Unsettled

Unsettled 

      by Stranger Doug  MA PhD

So unsettling, so ludicrous, so stupid! This misadventure of my mother's begins earlier than I had knowledge of it. I know about it only from that moment on when mom is blindsided by the sudden development in her life that destroys her hopes. What she has counted on to provide new joy, to free her from the worthlessness she has felt ever since she was sent away from home at a tender age to work as a maid for another family is a chimera, a mirage, a blinding instead of a clearing of sight.

    Mother arrives unexpected at her fiancé’s house to surprise him with a rare evening together. She and he (call him Cornelius for now) have been engaged for some months now and she has been preoccupied planning their upcoming wedding. Of course she’s looking forward to the day when she will be able to say goodbye to her cloying life in an overlarge family. So, eager and hopeful, she knocks on Corny’s door. But no one seems to be home. Because the door is unlocked she steps inside and calls his name. No answer. She feels that something isn't right so she opens his bedroom door and walks in on Corny having sex with her best friend. 

    Hers has been a house of cards. She runs outside and begins to walk. Cars stop and people offer her a ride but she hardly notices them. She walks and walks and eventually becomes conscious of the dark and that she is heading in the direction of the town closest to her home, a distance of maybe ten miles. In her best shoes. She arrives there, but that may well be the last place she ever arrives anywhere, really. 

     Eventually, she meets my father and they are married. It is a marriage of convenience for her. It allows her to put a sort of good light on her future. But growing up, I always wondered why my father worked away from home morning till night, 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM six days a week. He was seldom home. 

    When he did come home late, mom would tell him about this or that bad thing that her children had done, and ask him on occasion when the misdemeanour had been bad enough to go downstairs and give Douglas or Rudi a spanking. He did that. He obeyed her in that, though he hated to. Shame. The shame a good man feels when he knows that he’s been away, and away and away, in order to not see his wife’s troubled eyes. He spanks out of personal desperation at himself and what he got himself into in life, he, a man so filled with the desire to do good and to find love. To find love, that was my father. So he runs from unlove in his wife. From the unlove that trauma has forced on his wife. Catch twenty two if ever there was one. 

     I recall in myself more sadness and irritation about my life with my parents then happiness. I don't know if there was any happiness in me concerning my family. And this from a being full to overflowing with the need to be loved and to love in return. Oh, there were some good times such as Christmas but that is always a good moment for a child when there is a tree decorated, with the knowledge that a few presents will be under it on Christmas day. I remember enjoying playing table tennis with my younger brother, Rudi. I loved driving Old Henry, a 1951 Ford flathead that dad had bought so mom would be free to get around without having to wait for him to get home from his Raleigh’s sales. But most of all, I enjoyed the fun that I had with my friends in the village of Altona, Norman and Ronn. And there was also my friend in the next yard, Lorna. She and I had a special shout that would let the other know when we were able to come over to play. Mom seemed outside of this world, nervous, easily upset, judgemental, preoccupied (as traumatized people tend to be) not especially kind, and worried mainly about where dad might be at any time of the day. I found my happiness away from home.