Shifting

Good relationships are important

I can recall looking up at the charming faces of parishioners who would greet me every Sunday following my father’s sermon.  I’m able to make out my first “jungle gym” that stood in our side yard.  I can still feel the stinging chill of steel bars my brother and I would cling to during winter, and I still smell the tang of red cedar that greeted us happily in the summer.  I have recollections of parties that were held at the house; three carefully decorated gathering rooms and a sizable wood floored hallway was always large enough to fit however many wished to attend with a plus one.  I remember how verdant the lawn became in the waning days of spring thanks to May’s gift of rain and sunshine.  I remember the wrap around porch, the chain swing situated in between the two towering oaks, the immaculately kept garage that sat separate from the house, the wreath that was ritually hung out of my bedroom window before Christmas; I remember the gold plated numbers that gave the house its mailing address.

I remember someone shouting, I remember someone crying.  I remember sitting on the floor before being so abruptly startled that it brought me to tears.  While fear quickly welled up in the pit of my stomach, my trepidation stemmed more so from utter confusion and bewilderment than from a reaction to danger or to vulnerability.  Their voices penetrated the partition that separated the kitchen from the hallway.  I heard the dispute move from the hallway to the living room, their voices growing colder as they became quieter.  Feeling the strong instinctive need to follow my parents I moved from hard white tile of the kitchen floor to the cherry wood of the hallway, hoping that I might be able to get a glimpse of what was causing such commotion.  While my heart wished that I were able to stay seated with my Buzz Light Year and Woody toy dolls and ignore the fuss that was being made, I conceded to curiosity and kept moving forward, even as slowly churning uneasiness grew swiftly in my stomach.    

“F**k you!”  The ferocity of my mother’s voice silenced any further continuing conversation as the ceramic glass of our lamp was scattered across the floor into the hallway where I now stood, frozen. I now realize my trepidation in that moment stemmed more so from utter confusion and bewilderment than from a reaction to danger or to vulnerability.  My whimpering alerted my parents as they were brought back to reality.  As my mother stared, eyes pulsing and glazed over with warm tears, I knew I had witnessed a new side of the human emotion.  Rage. Sorrow. Hatred. Heartbreak. Emptiness.  My father, reacting quickly in his normal fashion, scooped me up in his arms and carried me to my bedroom.  No words were spoken, nothing was said.  He lay with me until my eyes closed for the night, leaving me with the only memory I have of my parents when they were still married.     

I remember the following day when everything was out of its place.  The couches rested in the hallway, two out of three table lamps with their yellow tinged shades occupied the couches.  I had never seen so many boxes.  Most of them were larger than I was, though I’m not sure what all they had in them.  My mother greeted me with a nervous smile as I trudged down the spiral staircase to also find my aunt waiting with my morning meal. 

“Eat fast. We have a lot to do today.”

I remember lights.  The bright white lights of the fueling station as I awoke from my slumber induced by the harmonic motion of my mother’s Mazda.  The crackling, dim, neon lights of what I would later come to know as the highway strip that led in and out of our town.  The mild yellow lights in the living room of our new house.  There was no fireplace.  There was no wraparound porch.  There was no lawn, at least not one that I found to be suitable given my past spoils.  There was no “jungle gym” or hard-floored hallway.  There was no grand staircase, church parishioners, chain swing, immaculately kept garage, oak trees, or furniture.  But at that point, I didn’t notice the absence of things, because that was what they were when I was young, things.  What I first noticed was that despite the couches, and the boxes, and the lamps, and the clothes, and the car trip, and the assortment of lights, there was still someone that my mother had left behind.

People reason that divorce must be difficult for most young children.  They assume that a child experiences confusion about why their two parents are apart and what makes them not want to be with the other.  In most cases I believe that people who state this have a valid point, however in my case, I don’t remember any confusion.  Things were simple.  My mom said that we had to go away.  End of story.  I didn’t argue.  I questioned from time to time why my mother no longer loved my father, but overall I felt it was an easy thing to accept in the beginning.  It would take years for me to notice the effects of this first divorce.

 The compartmentalization defense mechanism is a psychological term stipulating in essence that conflicting ideas may stem from or be tied to places that hold meaning.  Throughout my childhood, my parents both chose to raise me in different ways; my mother naturally being more protective and somewhat more conservative than my father.  Eventually, I noticed that I sometimes behaved and reasoned differently at my mother’s home in Reading than I did at my father’s home in Lancaster.  My junior year of high school introduced my still serious relationship with my girlfriend, along with another “compartment” that I had begun to form.  My last summers have been spent in these three worlds.

Freshman year of college brought a fourth compartment as I formed friendships and built stronger relationships with people of whom I now spend most of my free time.  I know that although I don’t mean to do so, I am constantly creating compartments ranging from friends, to family, to school, to work, and back to friends.  Like most defense mechanisms, I am able to see that this inhibits and even hurts many important relationships with others in my life.  Close friends and family don’t appreciate being grouped into separate categories.  Unfortunately, I doubt that this compartmentalization will cease to continue.

After the divorce, I had the chance to see my dad every other weekend.  He would drive three hours to pick my brother and I up from pre-school, then drive us three hours back.  Normally one would think that three hours in a car for two kids that are both under the age of six would be murder.  But despite that reasoning, our father could occupy us for hours, playing games, cracking jokes, telling stories; he always seemed to have a new story for us whenever he would come to take us back to the parsonage in New Jersey for the weekend.  Our heads would be filled with princesses locked in towers, kings that slayed dragons, warlords who moved armies, witches that made deadly brews, soldiers that defied corrupt emperors, and the occasional excerpt from a new novel he enjoyed called “The Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling.    

