gentle voice was just an imitation, I was mimicking the tone of those enlightened parents you see sometimes, the kind who never seem to raise their voice beyond the steady monotone of kind patience, like the computer in that movie
2001: A Space Odyssey
.
But even parents like that won’t be forgiven, you know. My wife’s friend is a psychologist, and she spent her life explaining things in the most calm, reasonable voice you can imagine. She never raised her voice. Even when her kid was two years old, shewas out there saying things like, “Please don’t run in the street, because, even though you’re excited and it’s hard to pay attention, some people drive their cars too fast and they might not see you,” et cetera. Now, naturally, her adult son won’t talk to her. At all. He finds her unbearably manipulative. Repressive. Repulsive. Good words like that.
I recall when my wife’s friend first told us about this. How old was I? Twenty-three or twenty-four maybe, and the son might have been twenty. I was sitting at the kitchen table across from this old, heavy, smooth-talking gal, the leader of some women’s group thing my wife went to, and I was holding my sweet, sleeping baby in my arms. I can recall giving her that stern, bored stare I used to reserve for people I thought of as adults. She was almost my father’s age, and her angry son was only a few years younger than I. She was a failure, I thought then. I stared down at my sleeping baby’s face, the long-lashed eyes, the softly parted lips that moved slightly, as if he dreamed of nursing, and I thought: That will never happen to me. I will never let them hate me.
Now, as they are growing older, I am aware that hatred is a definite possibility at the end of the long tunnel of parenthood, and I suspect that there is little one can do about it.
Not long ago, when I insisted that he come down to dinner, my youngest son called me a “stupid idiot.” I did not spank him, or wash his mouth out with soap, as my own father might have done; I simply set him up on the “time-out” stool—our preferred method of punishment—and scolded him while he kicked his legs and sang defiantly. His eyes sparked at me, and Icould clearly see the opening of a vortex I would eventually be sucked into, against my will.
Once, I recall, when my oldest son was about five years old, he asked me if he could have my skeleton when I was dead. He told me that when he was grown up, he wanted to own a haunted house. He would cover my remains with spider webs and charge people five dollars to look at them.
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever.” I even smiled, as if it were cute. I did not act as if I was offended. But the truth is, my throat tightened. You’ll be sorry, I wanted to say. You’ll be sorry when I’m gone!
Do you know how sorry I was? You should have seen me at my father’s funeral. I look back on this with some embarrassment, because I truly lost control. I wailed and tore at my hair. My children may have been too young to remember seeing this.
When my grandfather died, my father wept silently. Tears ran out of his nose, and I remember that it took me a long time to figure out that he didn’t simply have a cold. At the funeral, he stared straight ahead, rigid, almost glaring, his jaw set.
One time, I remember, we were at the county fair. We were walking back to our car through the parking lot, when a group of older teenagers began to make fun of us. This was in the early seventies, and the teens were what we then called “hippies”—shaggy, raggedly dressed, full of secrets. As a child, I was warned to stay away from them, as they might kidnap me in one of their Volkswagen vans and force me to smoke marijuana.
In any case, they were amused by us. We must have looked ridiculously corny to them, and I remember one of them callingout, “Look! Here comes Mother, Father, and the Children!” And the others joined in: “Hello, Mother! Hello, Father! Hello, little
2001: A Space Odyssey
.
But even parents like that won’t be forgiven, you know. My wife’s friend is a psychologist, and she spent her life explaining things in the most calm, reasonable voice you can imagine. She never raised her voice. Even when her kid was two years old, shewas out there saying things like, “Please don’t run in the street, because, even though you’re excited and it’s hard to pay attention, some people drive their cars too fast and they might not see you,” et cetera. Now, naturally, her adult son won’t talk to her. At all. He finds her unbearably manipulative. Repressive. Repulsive. Good words like that.
I recall when my wife’s friend first told us about this. How old was I? Twenty-three or twenty-four maybe, and the son might have been twenty. I was sitting at the kitchen table across from this old, heavy, smooth-talking gal, the leader of some women’s group thing my wife went to, and I was holding my sweet, sleeping baby in my arms. I can recall giving her that stern, bored stare I used to reserve for people I thought of as adults. She was almost my father’s age, and her angry son was only a few years younger than I. She was a failure, I thought then. I stared down at my sleeping baby’s face, the long-lashed eyes, the softly parted lips that moved slightly, as if he dreamed of nursing, and I thought: That will never happen to me. I will never let them hate me.
Now, as they are growing older, I am aware that hatred is a definite possibility at the end of the long tunnel of parenthood, and I suspect that there is little one can do about it.
Not long ago, when I insisted that he come down to dinner, my youngest son called me a “stupid idiot.” I did not spank him, or wash his mouth out with soap, as my own father might have done; I simply set him up on the “time-out” stool—our preferred method of punishment—and scolded him while he kicked his legs and sang defiantly. His eyes sparked at me, and Icould clearly see the opening of a vortex I would eventually be sucked into, against my will.
Once, I recall, when my oldest son was about five years old, he asked me if he could have my skeleton when I was dead. He told me that when he was grown up, he wanted to own a haunted house. He would cover my remains with spider webs and charge people five dollars to look at them.
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever.” I even smiled, as if it were cute. I did not act as if I was offended. But the truth is, my throat tightened. You’ll be sorry, I wanted to say. You’ll be sorry when I’m gone!
Do you know how sorry I was? You should have seen me at my father’s funeral. I look back on this with some embarrassment, because I truly lost control. I wailed and tore at my hair. My children may have been too young to remember seeing this.
When my grandfather died, my father wept silently. Tears ran out of his nose, and I remember that it took me a long time to figure out that he didn’t simply have a cold. At the funeral, he stared straight ahead, rigid, almost glaring, his jaw set.
One time, I remember, we were at the county fair. We were walking back to our car through the parking lot, when a group of older teenagers began to make fun of us. This was in the early seventies, and the teens were what we then called “hippies”—shaggy, raggedly dressed, full of secrets. As a child, I was warned to stay away from them, as they might kidnap me in one of their Volkswagen vans and force me to smoke marijuana.
In any case, they were amused by us. We must have looked ridiculously corny to them, and I remember one of them callingout, “Look! Here comes Mother, Father, and the Children!” And the others joined in: “Hello, Mother! Hello, Father! Hello, little
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