael was a senior in high school at the time. She commented that she found it curious that Charles and I didn’t relate to Michael as a child, but as a sibling or peer. Had Charles and I abdicated our parenting role because Michael seemed so strong-willed, self-sufficient, and capable of fairly good decisions? Was Michael’s reaction to my letter because I dared to call him on his behaviors—especially when he believed he had expanded his understandings?
Michael’s beautifully articulated response taught me two important things. For one, I needed to begin to think of my children as individuals, rather than as a family unit. Each of them was at a different place regarding our separation and my relationship with Bonnie.
Michael’s letter also convinced me that his maturity, life experiences, and spiritual/emotional work had helped him accept my relationship with Bonnie. I hadn’t accepted or acknowledged his shift because the group as a whole hadn’t made the shift. I reminded myself that Andrew, now twenty-one, had also dealt with our separation, at least intellectually, and seemed to have decided that life goes on. Lynn, at twenty-two, seemed overtly accepting, but covertly angry, as she was using the black-and-white fundamentalist Christian dogma to manage her feelings and formulate her responses. Marie, at seventeen, remained guarded. All of them continued to be greatly influenced by their father, whom they seemed to caretake.
Not a small issue was Charles’s requiring them to sign an agreement that he would withhold money for college if they spent time with Bonnie. And now he was telling Michael, who had finished his undergrad studies, that the “deal” remained in effect until the college money borrowed from him was repaid.
Secondly, Michael reminded me that he was separating from me as a life task at the time when he “should” be doing so. His honest question about how a twenty-four-year-old should relate to his mother was new territory for me as well. What should our expectations be for each other now? Had I fixated him at the age he was when we separated, and now needed to fashion with him a more suitable relationship?
I pondered what to write to Michael, and decided to hold to my original intent to not communicate with them until the fall, at which time I called each of them and began conversations about how to move into the next phase of our relationships.
So, having shaken up the family with my actions once again, I recommitted myself to move past my guilt and fear of losing them, and to relate in strength and truth—even to this strong, willful, and bright man-child, whom his siblings deferred to, and who now was developing a keen sense of his spiritual being and our deeper connection. I felt hopef
ul.
Rites of Passage
The years have a way of soothing the heart, allowing what’s important to rise to the top and dominate. So it was with my children and me. At ten years after our separation, the kids and I touched base at least bi-monthly by phone, and when Michael, Andrew, or Lynn were in town, I saw them several times during their visits, often at our home. My work responsibilities had increased, requiring I spend two-thirds of each week traveling; so between Marie’s busy class schedule and my jam-packed weekends, it took conscious effort to make time for each other.
In many regards Charles had not changed one iota. At one point, he was making plans to marry a secretary from Western, which may have diverted his attention from the past, but at the last minute, she declined. Recently, he had been dating another woman but explained to the kids that he had no intentions of marrying again—for after all, he was “still in love with your mother.” However, he remained caustic towards me whenever we had any kind of interchange. I had no interest in spending time with him to attempt to talk through our mutual issues.
Playing the martyr role, Charles continued to forbid our children to step foot in my home because of Bonnie. However, they all had decided for one reason or another to not honor his wishes, and each spent some precious time with us, alone or with friends. They were careful to not stay overnight, as this would be too blatant a disregard of his emotionally charged demands, and they would have to pay for it by his haranguing, at the least.
I was excited that they were getting to know and appreciate Bonnie. Erin and Edward said that they hoped my kids would come over for a dinner or an event because their interactions were so zany and fun.
Seemingly out of nowhere, in an uncharacteristically swift move, Lynn decided to marry Kenton, a man she met eighteen months earlier. She chose a wedding date only six weeks after she announced their plans to the family, and only six weeks before the date she knew her brother Michael had selected (October 31, 1992) for his wedding.
Driven by her timeline, Lynn planned and executed most of the Duluth wedding preparations by herself, with a little help from a close friend. From a 250-mile distance, I gave my advice on reception halls, flowers, and whatever else she asked. Together in Minneapolis, we shopped for and chose her wedding dress. I drove up one weekend and held a wedding shower for her with her Duluth friends.
The wedding day in September arrived and brought with it a startling insult. During the ceremony, the pastor stridently proclaimed that marriage was an ordained privilege of heterosexual couples only.
If Bonnie and I had not been sitting in the front row, we might have considered leaving the sanctuary. Instead, sensing our faces reddening in surprise, embarrassment, and anger, we held each other’s hand, feeling trapped and wondering how many eyes were directed towards the back of our heads.
This affront was followed by the complete exclusion of Bonnie from any of the wedding pictures, which set our moods for the reception. I was deflated and tearful. Bonnie was steeled and humiliated. We considered not attending at all, but I decided to fulfill my commitment to Lynn, as “Mother of the Bride,” at the reception and the wedding gifts’ opening the next day.
Lynn denied having any involvement in or even hearing what the pastor said. What most likely happened was that, during their prenuptial counseling, the pastor learned about my same-sex relationship, and determined to use this “sacred” moment to set sinners apart and point the long finger of Biblical law at Bonnie and me.
A pattern Lynn and I seemed to share is being so attuned to what others need, that we aren’t clear about what we believe ourselves. Was it her concern for her father’s welfare that permitted her to overlook Bonnie’s and my needs regarding family pictures?
