Dell on Family

My grand-daughter keeps me up on the latest goings on. She's quite a woman. Sometimes I refer to Shelley as a kid. She's no kid. She survived a childhood that was awful, due in part to my hand in things. Now, how in the hell, you're asking, could I have had any effect on the life of a child two generations removed?

Have you read The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold? Shelley loaded it into the Kindle  for me. It could have been the story of my family if you left out the dying bits, changed the circumstances and switched the personalities around some.

I won't spoil it for you, but let me say this, Alice Sebold is one smart writer. I couldn't wait to finish it to find out how the situation would get resolved. I tell you, she nailed it with the mother who was pretty much like my mother and my sister Elaine: women unable to see their children as separate from themselves, wrapped up in putting on a public face.

When it came time to get myself married, everything seemed so wonderful in the beginning: this woman, who stole my heart and would bear my children, was my whole world. (I'll post the story about the actual romancing part another day). When I brought the future Mrs. Carver out to the east coast to meet the family, she got the stamp of approval the minute they laid eyes on her. That should have been clue number one that things were headed for disaster, yet I remained clueless for another dozen years. I couldn't see myself and I sure as heck wasn't seeing my wife clearly, either.

Having moved out to Ontario after university, looking for work, (stopped in Montreal for a bit: a tale for another day) I  married and ended up staying there. It was years before I understood that I had  purposely put distance between myself and my family only to recreate that same family in Ontario. Then there were days I would look at my wife in the morning and do a sort of check list of myself to see just how much I was looking like my own father.

Don't get me wrong. I loved my father, but knowing nothing else I thought what went on at our house went on at other homes. He was a successful businessman even during the depression. I rarely saw him and when I did all I could think was what a disappointment I must have been to him: nose in a book, more often than not at the library. Sure, I played ball with the boys and such, but the older I got the more I retreated into books. My two oldest brothers were both on their way to being lawyers and Marty was selling insurance and making a fortune. By comparison my successes were modest.

I'll cut to the chase: each bit of my life after I left home, either socially, economically or even emotionally, unfolded as a  repeat of everything I had wanted to leave behind. Worse, the longer it went on the more our daughter, Shelley's mother, suffered. My only child, the dearest little girl in the world, would be hanging on my pant legs before I could get off to work. Hell, I didn't want to spend five minutes with her mother yet I left her there day after day. Eventually, I had so many things on the go, the only time I spent at home was breakfast, dinner and sleeping. It wasn't my wife's fault any more than my own. We were just doing what we thought was expected; it was all we knew. No one talked back then about how these things might affect a child.

Our child, the one I spent no time with, married and was out the door before she was eighteen. A girl who could have been anything, she married the first fellow that said he loved her and then she put a couple thousand miles between her and us. Then my grand-daughter, Shelley, ended up being raised by my divorced daughter who changed men in her life faster than you can say jackrabbit. Her mother eventually got a taste for liquor, too, just as my older brothers had turned to the bottle. Shelley grew up with a childhood I wouldn't wish on anyone, yet she's grown into a fine woman who knows up from down where family is concerned.

Living this long, I've seen the effect my choices had on those around me. The miracle is that many folks love me anyway, including Shelley. Ain't life grand?

I lit the fire when I got into camp at supper time. Just a small one to take the damp out. My feet are still hurting so I'm going to crawl into bed now and see if getting horizontal doesn't help ease the pain. Sure hope I can sleep.