Without solicitation comes out of the blue a repressed memory rushing into one's conscience as an unwelcomed intruder. Such mental visitations can be triggered by a word, a scent, a lyric, or a visual clue. My new friend in Georgia, John, encountered such a disconcerting memory as he observed outside his window children disembarking from a school bus. The sight of watching parents lovingly greet each child opened an unwanted floodgate of personal reflections that recalled his childhood that did not mirror that which he watched with silent comparison. I can relate... My Dad, now deceased over a year, was a tyrant. The word spanking was not in his vocabulary. Prolonged beatings of my brother and me was his method of discipline. Throughout my childhood I feared and hated my father for his unceasingly tirades of violence. My Mother, a gentile lady of southern lineage, was herself often the target of his relentless abuse, although I never personally witnessed that Dad ever laid a hand on her in anger. The carnage was nevertheless just as devastating, as her sense of self-worth was laid waste in his wake. We tiptoed in trepidation around him, never knowing what inconsequential event or slightest gesture would trip his hair-trigger of displeasure, invoking a violent response that two small boys and a petite woman were powerless to quell. There were periods of relative peace and quite solitude, but they were too few and far between to be identified as the normal course of events. His uncontrolled episodes of rage served like bookends to mark the interim periods of uneasy peace.
It wasn't until many years later, after I had long since left that environment, that it came to light that my Dad suffered from a chemical imbalance in his brain, a condition that was detected when, as as far older man, he was given a thorough medical examination at the veteran's hospital. Medications were prescribed to combat the condition that slowly and steadily changed his personality: so much so that he later commented to my Mother that he "must have put us through pure hell." It was at this point that I forgave him and let go of all the bitterness I had harbored toward him for a childhood that, albeit was rich with material comforts, lacked those emotional comforts that a child in need of nurturing and assurance should be embraced with unconditionally. Water under the bridge...
Some idiot once mused that "That time heals all wounds." Perhaps for some, but not for me. The memories still exist and there are telltale signs within my personality that reflect that upbringing...characteristics of my Father that I have fought to repress with greater success with each passing day, month and year. I tackle even the most mundane of projects with a determination to accomplish it to perfection, as though my Dad stands behind me still to judge and criticize my every effort. Yet with practice and the patience of my dear wife and wonderful daughter, I have managed to discard many of the outburst of anger that marred my earlier years as a husband and father. That trait of quick temper lingers too close to the surface still, but it is my personal determination to emulate only that which was good and unquestionably noble about my Father and to identify as a restraining yardstick those behaviors to avoid that he possessed that are ingrained in me that too quickly have and can drive a wedge of bonding affection between me and the two people I love and care for the most. I cannot change that which has passed. I can only effect that which may provide either good of bad memories for those whom I eventually shall leave behind.
The Beatles perhaps said it best of all... "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." I am confident that my friend John is well ahead in this equation as we both in our own ways try to make a worthy sum out of all of our parts.
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