Musing Manhood....September 5, 1999

Musing Manhood....September 5, 1999

I first became aware of the book's existence a few weeks ago when my sister proudly held it up and declared,

"Look what I got".

We do that sometimes, display our newly acquired literature and music wares, not as a means of eliciting jealousy, but to let the other know what may soon be available for borrowing (usually just as the smell of newness wears off). Nevertheless, having read the author's first book, there was nothing about it that urged me to yank his second from the clutches of my sister any time soon. It could wait, I thought to myself.

Except for some reason, it could not.

I suppose it happens to everyone at one time or another. A tiny little itch of a thought that something needs attending to becomes lodged in the back of the mind. However, what with work deadlines, laundry to finish, the lawn to mow, little ones to feed, the itch is ignored easily enough. Except that, with each passing day, the itch grows exponentially. Soon, akin to viral email attachments, that itch of a thought trails almost all cognitive processes, screaming to be scratched.

"Read that book!", my itch howled after a few days. It would no longer be denied.

While my sister was vacationing in Toronto for two weeks, I was checking up on her feline menagerie and saw the book resting on an end table. Even if she was not yet finished, I could probably get through most of it before she returned, I rationalized. Besides, as pervasive as the call to read it was by that time, and as punitive as it seemed to let it just sit there, I did not care if she was only on page ten and due to fly back tomorrow.

I Gold Bonded that itch and coopted the book.

Those "itches of thought that we are neglecting something important" have diverse origins. Sometimes we promise a friend or relative something and it gets perpetually put off. Sometimes we set a goal for ourselves to start something new, or to end a bad habit, which will invaritably end up at the mercy of daily routine or complacency.

Sometimes it is our conditioning to call mother.

Still, there are those less frequent occasions where the festering thought has seemingly external origins. We hear a voice whispering to us to "sit up and pay attention to what I have to say about this...", which unfortunately often gets ignored either because it is not speaking loudly enough, is not quite on the same wavelength and thus lacks clarity, or does not fit into our sense of what is rational.

Just who or what is responsible for that whisper is anyone's guess: our intuition, the spirits that guide us, guardian angels. We all have different theories which seem predominantly guided by our spirituality. One thing that is constant, though, is that the message points the way to what could turn out to be a valuable life lesson.

If we ignore the initial whispering, it often does not repeat itself. In rare situations, we cannot shut it up.

Nor should we, I am coming to realize. Part of my journey has been to try giving a bit more credence to that inner voice, to those gut feelings we all have about certain situations and people. I have been discovering that more often than not, those tingles are valid. However, with wedding plans, a full work load, administrtive duties, housework, and pets to care for, I was hoping amongst hope that in this instance the voice would go away, even for just a little while, until after the wedding for instance.

No such luck.

In the end, when all was said and done, so to speak, because I could ignore the voice no longer, I was given the gift of I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb.

And all became clear.

From the outset, let me allay the fears of anyone who intends to read this book. My agenda here is not to reveal the intricacies of the book's plot. So please, worry not. I detest having endings revealed to me, too

It is rare that a novel will elicit overt emotional responses from me. I could count such instances on one hand. Usually, a book's content and the writer's delivery are just not enough to loosen the tightly bound strings that are my male emotions. Indeed, these strings have been practically fused together and made barely distinguishable as a result of years of familial and personal issues on top of conflicting societal messages of what it means to be a man.

However, I Know This Much Is True is about men; it is about fathers, sons, brothers and best friends. It examines the ties that paradoxically bind us yet keep us at arm's length. It is a testimony to the harsh consequenses incured for the way we men relate to ourselves and each other. For this reason, and because I could relate so wholly to the characters, as I read the book I felt little hands prying apart some of those still fused emotions, strand by strand. Alas, sometimes the pull would be too strong, a thread would snap, and I would find myself misty on more than one occasion.

Dominick Birdsey, the central character, is a man whose anger is his nemesis, his first and only line of defense. When faced with highly sensitive issues, his anger serves to sever him from the things he values and loves the most. It also makes him appear to be the kind of man he so desperately wants to avoid being. One of the reasons Dominick has had such difficulty nurturing his sensitivity is because of his identical twin brother, Thomas.

In his child and adolscent years, Thomas Birdsey epitomizes sweetness, sensitivity, and introversion. He is the "good" twin. However, his lack of assertiveness always places him in the position of needing to be looked out for by his brother. This particular aspect of the twins' relationship becomes exacerbated when Thomas is diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of ninteen.

Dominick and Thomas' polar identities make them two halves of the same whole. As such, they never attain a closeness that even mere biological brothers can have, let alone identical twins. The onset of Thomas' mental illness guarantees that they never will. Well into adulthood, Dominick continues to look out for Thomas' best interests, but at the sacrifice of looking out for his own. While Thomas feels like a monkey on Dominick's back, for him to let go, Dominick would have to fill the void with looking at what is dysfunctional in his own life.

At different stages in my life, I have been both Dominick and Thomas. As a child, I was angry, bitter, and had a hate on for the world and everyone in it. I was a bully. I was destructive. I beat on my sister. I beat on other children. I lit fires. As offensive as I see it is now, as much as it gauls me to even admit it, my mother's nickname for me was Little Hitler.

As I matured, I merged into Thomas. I was withdrawn, silent, and highly sensitive. In my late teens, being so repressed led to full blown depression, and I had a breakdown of sorts. I thought I was insane, and half-heartedly attempted suicide. I thought I had no place in the world. I thought most everyone in my life cared little whether I was alive or dead. I was full of hurt and sorrow all the time. I was immune to joy and happiness. No matter what I did, or tried to do, nothing worked. Nothing mattered. I certainly did not.

