Toward Commitment

by Diane Rehm

  JOHN: I think that's fairly put. The church had an emotional significance for you that it didn't have for me. I think I was somewhat envious of your faith, even though I didn't put too much stock in it.

  DIANE: Envious of my faith?

  JOHN: Yes. The sense that you had of God, of a divinity. It's not easy to be a struggling atheist.

  DIANE: I think the other element that got to you relates to the subject of friendship. It was out of that religious group that came some of my earliest and deepest friendships within the marriage. Friendships I could rely on, people I could turn to. And that's where religion spilled over into an emotional freedom from the marriage that I found myself experiencing. I found myself battling against you as I went. You not only didn't believe in God, you didn't believe in the Nicene Creed, you didn't care to go to church, but you also didn't want to have me involved socially, or to bring you along into that social group.

  JOHN: Because, you see, you were an active participant in an institution that I respected not at all. In my eyes, you were tainted by that participation. Ideally, in those days, if I could have I would have kept you from this degree of participation, so that you wouldn't be swallowed up in the social activities of the church.

  DIANE: But what does “swallowed up” mean? Does that mean I'm taken away from you in the process?

  JOHN: I saw it then as a kind of impairment of your integrity. To be so associated with this worthless institution demeaned you in my eyes.

  DIANE: Wow, that's quite a statement! I've never heard that before. To be tainted in your eyes strikes me as really quite dramatic.

  JOHN: I mean it, because, for me, the institution was so hypocritical.

  DIANE: It still is. It always has been.

  JOHN: That's right. But in those days I think I felt particularly strongly about that aspect of the church. So I would've kept you away from that involvement, but it was obvious that I couldn't. So I somewhat passively and unhappily and—

  DIANE: “Grudgingly” is the word.

  JOHN: Yes, “grudgingly” is the word…. I went along with your activity. I figured the kids wouldn't be too harmed by their superficial exposure to this tradition.

  DIANE: Your grudgingness, your feeling that I was somehow tainted, your intellectual and emotional antipathy toward the church say to me more about you than about me. They say to me that you were struggling within yourself to find a way toward God and, at the same time, wrestling against it.

  JOHN: I think that's unquestionably true. And even though I would have branded myself as atheist or agnostic, I was aware of certain strains within me that were reaching out for something. It was an internal struggle that was manifested externally in these ways.

  DIANE: Scoop, here is an area where I felt you were meanspirited. You did not behave charitably. You attempted to foist your own ideas on me, without the generosity or maturity to simply acknowledge that we were different in that regard. We were simply different. We could've spent years and years exploring this before we were married, and then we might never have gotten married if we had talked about all this in the first place. But why were you so mean to me about this?

  JOHN: Because I felt you were drawing me into an excessive degree of activity, like going off on vestry retreats. I did go with you—

  DIANE: And you had such powerful experiences. I think of Manresa, the very first retreat we went to, and how powerfully drawn you felt yourself to be.

  JOHN: But still resisting at the same time.

  DIANE: Do you remember we saw an eclipse of the sun from the hill at Manresa?

  JOHN: Of course I do. But “mean” is a strong word, though I'm not sure it's the wrong word. What I was wrestling with internally certainly manifested itself externally.

  DIANE: Had we not been married, had you found someone else who felt exactly as you did, would your life have been easier or richer because of your lack of involvement in the world of theology, if you will?

  JOHN: No, not richer. Certainly easier. Less problematic. This can be and is a difficult issue, so it would have been removed from what other issues the relationship or marriage might have had to deal with.

  DIANE: But far less interesting.

  JOHN: Well, that's right, far less interesting. And now, of course, looking back, since my conversion in 1979, now that I have a sense of the divine—

  DIANE: —and now that you have a master's degree in theological studies—

  JOHN: You and I now have some degree of common ground. I would define my Christianity in different ways from your Christianity. But nevertheless, we share, for example, Christmas and Easter services.

  DIANE: Beyond that, we say grace at each meal. We give thanks to God for all of our blessings, for the health of our children and grandchildren, and you don't seem reluctant about that.

  JOHN: Oh no. And I can say those things very genuinely. I'm overwhelmed by a daily sense of gratitude to some benefi- cent force.

  DIANE: So what's changed?

  JOHN: Well, me, that's what's changed. You and I can now hold hands and say grace in a way that I wouldn't have done at all, or about which I would have felt very awkward.

  DIANE: It comes back to the question of religion and its interpretation. One can say that religion is the organized church. One can say that religion is the deep belief that one has in a spiritual being. It depends on how it's defined. The church is the most political institution out there, it turns me off, but that doesn't get in the way of my worshiping and receiving Holy Communion, and feeling the spirit of God in a church setting.

  JOHN: And I have made the same distinction. One of the ironies is that now I'm the one who's more apt to want to go to church on Sundays than you. For a number of reasons, you now go less frequently than I. But when it comes to religion, I do think we've reached a meeting ground.

  DIANE: Beyond that, you attend weekday services as well. So you're right, we've come a long way.

