The Love Exemption

I picked up my mother from her trek to bury her brother and was/had a captive audience for 45 minutes in a Ford Escort. We were treated to the disgusting details of a family brouhaha over the "estate" of a man who died in utter squalor. But I took the opportunity to try to impart, via Socratic Method, some of what I was stumbling upon in therapy.

"So why do you think Uncle Kenny was that way?" I asked upon learning that he had been married and divorced 7 times (!), had innumerable step-children and grandchildren, had been horrifically abusive to all concerned and, as previously noted, was a notorious opponent of the truth. Attribution was made to their parents, my grandparents.

My mother's biological father who "didn't leave, she threw him out when he went for 3 days on a preaching jag and left us with no food or money" was horribly abusive. He would pinch the skin on her brothers' arms and twist it until he drew blood, she told. Never to her, though. Her mother "hated us" she said, for no better reason than they reminded her of him - in looks and, of course, by descendance. She summarized, "So your father leaves you and your mother hates you because he left." Her mother, the indictment reads, only wanted what she could get from her children - monetarily, most notably. When she created the beauty shop for my mother's aborted career as a cosmetologist, she took all of the earnings save $4 a week for mama's compensation. We have a sweat shop history, too, it would seem.

"So why do you think your father was that way?" I asked, hoping to inspire an amateur Aha! Moment (a la Oprah). His father, her grandfather, had been equally abusive, she related. He once threw her grandmother down the basement stairs because she refused him marital favors in the pantry. Then he nailed her on the basement steps, to prove a point, I suppose. The children (my mother and her siblings) were sent to this grandparental nightmare for 2 weeks every year and were often made to sit in the blazing heat in a horse and buggy under an apple tree for hours on end because they weren't wanted in the house.

"So your grandfather was this way, your father was this way, your mother was this way and your oldest brother was this way...." I hoped this would inspire some self-revelation, to no avail. She labeled her surviving siblings, each in his turn, as being alternately jerks or timid creatures as a result of their history. There was no indication, outwardly at least, that she saw herself as fruit of the poisonous tree. That has to be a hard admission to make to yourself. But I saw us both. I made the ill-advised move of hinting at so much to my father who cut me off short with "Don't even infer that she treats people like they do." I don't think he'd ever used the word "infer" before that. He's either blind or 40+ years into Stockholm Syndrome. Or he needs to clue me into what I don't know before I set this idea in stone.

But the light bulb was on for me. I finally had a plausible, if not admirable, explanation for a lot of things. She will continue to make the treks to Timbuktu to bury her dead, call them on their birthday and Christmas, and harbor contempt for them otherwise because "that's just what you do." She'll grieve when they die and lament that they were assholes in life. And that's just what she expects...from us. For no better reason than familial bond, she will forever expect an exemption from good behavior. Never mind any of the other things that you see mothers give on TV. We're down to negotiating for good behavior. That's just what you do. It's the relationship equivalent of Because I Said So. No explanations, no rationale, it just is.

The outside world will get her entertainment face, the happy, ballsy, unedited side-show. Her family will get the ranting, denigrating, belittling heap of poisonous shit that has shimmied unscathed down the family tree. That's what you do. And that's why we'll always be problematic for one another. I don't buy it anymore. But I sure as hell see how I've done it. It's the Love Exemption. If I love you, you are forever exempted from behaving in a loving manner. Love is, in my family, a birthright that comes with no expectations - behavioral or otherwise. But unconditional love in our case is a license to kill. And we use it.

I have demanded of myself lavish praise, attention and sexual prowess to be heaped upon the men I've loved - or thought I loved. From them I demanded nothing. That's just what you do. Where I come from, love requires a lethal mixture of martyrdom and denial. Now I see it. And I see where it originated in a buggy under an apple tree and on basement steps and at kitchen tables over 100 years. I also see that stopping this is going to be like halting a freight train with a palm branch.

That's why we're difficult for each other, mama and I. I never quite bought the entitlement theory of parenthood. I never silently gave a pass for bad behavior when it came to them. I talked back and called it out. I reserved the exemptions for the men I loved.

I'm fresh out of Love Exemptions. The next man will have to act like the people on TV or else. Oh sure...we all have our fits and snits and whatnot. But I'm not going to add any people to the list of those who I'll grieve someday more for what they withheld than what they gave.

The Love Exemptions have been exhausted.