Debate or manipulate?

 

I grew up in a two parent family, but most of that time was spent with women. My father worked night and day trying to provide the means for my mother's preferred way of living and she surrounded herself with her family and other like minded people. Controversial subjects were candidly approached by my father, but since I seldom spent time with him, the majority of my life was spent avoiding those subjects. In my mother's family we simply did not talk about certain things.

I can't recall anyone ever saying outright that something was verboten, but there were subtle ways of enforcing those things. My great aunt sometimes whispered of things she wasn't supposed to, but no one else. Life was supposed to be a bright, primary colored, sunny representation of Dick, Jane and Sally.

Variety came in the form of homely things. I loved the story of the country mouse and the city mouse, especially the listing of things they packed in their suitcase. Rearranging the furniture was about as risque as it got unless my almost unknown oldest cousin appeared. She was from my uncle's first marriage and her mother (ahem, whispered, ran a bar!) Of course this one thing explained every failing she had and the occasional stories of how she danced on that bar as an infant were told with relish.

Other than that my life was full of morality tales. Hard working, self sacrificing, noble people who persevered in spite of terrible odds without any vices, sex, or murky blurs at all to mar their virginal heroic personas. We were the stuff Baptist Sunday schools were built on!

Except the world is not a Sunday school and even if my family was composed of these paragons, I found myself needing skills it did not foster. The ability to discuss opposing ideas in a rational, sane, open way was not something I learned at home. Instead I learned manipulation and I didn't know the difference for a long time. Manipulation is a backhanded way of getting what you want without allowing discord to interfere. Oh, there may be discord, anguish and a lot of other things, but you don't have to deal with them if you are a great manipulator. The one being manipulated might be an entirely different story though.

And the insidious truth of such an upbringing is that one does not even know it exists unless he or she happens to have a lucid moment somewhere else. Realizing your format for living is flawed is infinitely uncomfortable. Turning a blind eye does not eliminate the problem and so the problem shows up twenty years later in your offspring who were sent out into the world totally unprepared for reality.

Going away to school when I was seventeen saved me in many ways, but there were leftovers that still affected my children. I am hoping their children experience fewer ripples of perfect family syndrome and more tolerance of reality without losing their ability to be positive thinkers and creative problem solvers along the way.