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OldManRivers
What's it like to have a son? How old is he? I sometimes think starting a family is all need, but then I remember if I am going to be a father, I'll need to be 100% there. If I don't want to repeat the ways in which my dad tried to raise me, that is.
Normalcy is no longer something I strive for however. I could live with being me. I mean, I always have. It's just that it is difficult to find a place for all that is me in this world I find myself in.
Thanks for putting into words whether it was worth the bother for you to crawl out. It is helpful to hear these things from someone who's older than me. (Going by what you wrote, I figure you're older)
I was born the day after Pearl Harbor - I am older than the Boomers.I will be 71 inDecember 2012.
I have had many wonderful times with my sons - now 42 and 44. I avoided most of the mistakes my dad made but made some of my own. Doing one's best doesn't change other's behavior toward one's children - their mother was a narcicistic bitck, and one Sunday School teacher was a sadistic spawn of Satan. My older son is a recluse, works and saves up, takes a leave and holes up somewhere. Social avoidant personality sindrome. The younger son has three boys, a wonderful wife, a good home and great love for them.
If if yo have a family, take a lot of photos, make quality prints and fill many albums. A digital image is fleeting regardless of backups. Get a safety deposit box to store your things, your memories. Divorce is possible - maybe likely, and vindictive ex'es have been known do destroy these things.
My old man would tell me to do something -knowing I couldn't. He had a particular expression, voice tonal quality, I would know what was coming and go numb. After the second failure to comply, he would go into a rage, "You gonna do what I tell you to do" and beat the holy crap out of me. Then laugh in my face. He was the youngest child, 11 years younger that his brother, 15 younger than his sister, and they severely bullied him. Out of the blue he would say"you just like .(his brother) . ." and slap me. Any comments was sass and resulted in a beating. I had a brother 5 years younger, and if I spoke to him I was risking punishment, and my brother would use that to torment -run tattle about something, stand by and laugh as I was whipped. We made amends as middle aged adults - he hurt as bad as I did.
We lived on a tenant farm. I went back several months ago, and from the lay of the land and a TVA power line and supporttower l located where the house stood. Nothing was there, I realized that all my memories were those of a child who needed protection and acceptance. The adult me does not need that. To "heal the inner child' is to become stuck as a child -both that child and his tormentor are gone, the child by growing up and the tormentor by dying. I leave him in God's hands. I feel a little for him, for once he had a son who loved him, and I know how great that is. He never did.
In the old Testament, somewhere, it says that the sins of the father are visited on the son, down through 7 generations. Leaving the hyperbole of "7" behind, there is truth: not devine condemnation, but because violence and abuse begets the same. I believe with my death the chain is broken.
Bear, I want to share a phrase I had in some poor attempts at poetry in my teans - "soul-searing loneliness." I am not a religious man, but I do attend church - I am a spiritual person, open to the Unseen, which may be only my imagine. If so, and it brings peace and comfort, if only for a night, so be it. But I believe that we have not even begun to understand the concept of God - from a tribal god, one of many, to a presence in a whirlwind, to a temple , to a God in spirit in exile, to God in man as Jesus - as we evolve we must be open to see what we have seen in part - Paul alluded to this. These ideas, my meditation, my time in prayer - these things sustain me. In a few years, I will leave on an open-ended journey through all time and space. If I am wrong, what of it? I will be cold meat then hot ashes - and that I believed in vain will not matter. My crutch, my glasses, my hearing aids, my faith - they are for my living now.-
Peace .