understatement to say that I had to coax her to talk. Beg her. Decades after the breakup, I finally feel closer to the truth. Or at least her truth.
Much of the tension between my parents during that time is crystallized in Mom’s mind by something that happened at a party. She tells an anecdote time and again whenever she describes that period. “We’re talking about this and that and the subject of chitterlings came up and I said I don’t bring chitterlings in my kitchen,” Mom says, nearly spitting out the word:
chitlins
. “I just don’t do it. Don’t like the way they smell. Don’t like to clean them. I just don’t want to mess with them at home.”
The first time she tells me this, she crosses her hands in her lap and looks me dead in the eye. “Your Dad said: ‘You’d cook them if I told you to.’ ” This might seem like a minor infraction, the kind of thing that might lead to shouting in the car on the way home or maybe Mom’s giving Dad the cold shoulder for a week. Not something that would sink a marriage, prompting a mother to leave her teenage daughter behind. But I can see from Mom’s look that she’d borne a much deeper insult and, more than likely, not for the first time.
“We were in a circle of people and it was like he had to show them who’s the boss. That was the beginning of the end. He was willing to humiliate me. He was willing to do that so our friends would see he had power inside his house. I don’t know what hurt me more, the embarrassment or the realization that your father needed respect that badly.” My father was a gentle man. He rarely raised his voice and was never violent. But for all her toughness, Mom had a soft underside that was easily wounded by words. Her needs clashed with his. It was as simple as that. But it also had to be complicated and unbearable. Why else would a mother flee her family?
My mother’s cheeks seem to sink when she tries to explain how my father, despite his efforts, was not the partner she’d needed while struggling through her first bout with cancer. Her admission was like a stab to my gut. I remember my father doting on Mom during those long weeks when she slept on a cot in the living room because she was too weak to walk up the stairs. I remember Dad carrying trays of soup to her bedside, and going downtown to get the Sunday
New York Times
for her. He fixed her sponge baths and emptied her bedpans. But emotional support is as important as physical health in combating cancer, and Mom apparently enjoyed neither. “After my breast cancer your father just did things that were … well.” Her voice trails off. “He talked about what
he’d
lost.” I’d heard enough.
The man she was describing was not the man I’d known. I’d been living with confusion and anger for decades, for I’d assumed that Mom had just run out on Dad to live life by her own rules. I didn’t know that she’d thought she was running for her life.
At some point in the telling Mom shakes her head and concedes, “I’m no angel”—this is as close to an explanation of her detachment and departure as I’ve ever heard from her. And after yearning for some kind of explanation all these years, it turns out to be more than I can take. In sum, Mom’s account of our life on Oakland Avenue is this: Dad, who had had so little control over the circumstances of his early years, made sure to have absolute control at home. And for a woman as independent as Betty Norris, their marriage was bound to meet with extreme turbulence. Just because I didn’t hear the shouting doesn’t mean all was well. He tried to bend her will; she succeeded in breaking his heart. But we all survived and moved on. Dad and Mom both had other loving relationships, and they maintained their friendship until he passed away. Mom was with Dad the night he slipped into a coma. Deep in her eyes,you still see a faint flicker when she talks about Dad’s essential goodness.
“Here’s the thing
Much of the tension between my parents during that time is crystallized in Mom’s mind by something that happened at a party. She tells an anecdote time and again whenever she describes that period. “We’re talking about this and that and the subject of chitterlings came up and I said I don’t bring chitterlings in my kitchen,” Mom says, nearly spitting out the word:
chitlins
. “I just don’t do it. Don’t like the way they smell. Don’t like to clean them. I just don’t want to mess with them at home.”
The first time she tells me this, she crosses her hands in her lap and looks me dead in the eye. “Your Dad said: ‘You’d cook them if I told you to.’ ” This might seem like a minor infraction, the kind of thing that might lead to shouting in the car on the way home or maybe Mom’s giving Dad the cold shoulder for a week. Not something that would sink a marriage, prompting a mother to leave her teenage daughter behind. But I can see from Mom’s look that she’d borne a much deeper insult and, more than likely, not for the first time.
“We were in a circle of people and it was like he had to show them who’s the boss. That was the beginning of the end. He was willing to humiliate me. He was willing to do that so our friends would see he had power inside his house. I don’t know what hurt me more, the embarrassment or the realization that your father needed respect that badly.” My father was a gentle man. He rarely raised his voice and was never violent. But for all her toughness, Mom had a soft underside that was easily wounded by words. Her needs clashed with his. It was as simple as that. But it also had to be complicated and unbearable. Why else would a mother flee her family?
My mother’s cheeks seem to sink when she tries to explain how my father, despite his efforts, was not the partner she’d needed while struggling through her first bout with cancer. Her admission was like a stab to my gut. I remember my father doting on Mom during those long weeks when she slept on a cot in the living room because she was too weak to walk up the stairs. I remember Dad carrying trays of soup to her bedside, and going downtown to get the Sunday
New York Times
for her. He fixed her sponge baths and emptied her bedpans. But emotional support is as important as physical health in combating cancer, and Mom apparently enjoyed neither. “After my breast cancer your father just did things that were … well.” Her voice trails off. “He talked about what
he’d
lost.” I’d heard enough.
The man she was describing was not the man I’d known. I’d been living with confusion and anger for decades, for I’d assumed that Mom had just run out on Dad to live life by her own rules. I didn’t know that she’d thought she was running for her life.
At some point in the telling Mom shakes her head and concedes, “I’m no angel”—this is as close to an explanation of her detachment and departure as I’ve ever heard from her. And after yearning for some kind of explanation all these years, it turns out to be more than I can take. In sum, Mom’s account of our life on Oakland Avenue is this: Dad, who had had so little control over the circumstances of his early years, made sure to have absolute control at home. And for a woman as independent as Betty Norris, their marriage was bound to meet with extreme turbulence. Just because I didn’t hear the shouting doesn’t mean all was well. He tried to bend her will; she succeeded in breaking his heart. But we all survived and moved on. Dad and Mom both had other loving relationships, and they maintained their friendship until he passed away. Mom was with Dad the night he slipped into a coma. Deep in her eyes,you still see a faint flicker when she talks about Dad’s essential goodness.
“Here’s the thing
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