  Parenting

  John

  I anticipated parenthood with three beliefs that I held deeply but barely discussed with Diane, if at all. First, children were an integral part of what would be our successful marriage. Second, loving one's children would be as easy as having them. Third, any ignorance about raising children would be overcome by patience and intelligence. These beliefs propelled me into parenthood, just nine months after we were married, with genuine joy and dangerous naïveté.

  Diane and I experienced very different childhoods. However distant from each other, my mother and father doted on me. They supported and encouraged me, giving me wide latitude to do what I wanted. At times they imputed more maturity to me than I really had, but I had no doubt that they were in my corner, convinced that what I decided for myself would be good for me.

  From what Diane told me, she was raised in a traditional Christian Arab household. Being a girl, it was ordained that her highest ambition was to be a wife and mother, in a role inferior to that of her husband. Any thought of attending college and pursuing a professional career was out of the question. In short, as I grew up my world was expanding, whereas Diane's was shrinking.

  This disparity created serious problems for us as parents and, in turn, as spouses. Generally speaking, my tendency was to presume that our children were acting, or would act, responsibly. That act of faith corresponded to my childhood experience. Diane's inclination, on the other hand, was to doubt their ability to do the right thing. That, after all, was the way she had been treated as a girl.

  This difference in presumptions had several consequences. It caused Diane to clash more with the children than I did. As a result, she tended to be cast as the “bad guy” and I as the “good guy.” This made her resentful, especially as my absences placed a disproportionate burden on her. Perhaps in retaliation, Diane adopted the stratagem of imposing upon me the role of judge, with the responsibility of adjudicating between her and one or both of the children. I felt that this made me the “fall guy,” whose decision was bound to disappoint one
side or the other. Most of the time, I found myself siding with the children, which heightened the tension between Diane and me.

  We also had different ideas about discipline. I was opposed to all forms of corporal punishment, including slapping or spanking. Throughout my childhood, I can recall only one occasion when my father cuffed me lightly on the back of my head. By contrast, Diane remembers being regularly hit not only with a hand or fist but with a metal spatula or wooden spoon. I was appalled when, in our son's early toddler days, Diane, following her parents' example, swatted David on his bottom. I insisted that there be no corporal punishment in our household. That quickly became the rule for the rest of our children's upbringing, a fact about which they both bragged to their young friends.

  The children's privacy also emerged as an issue out of our respective pasts. As an only child, I had my own room, and it was tacitly understood that I could bar anyone from coming in—even my parents. Diane, by contrast, never had a room to herself until her sister married and moved away. Even then, she couldn't close her door, however much she wanted to. On one occasion, Jennie was furious with us and closed the door to her room, with a sign that read “Do Not Enter.” Upon seeing the sign, Diane's immediate inclination was to assert parental authority, disregard the sign, and enter the room. I said that I felt it was terribly important for Jennie to have her own unconditional sense of privacy from all others, parents or otherwise. The door remained closed until Jennie chose to come out.

  Diane

  One of the two most basic challenges most of us face as we attempt to move toward adulthood is parenting. The other: learning to live with another human being. It has been encouraging to watch today's young people share many of the responsibilities for parenting that, when John and I were married, fell to the wife alone. It was she who was expected to wash clothes, clean house, garden, prepare food, and, most importantly, take care of the child or children. I grew up with that model. It was the only one I knew, so I had no expectation that John would be involved in the day-to-day efforts of taking care of or raising our children. We've laughed and joked since then about the fact that, except for a period when I was in the hospital, before Jennie was born, John Rehm had never changed a diaper! How times have changed. Now I see our son-in-law, Russell, taking superb care of and responsibility for our grandson Benjamin. He doesn't hesitate to step forward to take over from Jennie when he senses he's needed. He doesn't have to be asked, he just does it.

  The years of our children's infancy were a lonely time for me, since there were very few parents in our neighborhood who had young children. If there were questions to be asked or concerns to be shared, I was on the phone with the pediatrician. It seemed as though I started dialing the moment I knew his “telephone hour” began each morning, asking, I'm sure, some very basic questions, but at the same time trying to reassure myself that what I was doing as a parent, and how the child was behaving, were healthy and appropriate.

  I've often wondered whether my extreme loneliness and sense of isolation would have been considerably reduced by the presence of close relatives and friends, people on whom I could call to ask the simplest questions or just to come for a visit. Both my mother and father were gone by then, John's mother was in New York, and I had left behind all my friends from my former marriage. I had grown up surrounded by aunts, uncles, and cousins, so the void I felt seemed particularly great. One neighbor across the street had young children, but she worked full time as a nurse, so we never managed to develop a relationship.

  Since my own upbringing hadn't given me a sense of respect for myself as a child, in my ignorance I transferred those feelings and attitudes to the raising of my own children. I didn't assume they had rights of choice. I did assume that my choice, as the adult parent, was the operating principle. It was here that John stepped in, with his own attitudes and upbringing as the backdrop. He argued that it was important to overlook the small transgressions. It was important to try to negotiate with each child, no matter what the issue happened to be. Food was an issue. Even as I recalled my own belligerent reaction to the foods my mother insisted I eat for breakfast, I foisted that same kind of rigid attitude on the children. Why should Jennie have to have scrambled eggs if she didn't like them? Weren't there acceptable substitutes? But somewhere deep inside me came the sense that children were expected to “obey,” and it created many problems, both for me as a parent and for the two children.

