Reaching out
Like the rest of us Stateside I’m sure, I’ve been watching the aftermath of Katrina with queasy horror. Beyond words.
I’ve also seen hints of a lot of generosity. Sure, the give-to-charity type is all over the place, but that isn’t actually what I mean. I’m talking about someone taking in an abandoned greyhound, someone else saying “Stay with me; I have room,” others picking up and heading south on no notice.
I don’t know anyone on the Gulf Coast. The only time I ever saw New Orleans was at the age of eight, when my parents insanely drove from North Carolina to Laredo to pick up a train into Mexico. (I’m serious. They did. It was insane.)
That doesn’t mean I have no responsibility to help. It just means I’m limited to help-by-proxy, faceless help; I can’t offer a flesh-and-blood hand if I’ve no one to offer it to. As it turns out, I do better with helping when I can offer a hand, make a human connection. I daresay I’m not alone in that. I also say that I don’t find it particularly praiseworthy; need is need, and limiting my response to need is not what I hope of myself.
I suppose that’s why I don’t talk here about the occasions on which I do extend my hand. Partly that shame, partly others’ privacy, partly a (salubrious, I’m sure) reluctance to claim virtue.
I’ve a story to tell, just now, aimed at someone on the other side of my outstretched hand. I hope the rest of you will forgive the indulgence.
It was years before my mother accepted David. Years. She had her reasons—at least, the ones she told me about. Honest or not (and to some extent they were), those reasons were not the entire story. David was my freedom, many years ago. David taught me how to build an independent spirit, and I don’t know that my mother ever quite got used to that, either.
I think she knew how it happened, though. I do think she knew.
As the days counted down before my departure for Madison to start graduate school, everyone in the house knew what the plans were, but none of us dared say anything. Peace was like that, in our family: artificial, bounded by thick slabs of silence. I was racking my brain trying to sort out how to move us and our stuff, given that we didn’t live in the same city and I didn’t drive. And how to do this without material assistance from my parents—well, that bordered on impossible.
So finally, one sweaty-hot July morning, I marched myself out to the garden where my parents were working, and I came clean. I tell you three times, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Leaving grad school was a cinch by comparison (of course, I was so beaten down by the time I left that really there wasn’t much else I could do).
In the pictures, these scenes always carry dignity. Well, I didn’t. I was crying and gulping for air and sweating bullets and doubtless looking a right sorry specimen. But for once in my sorry excuse for an adult life, I didn’t ask permission; I told them what I was going to do.
My mom had a way of smacking me down in my teenage years, whenever I came close to asserting myself. Only once did she ever actually hit me, and this was not that time (but I remember that time, yes, I do). She’d just say something deeply cutting and completely unanswerable, shocking me into stunned silence. This time, she said, “So what do you want from us? Our blessing?”
That made me stammer, more than a little. I certainly hadn’t envisioned asking for, much less receiving, any such thing. I knew better. Finally, I got hold of myself long enough to say that no, I didn’t want any blessing they weren’t willing to give; all I wanted was their help packing and moving.
And what do you know, I got it, essentially without further argument.
My parents and I have kept a careful arms-length distance ever since. One thing I have never done since that day is accept money from them, though we could have used it in those early years. Mom offered. Repeatedly. But it was easier to live the grad-mouse lifestyle than attach the marionette strings. (I paid for both my master’s degrees. My parents paid for both of my sister’s—and she still lives at home. Coincidence? Well, it’s always more complicated than joining point A and point B… but no, I’m sorry, it’s not mere coincidence.)
What it comes down to is that yanking myself free hurt like the devil and scared me silly. I did, however, survive it, and I have never had reason to regret doing it.
The same will be true of the person I’m writing this story for. I offer the story, then, along with my hand.