While these stories were most entertaining, the best thing about the long car trips was “Goofer”, the imaginary character that my dad created specifically for Justin and me.  Goofer always sat in the front seat of the blue Isuzu, as if to fill a void that had been created.  You could ask him anything that came to your mind and he would respond.  What was the tallest roller coaster you have ever been on?  What’s outer space like?  What happens when you eat too many watermelon seeds?

Only having just turned six, my adult filter was not yet intact.  So, in the spirit of asking Goofer any question that I thought could be answered, I had no reservations when asking something that had been a pressing matter in my everyday thoughts. 

“Goofer, why don’t my Mommy and Daddy love each other any more?”

A brutal silence engulfed the small sedan as Goofer disappeared, replaced by my father’s frail, quivering voice. 

“Zach.  Justin.  I will always love your mother.  But sometimes love and commitment between two grown-ups can be a very hard thing.  Do you understand?”  The two of us gave a passive nod as he looked back at me with the same hollow pair of eyes my mother had worn months earlier during the night of the broken lamp.  I wondered to myself if my eyes ever had appeared as theirs were.  To this day, Goofer still gives me the answers I crave.  Whenever I need advice, input, an alternate perspective, anything, Goofer will be the first person I turn to.

In the early years following the split, my mom chose to get remarried.  After six months of dating she tied the knot with a businessman named Marc.  At first, everything was as it should have been.  Justin and I really enjoyed spending time with our new stepdad.  His half moon glasses made him scholarly and educated and the smile that he wore day to day was welcoming.  Summer evenings were spent playing catch with the baseball or football or engaging in a game of tag or hide and go seek using what little yard we had. 

Eventually, we were able to move to another house with a much larger yard.  In fact, its size was so great that it took four plus hours to cut even with the aid of a John Deer riding mower with a fifty-four inch blade deck.  It wasn’t long before my mother conceived, and with a new baby came a final house, the one that we were supposed to live in as a family for the next how ever many years.  Over the passing months though, even before the move, problems began arising.  Marc’s genuine disposition turned into an every day ill temperament.  There was glaring at me and my brother, snapping at my mother, taking absolutely no responsibility for any action that needed his attention or any chore that needed to be carried out.  We were grounded harshly for miniscule transgressions; forgetting to take the dog out in the evening, not making sure the kitchen was kept clean upon his return home from work.  But my favorite though was the lecture we both received for eating the final piece of pizza in the refrigerator before asking him if we could do so.

My mother gained an exorbitant amount of weight.  I started to see pain in her eyes again, but the pain failed to bring tears with it as it had done in the past. The commonly seen clear drops had turned to a blank stare that damn near curdled my blood.  At first, she was able to mask her emotion so that my brother and I wouldn’t be affected.  Ultimately though, her sorrow was too great for even an experienced actress like herself to be able to conceal.  She had become powerless.  She knew it.  I knew it.  My stepfather knew it. 

Despite the constant tension and verbal abuse, life in the house continued.  He still was able to teach me regardless of how much I disliked his presence; proper etiquette, standard table manners, the importance of a firm handshake and eye contact when doing so.  However, despite these pertinent lessons, Marc’s chief contribution to my character was still yet to come.

I remember someone screaming.  I remember someone crying.  I was startled back to consciousness by my mother’s voice, but it wasn’t close and calming as it normally was.  It was distant, as if muffled, almost inaudible.  I turned to lay on my back in complete silence, staring blindly through the heavy blackness towards my door.  Was it a dream that roused me?  What else would it be?  No one has a reason to scream.

I roused myself from temporary paralysis to see what was transpiring, knowing that it was late and the rising sun would soon bring me the last day of the seventh grade.  Slowly I took the journey through the upstairs hallway of our new house, deftly placing my steps as not to have the wood that lay underneath the carpet groan.  Just as I was upon the master bedroom, the door was nearly ripped off of its mount as my mother flew past me and down the staircase to the kitchen, followed by my stepfather.  Not having any knowledge of what preceded, I cautiously approached the situation, deciding to follow the two of them downstairs. 

She gave me the phone. She told me to call the police.  She followed me back up the stairway to collect my younger brother and take refuge behind a locked door.  She panted.  She whimpered.  She cried to God.  She said to me once that my greatest teachers would be the ones that led by example.  As the sirens grew from a faint whine into a full on wail, flashing lights emerged from the street corner, and he gave me my final lesson.  It is no longer the case that attempted murder will land you in jail.

In the more recent years, I’ve started a serious relationship of my own, one that I am able to say is among the greatest blessings of my life.  Like all couples, we have our over arching problems that we are perpetually attempting to work through, namely the issue of my commitment.  Having come from a family with no divorce, Maggie I know will be ready to tie the knot in a few short years, however I have told her many times that this regrettably will not be the case for me.  In fact, I have the utmost difficulty attempting to make any type of commitment to anything in my life, even in the most trivial of situations.  I fear that a wrong selection on a grander scale will ultimately lead to one of my greatest fears; having to look at another with the same eyes that my parents had given me.

I do not believe that I have yet done this, although I know that I will eventually want to take the necessary steps to be able to do so.  This too terrifies me.  With the overwhelming fear of true commitment and my inability to confidently make most decisions, though I may desire marriage and further commitment, I cannot be totally sure of the future outcome.  And so, the challenge to confront the greatest of my fears and inner issues is ensued.