Back handed love

I grew up on the set of Eden. Our world was perfect love in all its sterile glory. The members of our family, in order to preserve that tranquility, lived by a closely scripted set of rules and rituals that governed nearly everything.

My mother's role was the perfect southern woman with bit parts doing comic relief where she played the long suffering daughter, or a redneck hick from a small town.  My father was the worthy pedagogue, the absent minded professor, the dutiful son. He took care of bringing in whatever money there was. She took care of everything else.

The cues were different depending on who was home.  "Man in the house" meant we ate in the dining room. My father never ate in the kitchen unless he ate alone. He had an assigned chair, an office and a hobby. He wore night shirts and little pointed hats to sleep in until he fell asleep smoking in his white satin night shirt and nearly burned the house down.

My mother ironed everything and mowed the grass with a hand mower because my father felt women were too delicate for power mowers. She had bizarre little hobbies to keep from going stark raving mad and was constantly "inventing" something that never quite worked. Including cutting down my grandmother's clothing for me and convincing me that I was stylish beyond the pale, meaning I often looked like a small mannequin dressed for burial. To make sure this elevated state was perpetuated, she typed our term papers, drew our pictures, did our math and sometimes even did our research. I'm sure my fourth grade teacher never doubted that report with the exquisite cover was mine when held up to my art project labeled, "messy pasting."

Both my parents were frustrated musicians who lived out their dreams by urging us to study instruments they had dreamed of playing. Outwardly  encouraging, they approached this very differently. My father critiqued my playing like a concert master training little Mozarts and my mother ridiculed my style because it was not her signature big band, or ragtime.

Everyone outside our home was ludicrous and fodder for building our egos and reminding us that we were "better than." Everyone inside our home learned, quickly, to stay within the confines of our roles so that peace was the facade that lay gently over the passive aggressive hostility we breathed in and breathed out.

I never heard an argument, debate, or difference of opinion between my parents.  I'm not sure I even knew they ever made decisions. Our world simply happened, as if by magic the next move, or meal, or project was simply written into the script and performed discreetly and without comment.

My father and I would sit for hours after dinner discussing ideas, but never anything personal. Personal was considered crass. We did not discuss, money, religion, sex, or personal.

I came out of this insulated existence believing that this was the way all people lived and I married believing that all people were innately reasonable, calm, co-dependent people. (Who occasionally threw chairs and glasses and backhanded their children so that a stunning blow on the nose brought up fond memories of mama on bad days.)

I loved my family and I know they loved me, and one really good thing I brought out of that love was resilience, a way to find happiness within myself and the things I loved, no matter what else was going on in my world.