"Plastic Grocery Bags...." June 11, 2000

"Plastic Grocery Bags...." June 11, 2000

Evening...

....and The Goddess and I were graced with a visit from my Dad earlier this week. It was late Wednesday evening to be specific. It had been quite a long time since I had seen him. I think it was probably back in March, but I am not too sure. When one becomes ingrained in routine, performing the same mundane tasks day in and day out, time seems both to stand still and race by at the speed of light. Without any breaks from reality, without any reprieve from survival, life feels like a spectator's sport. One thing I am confident of, however, is the last time I was out to the house; it was just after Dad's birthday in mid April. You know, when I was subjected to rather horrendous verbal abuse from my Mother?

I certainly do not forget it.

But Dad wasn't there. And part of the reason I have not seen him in so long is that I have no interest in going down there to be on the receiving end of more of the same from my mother.

We had a great time, the three of us. We stayed away from the controversial topics...

...like Mom.

Instead, we focussed on the fact that we need to have more time together. Over coffee, Dad told us how work has been going, about his new ride-on mower, and how he has been fairing lately. We talked about music, we debated about art.

He was here until almost midnight.

But the most poignant aspect of the evening was what he brought with him, for me, in a plastic grocery bag.

"Your mother has been cleaning," he said not too convincingly.

Part of me does not believe it is that simple, for in the bag, was my life.

Or, should I say, scraps of paper (some yellowed with age), cards, and letters elliciting memories of my past spanning over two decades.

I wept the next day when I had a private moment to view thoroughly the contents of the plastic grocery bag.

In it were cards given to my mother during her baby shower while she was pregnant for me. I could not help but think to myself through wet eyes that surely when she first read those cards, she had no inclination of ever calling that child inside of her cruel, vindictive, and greedy.

Moving ahead in time, I came to find cards from my first, second, third, and sixth birthdays. Some were from my paternal grandparents, who both died when I was very young. I had forgotten how much I missed them, even though I remember visiting with them in Nova Scotia only a handful of times. Others were from my Mother's sister, now in her seventies, who has been institutionalized for over twenty years in Allentown, PA, after a nervous breakdown that she could not recover from. There were cards from my maternal grandmother, with whom I was able to develop a closer relationship until she died when I was ninteen. She was an angry, bitter woman. She was spiteful and at times nasty. She passed on this legacy of mental illness to her daughters. But I loved her just the same. Like I love my Mom.

Pouring over these fragments of my past, I found myself grieving deeply for them all, feeling sorrow for times we never had, and never will have.

There was a newspaper clipping from when I was in cub camp more than twenty years ago. There I was, poised over a huge metal tub, washing my supper dishes in cold, almost soapless water. The caption read "KP Duty". Of greater significance was the picture below. Among two other cubs was Lowlandz, then not even ten, like me. How different we both looked. How much we have changed. How much we have gone through since that picture was taken.

That was the year we met.

What an invaluable treasure.

There was a letter from my father, written in '75 when he was on course in the military. He addressed me as his "dear son" back then. He signed it "Love Daddy".

While the letter was short, it exuded a great affection for me that he seemed unable to communicate as the years went by. Was it shortly after that that he stopped calling me, "son"? How long after did I stop calling him, "Daddy"? Why did things have to get so bad between us that neither of us even remembers losing what we once had?

But that was then. I am in my thirties now. Dad is sixty. And while I do not think it terribly adult to call him "Daddy"...

...he again calls me son.

After looking through all these things, I was profoundly sad. I was in grief for so very many things. Here was my early, most formative part of my life in a plastic grocery bag. Because its contents reflected times I cannot remember, or barely remember, and exude some truths and attitudes I have never been cognisant of, it somehow does not feel like my life at all. It is like the contents of that bag belong to somebody else.

The only thing that represented a consistent reality was Lowlandz. He has been there for me since that time. He is with me now.

Thank you, bro. You are the greatest gift of all.

You allow me to divert my focus from just why Mom has given me the stuff to begin with.