Wednesday, September 5, 2001
Seeing Stories in Faces - To LTF
This afternoon after my mother's hair appointment, we went to lunch.
She is chomping her way through a burger that looks like something else, I'm drinking coffee and watching her gaze around the restaurant and out the window. This is going to be a long luncheon. One benefit to being a little to the side now, though, is that I experience long fits of indifference which would have normally bothered me but now seem like standing under a waterfall of a temperature somewhat chillier than this late, hot summer day. I'm watching her eat, watching her gaze, listening to her comments, all of which begin, "Have you ever noticed..." In my background I hear my father's accusatory voice tell her she is "like a cow". At the time I originally overheard this I imagined that it hurt her, I remember hurting for her. Now, though, I'm seeing that she is very cow-like, very placid. I've known her to be excited and/or excitable only a few times in either of our lives. I also see why this irritated my father, why he considered it a fault. I then remember overhearing him accusing her of not enjoying "giving [him] head" and calling her a "damn prude". This was many years into their marriage after they'd relocated stateside and bought the farm in Texas. I was visiting over a holiday. I remember thinking at the time, every time I've accidentally spied them having sex or arguing about sex it has always been over a holiday or vacation. Examining her at the table this afternoon, I see that she probably is prudish, not much given to sexual expression and how this must have driven my father crazy. He was a sensually expressive man. I think he was also faithful because he was loyal and a person of honor but I'm quite sure it just about killed him. I also know he was smitten with her when he met her. He ordered his squadron, all of whom were assigned to her sighting classes, that she was hands-off, he was going to marry her. He did. She has also told me she was a snob and hung out with snobs. She has a log-like memory of their courtship. He supplied all the emotional detail. I don't think, upon whatever levels of insight each of them were capable, that either regretted their marriage but I think it was certainly much different for both than they imagined it would be, in part, I realized this afternoon, because my mother is, indeed, a cow, and a prude as well, and my father, well, she never provided me with adjectives for him. She is much too genteel, much too placid for that.
He drank himself into a grave at 68. She is still alive and still interested in being alive.
She is chomping her way through a burger that looks like something else, I'm drinking coffee and watching her gaze around the restaurant and out the window. This is going to be a long luncheon. One benefit to being a little to the side now, though, is that I experience long fits of indifference which would have normally bothered me but now seem like standing under a waterfall of a temperature somewhat chillier than this late, hot summer day. I'm watching her eat, watching her gaze, listening to her comments, all of which begin, "Have you ever noticed..." In my background I hear my father's accusatory voice tell her she is "like a cow". At the time I originally overheard this I imagined that it hurt her, I remember hurting for her. Now, though, I'm seeing that she is very cow-like, very placid. I've known her to be excited and/or excitable only a few times in either of our lives. I also see why this irritated my father, why he considered it a fault. I then remember overhearing him accusing her of not enjoying "giving [him] head" and calling her a "damn prude". This was many years into their marriage after they'd relocated stateside and bought the farm in Texas. I was visiting over a holiday. I remember thinking at the time, every time I've accidentally spied them having sex or arguing about sex it has always been over a holiday or vacation. Examining her at the table this afternoon, I see that she probably is prudish, not much given to sexual expression and how this must have driven my father crazy. He was a sensually expressive man. I think he was also faithful because he was loyal and a person of honor but I'm quite sure it just about killed him. I also know he was smitten with her when he met her. He ordered his squadron, all of whom were assigned to her sighting classes, that she was hands-off, he was going to marry her. He did. She has also told me she was a snob and hung out with snobs. She has a log-like memory of their courtship. He supplied all the emotional detail. I don't think, upon whatever levels of insight each of them were capable, that either regretted their marriage but I think it was certainly much different for both than they imagined it would be, in part, I realized this afternoon, because my mother is, indeed, a cow, and a prude as well, and my father, well, she never provided me with adjectives for him. She is much too genteel, much too placid for that.
He drank himself into a grave at 68. She is still alive and still interested in being alive.