  By the time David reached adolescence, John was hardly to be found. He was either working or so angry with me that he left the house. He simply wasn't around. David and I had some extraordinarily difficult verbal battles, but most of the time he held his ground when he felt he was right. Then John would ultimately come in as the all-knowing arbiter and I would become furious, because most of the time he would take David's side. Those arguments left me shaken and weary, with a sense of defeat. I was the one against whom David rebelled in his adolescence, while his father seemed to be rebelling against me not only for David but for himself as well. It was a dreadful period.

  Looking back, I must say that, considering the kinds of difficulties parents must deal with today, including drugs, alcohol, truancy, and violence, I believe that we were fortunate parents, both in terms of the times in which we lived and the integrity that our two children have. They went through tough times with me as a parent. At the same time, I've always felt that John should have played a stronger and more supportive role in the upbringing of our children.

  Dialogue on Parenting

  JOHN: On this subject of parenting, I'd like to begin with an affirmative question, namely, what did we do right in raising Jennie and David? I'm so struck by how these two lovely, remarkable human beings have turned out. They have so many of the best kinds of qualities you can think of: honesty, integrity, compassion, the desire and the ability to help others. It's so easy to berate ourselves over all the wrong things we did that I thought it might be interesting to try to identify what we did right.

  DIANE: Well, I think the two children had their own understanding of themselves, perhaps in spite of us—despite the difficulties we had with each other and despite the difficulties I had with them. Somehow, within each of them was a sense of what was right, how far they could go in testing us, how much they considered their own personal beings to be of value. I think that may be the essential thing we did right#x2014;to give each of them a sense of value.

  JOHN: I would agree. I've often thought that while love is a vital and necessary part of what you give to children, it's not enough. You've got to give them a sense of self-worth, of their own dignity. This didn't come out of the air, but I don't know quite how we did it. I suppose if I had to say how, I would say that early on, with all the normal disciplinary problems, we gave them a sense that they were equal partners in our family of four, and had a significant and rightful position in that family.

  DIANE: That was probably the part I had the most trouble with, given my own upbringing: feeling as though they were equal partners. I came into the marriage and into parenthood thinking there was this distance between parent and child. I began to understand that these were human beings who had their own internal life that was different from my idea of what it should be. Obviously there are basic approaches to life that parents try to instill in their children, but I finally came to realize that I could not impose my wishes or my instincts on them all the time.

  JOHN: Speaking for myself, in terms of giving David and Jennie a sense of self-worth and spiritual equality, I may have gone too far in David's case, by imposing upon him obligations and responsibilities that were beyond his emotional age.

  DIANE: Such as?

  JOHN: The way we asked him at the age of nine or ten to baby-sit his younger sister.

  DIANE: Well, yes, he was doing that, he was even cooking for his sister at that age. And of course, today, he adores cooking, working in the kitchen.

  JOHN: He enjoys making lists. Jennie keeps her lists on her Palm Pilot. We taught b
oth of them early on the importance of lists, to keep a household going.

  DIANE: So maybe our need for a sense of order, our need for a sense of responsibility not only for oneself but for another, were communicated to them. In some ways, I think, Jennie, the younger child, “got away with” a lot more than David did, not only because she was the younger but because she was a girl. Somehow you expected more of David in terms of responsibility, and let more slack with Jennie.

  JOHN: I did have a different relationship with Jennie and David. You're right, I think, that she did have an easier time being a second child. But there was that period in her adolescence when, for some time, she was only an average student, with no particular desire to learn or excel.

  DIANE: Whereas David excelled right from the start.

  JOHN: And then, in her junior year of high school, she caught hold of herself and became a really serious student, to the point where not only was she able to get into a fine college, Carleton, but then went on to medical school. She stayed on that path. And we watched David go through graduate school to earn his doctorate in classical philosophy, and then use that learning to teach others to learn. Sooner or later, they both acquired this seriousness of purpose and a desire to help others. Above all, what so overwhelms me, almost to the point of tears, is that they reach out to others in both intellectual and emotional terms.

  DIANE: We've been talking about the children and how they struggled through their own childhood and adolescence, and now have become these fine, strong adults. What we really haven't talked about is our relationship to ourselves and each other as parents. I think I had to struggle with my own feelings of deprivation as a child. For example, when David had the opportunity to go to Paris, I was furious because I'd never been to Paris! Here he was, just seventeen or so, and he was going off to Paris with his schoolmates. I couldn't believe it—and in retrospect, I cannot believe my own selfishness! You, as the good and generous father, felt very strongly that he should go, and so we argued. In the end, I could see the foolishness of the position I'd taken, and off he went for a glorious and enriching experience. So, in fact, you and I argued a lot about our approach to parenting. The basic question becomes: How do you work those things out beforehand? The answer is, you probably don't. You come upon parenting, each with a set of ideas and not even knowing you have those ideas. And there you are, facing parenthood, the most important responsibility in the world.