We hoped this treatment would not be repeated. However, there would be ample opportunity with seven more possible weddings in our future. With hardly a chance for any healing for us, Michael and Kristina’s wedding invitations arrived the week after Lynn’s wedding.
Michael and Kristina decided to marry shortly after his graduation, when he was deeply engrossed in a new theater company he and three other friends had developed “to cure Dallas of its cultural dearth.” While in Dallas, they were involved with the Unitarian Church, which suited their evolving beliefs in religious tolerance and God as the masculine and feminine Source of all Life. Even though they had developed a close-knit family of friends in Dallas, I was grateful that they held their wedding in a small Unitarian church in Minneapolis.
Michael asked his father and me to walk him down the aisle, followed by Kristina’s parents walking with her. I took note that having Charles in this close proximity was not nearly as difficult for me as it seemed to be for him to have Bonnie with me in the same room.
Bonnie was included in the wedding pictures. I don’t know how much of this all-embracing planning occurred in response to Lynn’s wedding. Regardless, we were pleased.
Bonnie and I hosted an evening supper with my mother, my sister Carol, and all my children, including the newlyweds, at our home in Chanhassen. This was my mother’s second brief visit to my home in five years, and I was aware of how her cognitive abilities were lessening. She seemed less confrontational, more docile, and had developed the hallmark “rummaging” (in drawers) pattern I’d learned from work to associate with early cognitive disorders.
I could see that Mother was an increasing challenge for Carol, who had primary caretaking responsibilities for her. I marveled at Carol’s ability to keep on keeping on. Her beloved daughter Elizabeth, after years of battling Crone’s disease, had succumbed at age twenty-three to its complications, and died less than a year before. Watching my children marry renewed her pain of never being able to see Elizabeth fulfill her own rite of passage.
Shortly after this wedding gathering, Michael and Kristina headed back to Dallas. Lynn and Kenton drove home to Duluth to finish their last two years of undergrad studies in graphic and fine arts. Andrew left for his bachelor’s apartment in Manhattan, where he held a fast-paced position as an equity analyst in a large financial institution. And Marie returned to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she was completing a semester-long immersion course in Spanish, fulfilling a requirement to graduate from the University of Minnesota.
While Bonnie and I celebrated our ten-year unconventional anniversary, my children’s journeys appeared to have taken them down some fairly traditional paths. I was grateful for their father’s financial support for their education, despite his vengeful, self-serving strings, as it gave them a stronger platform from which to make their way in the world. Most of our conversations concerned their current relationships, and their choices of livelihood or studies. We rarely discussed the past. For now, we seemed to have reached some sort of temporary compromise, agreeing to allow me to be their comforting and supportive mom—albeit long distance, since they were scattered across the United States. Despite my angst and misgivings about having disrupted their lives, in my heart, I knew I had done the best for them that I could. I had been true to my own spiritual unfolding, and had to trust that my example would one day help them be true to theirs.
Journey Within Our Journey – November 1992
I believe we exist within layers of livingness. And that the layers are designed to help us through a period of our life, only to be peeled away to reach another level of being, that we’re now able to manage better having gone through the former layer. I was fifty-two, ten years into Bonnie’s and my life together, when we were both presented with an unexpected challenge—the onset of a life-changing journey within our journey that would deeply affect us for years to come.
I assumed the ordeal presented itself now because our loving relationship had created a safe space for me, secure enough to allow this hidden part of me to emerge. And so, given permission on some unknown level, it rose to the surface with all the pent-up intensity and power of a whale breaching in ocean waters.
The journey within our journey began when my son Michael gave me the audio
taped version of Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Bonnie and I stashed it away, believing it would be perfect listening for our next four-hour trip to visit her sisters in Iowa. As we were cruising down the interstate, listening to Maya’s resonant and deeply expressive voice, telling her story of being raped as a seven-year-old by her mother’s boyfriend, my body involuntarily began to react. My entire torso rhythmically undulated, as I retched in dry heaves. From a detached place, I heard myself intermittently groaning and wailing. Bonnie immediately pulled onto the roadside and stopped the car, believing I must be having a heart attack or some other sort of medical emergency.
Within minutes, the bizarre symptoms were replaced with deep sobs. Bonnie held me tightly until I quieted, alarmed about what had taken possession of my body in such an uncontrollable way.
She took both my hands in hers and cautiously asked, “Was it something about the tape? Did that happen to you?”
I couldn’t respond at first—couldn’t rise out of my inner-absorbed state for several minutes.
Then, “Yes. It did.”
Bonnie held me for several moments before we continued to drive. I continued to sob most of the way down into Iowa, unsure of what powerful entity had been unleashed, what it meant to accomplish, and just what its forceful emotions would exact from me.
Over the next couple of years, I underwent extensive therapy to uncover suppressed feelings, to reframe my childhood, and to understand the long-term effects of abuse of any kind. Within this whole process, there was a strange, growing comfort. I was learning that the abuse created deep patterns in me that helped me better understand myself, by answering several questions: Why had I become sexual so early? Why had I fallen into the powerless victim role? Why did my pattern of pleasing others supersede my need to meet my own needs? Why did I have difficulty trusting people? Why had I created drama and even chaos in my life? And why did I avoid conflict, even to the point of deception?