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From free falling down the rabbit hole, at Free Fall Friday
prompt- what she said
We were 8 years old, my cousin Connie and I. In the backyard, a drizzly day. I was looking down, but Connie was looking up. “We could go over to that chestnut tree,” she said.
“Mom wouldn’t like it, remember what she said?”
Connie looked like a grown up making a pronouncement: “What she said was ‘Don’t leave the yard.’ And the branches of that tree are in the yard.”
“They are?” I said helplessly.
“They are in the yard. So let’s climb.”
So we did. At first we had to reach and squirm so that our feet were above our head, but we did it. And got up a ways. And found a spot where we could both sit on the same big branch with our heads below another branch, and there was even one in front of us we could hold on to. We were smiling to beat the band.
I said, “I like this tree. It feels friendly to us.”
Connie said, “I see some horse chestnuts we could eat.”
I said, “No, mother said not to eat them.”
Connie replied in her pronouncement voice: “What she said was, ‘Don’t eat your neighbour’s chestnuts,’ but she also said we could have the ones that fell one the ground on our side of the fence. So these are the ones that are going to fall, but haven’t yet.”
So we started pulling off chestnuts and peeling them and eating them. When they are green they peel easily.
“Connie,” I said, “you will be the prime minister some day.”
Connie replied, “That’s what she said too. Your mother, I mean. So let’s take some back to her, so she will be in a good mood.”
I wondered if that’s what prime ministers do, but then I didn’t have to wonder, as my mother said so.
…
From my comment on a blog post of Derek Sivers on being unselfish
As a child, to be obedient meant too much “not thinking for myself,” too much “honouring my mother.” As a result of this way of thinking I protected her from knowledge… which harmed her and our relationship. In honouring her I believed she was as honest as she claimed to be. I didn’t realize my dear mother could lie and be manipulative, although I was able to grasp in childhood that she exaggeration-lied. By accident, I thought, not on purpose, not my dear mother.
I didn’t know she was being manipulative. Therefore I believed her that she believed that nobody could honour me or respect me or give awards to me, that when they did so it was only because they were unknowing about me, unknowing that my room “was not cleaned up.” Too bad there weren’t counsellors in her day, too bad she didn’t ask advice from other parents.
I’m sure she believed that if her children loved her “badly enough” they would clean their rooms without any help. This when her own rooms were like an archeology dig, with layers of stuff. I’m sure she felt unloved by her own children, as they were growing up, because of their untidiness.
I protected her from knowing she was wrong for all those years of my childhood, protected her from knowing that some children are not naturally tidy. I did this by not telling her that even as grown adult my room was still not cleaned up. In adulthood I lied by omission by not telling her that I still wasn’t good enough for her and others, since my room was still untidy.
I couldn’t expect her to change her mind about “untidy means unlovable.” I honoured her belief. I could only change myself. By becoming tidy. Too bad for years I was like the clients of tidiness expert Marie Kondo.
If I had not been so unselfish in protecting her, maybe we could have had a talk and maybe she would have laughed to say that she herself was untidy, and so she didn’t expect others to be any better. This might have saved me years of despair, and of anger, and produced a better relationship.
…
prompt- we pulled down the shades
There was no sound but the deceased’s old wall clock, going clok, clok, clok…
It was irritating, driving us mad, but no one said anything to each other, any more than we would cough or laugh.
Old Flora, once my Auntie Flora, once “Mumsie,” once pretty “Florida,” lay under the sheets as the deceased. She never did find the money or time to get cheerful wallpaper. Just a drab pattern of yellow, to match her yellowing bedsheets. When I was a boy she had given me a little plastic green camel. Boys remember things that grownups forget.
We stood around the wallpaper: Me, going bald; mother with her cane, going grey; Uncle Warren round and stooped. He had caught me once, before I could slide into a mud puddle. The clockwork continued, impassive.
Mother sighed. Strange how my thoughts wondered when I should be thinking of the deceased—she used to fry delicious haddock from mountain streams. My thoughts shied away from the thought—I had no hunger at all. My thoughts shied away from the deceased like my fingers being unable to grasp a haddock.
Mother sighed, and spoke. “Come away, let’s make tea and prepare to welcome the others.”
And Warren shuffled over and pulled down the shades.
…
…
Sean Crawford
May 2021