As Dominick's lack of control brought on perpetual loss, I found myself repeatedly torn between sympathizing with him and feeling as though he was getting what he deserved. As young Thomas took blow after blow, I found myself struggling with wanting to reach out and hug him tightly and demanding that he stand up for himself for once. Just as I would love to give Little Hitler a piece of my mind, followed up with a gentle discussion as to why he felt compelled to spread such pain to others, and ultimately to himself. Just as I would love to be able tell that depressed young man that one has to be strong to survive this world, that true strength is something that is radiated from within, and is not in the form of a brick fortress we erect around us. Of course, this stern discussion would be followed up with a tight embrace, reassurances that things are going to be a-okay, and most likely remaining there while he has a long and much needed cry on my shoulder.

The root of Dominick's and Thomas' emotional oppression and repression is, of course, their parents.

Ray, the boys' step-father, was a proud, partiotic war veteran, and quintessential patriarch. He could never accept the boys as his own, and indeed, resented them for diverse reasons.

He resented Dominick because of the boy's strength and independance, a will fueled by his ignorance of who his biological father was, and fantasy that the unknown man would someday show up and take him away to utopia. Ray felt that because he put a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, that they owed him the world. Dominick's will was a reminder to his step-father that payment would always be due in full.

Sensitive, compassionate Thomas simply did not fit into Ray's stereotypical definition of maleness. His attempts to browbeat Thomas into shape resulted in Thomas becoming even more sensitive, more emotional, and more withdrawn. Thomas became Ray's easy target, his scapegoat for all the family's problems, all of society's problems, and all the pain that a young Ray never learned how to purge.

As is all too common, Ray's epiphany comes, in some ways, much too late.

Connie, the boy's mother, is only alive in Dominick's memories. She died of cancer, and all that we learn about her is primarily through her son. Connie conceived the boys out of wedlock in a time when it was considered shameful to do so. She never revealed the identity of the boys' father to them, probably due to her guilt. There is a disparity with which she raised the twins. Thomas is her prince, and Dominick the troublemaker. Unfortunately, the boys' individual reactions to their step father do much to feed into this disparity. Connie held fast to the dream that theirs would be a role model family, and was not able to see the abject dysfunction going on around her, and that she was very much a part of. She did nothing to validate the pain that the boys endured at the hands of Ray, and indeed, did more to insinuate that it was the boys' fault that their step-father was a tyrant. Connie was a poster woman for the emotionally abused.

The Dominick in me was something to make my military father proud. He ran a tight ship, and the degredation he suffered at the hands of his superiors turned our home into a boot camp. I was a quick study, and learned that brutality was synonymous with manhood, at least the kind of manhood that earned my father's approval. I often wondered how I would have turned out had he not retired when I was seven.

Leaving the only existence and security my father ever knew was pivotal to all that came afterward. He went to university, then left after it was no longer financially feasable. He went from one job to another with increasingly longer periods of unemployment in between. My mother became the major bread winner. My father lost his identity completely; he became his own antithesis. In his quest to reclaim himself and his status, he became this unpredictable yet omnipotent monster who one day would be challenging me to go outside and deal with my gripes with him like a man (despite my being only a boy), and the next day be giving me a set of golf clubs so that we could spend bonding time on the course together.

And for so many years, my mother seemed blind to it all. She had her reasons, some of which I can see now are valid ones. As a child, there were issues concerning my mother that I was not aware of. Yet, when I took my emotionally battered little self to her for consolation, for a warm embrace, I ran into her own brick fortress first. She offered no way in.

Through it all, I became Thomas. My father, not knowing what to do with himself let alone me, replaced the token golf clubs with constant belittling criticism and disapproval. When he was even condescending to speak to me, that is. He gave up on me at the same time he gave up on himself.

Of course, there were many other dynamics happening that contributed to my abject hopelessness, despair, and ultimate wish for release. However, losing the connection with my father was an ongoing process whose seed was gernimated when I was still very young. In losing my most desired mentor, I was robbed of the opportunity to learn how to deal with all the rest.

I did not have the courage to pull the trigger all those years ago, needless to say. Instead, I began scuffing my feet down a path of self discovery. It was not a well cut trail, mind you. In many places, there were stumps to be pulled, boulders to heave, and in places if impasse, detours to fashion from whatever resources were nearby. In places of rest, one thing I was able to do was to come to my own conclusions about what it meant to be a man, since I had no adequate frame of reference. Those conclusions, combined with others that came further, such as the gifts in honouring myself, the power of spirituality, and the sanctity of all living things, permitted me to disperse clean fill onto my path, and level it out a bit. The twists and turns are still there, though, as a constant reminder of the lessons I have learned along the way. The detours are clearly marked lest I ever fall back a ways. And, in light of my marriage a little more than a week away, combined with the blessing in my father's wish to heal our almost irreparablly severed bond, I see now that the road is ready to be paved.

Which is a good thing, because my mother is very ill now. She has never been able to come to terms with her own pain, let alone that which was inflicted during my childhood. Her fortress is ever present, ever looming, and is perhaps the only thing that is keeping her alive at this point. There will come a time, in the not so distant future I fear, that my father and I will need each other. I am so tremendously grateful that he is walking beside me now.

In reading I Know This Much Is True I was crying for my own struggles as well as those of the characters. I rejoiced in their accomplishments as I rejoice in my own. Because their journey so mirrors mine, because they are men, and in the manner with which Lamb relates their struggles, I felt full permission to do so. I could free myself from the emotional inhibitions I, like many men, still struggle with.

The read was also a reminder that my travels, like theirs, are never over. We may slow down as time passes, we may need a new pair of shoes from time to time, but we are forever ambling.

Most importantly, I realized one thing I know to be true. I still know so very little to be true.

....Blessed Be