Hoping for the best

I’ve been thinking about “family” a lot recently.

Particularly about the connections we’re born with … and the connections that fray as we meander through the seasons of our lives. A wall of silence is a reminder that relationships can be as hard as our feelings.

Our wanting to do better than our parents did. Our hoping that we will. And the likelihood that we will fall short seems to be the embodiment of the human condition itself.

A friend reminded me of my own setting and resetting of boundaries as she recounted a rollercoaster ride of familial discord twice removed. The kind of thing that starts as a friend of a friend’s story of hurt and misunderstanding so big that it becomes a telegraphing parable of a story for the ages.

In this story, the daughter had a tumultuous relationship with the father, which had ebbed and flowed over the years in predictable ways. Admiration floated naturally along with the jetsam of off-the-cuff banter that eventually led to a host of invisible wounds that were healed with silence. Some of which she let go, but some gathered to her like scar tissue, overgrowing, becoming proud flesh. 

I know the feeling. Anxiety often rules these interactions. We interpret words - sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly - and commit them to a dictionary of feelings we’ve written in our minds. 

We bring our fallible selves to witness and often we can't help but believe the worst. 

My friend’s friend has erected fences and barricades to protect herself. It had been in her best interest. Anything to blunt the hurt, she understood, allowed some form of relationship to remain. 

 

Which is what I had done for a time. Like the friend of my friend, I had harbored the pain of a mother’s harsh gaze and thoughtless words and let them resonate within. I had wondered if love could be extracted and measured. That we just had to accept that love could coexist with unsolicited advice, disappointment-laced judgmental tone, and the occasional I-told-you-so. 

But we didn't have to like it. 

Avoidance of discomfort sometimes becomes central to our relationships. Not that we shouldn't mitigate abuse via the least taxing ways possible.

After all, avoidance feels like it does the least harm.

But why don't we have an impermeable layer that prevents the muck of our thoughts from drenching us in toxins? 

Maybe that’s where we will find ourselves one day If we were unlucky enough to have been wrong; once avoidance is no longer required  … maybe it will be in a box of old letters or the pages of a journal.

Maybe we will find the evidence of the loving parent we had never known or had forgotten.

And we will see ourselves in a different light. A dimmer one that missed enough possibilities to have mattered. 

My friend found it heartbreaking. All those years of animosity and keeping oneself at arms-length for naught.

For some reason, I found it comforting. 

The note, in my mother’s handwriting, about her joy at some tiny thing I didn't even remember doing, was reassuring that my fears about being unliked, let alone unloved, were unfounded. 

Though it didn't erase any of the awkwardness that had existed in our relationship, it reminded me that my feelings are not always as reliable as they seem and that stoicism isn't the absence of love. And that the work of understanding was neither hers nor mine alone. 

It may even take more than one lifetime.