To Whisper the Rooster
Let me paint you a picture with my words. Let me tell you, in a poem, what there are no words for. A poem is not mere verbiage. It’s a voyage. To the depths, to the heights, to the great beyond. I’m inviting your companionship.
My only son, whom I have loved for half my life, has been saying that I don’t care for him. Told his sweet girlfriend and her dear mother, and I had no idea. It’s an ugly, painful narrative, fictitious yet still hurtful. I reacted, as any mother would, by feeling sad and angry, stupefied and incredulous. Why would Scott bastardize the truth of my love? To what end? I’ve never cared, why should I start now?
Intellectually, I understand it’s not personal, but to throw your own devoted mother so hard under the bus is a surprise I wasn’t prepared for. So there’s some dysregulation going on in the boy’s brain (he’ll always be my boy). He’s been spinning his own reality for years now (I tried to find help but was shamed/blamed. Good help is hard to find). The rooster came home to rest on my head; good a place as any, loving birds as I do, devoted to understanding them.
Doug was appalled, when he heard this. “You are love,” he said. Bless his heart. I try, which is more than I can say for my mother with me. Only once did she tell me she loved me, and she was drunk, which in my child-mind negated it, but now I think she had to be, to say it.
Scotty paints a Dickensian picture of his bleak childhood but he has no idea how lucky he’s been to be stuck with us. No idea how I might have fallen into child abuse, watching my father come violently unhinged, no idea how much energy and effort I’ve put into being not just a “Good Enough” mother but the Very Best Mother I could possibly be for him. Every day, for 30 years, and none of it has meaning? None of it registered? Worse still, all of it was a lie?
Scott is looking for a therapist, it isn’t an easy task (my PCP ‘abandoned’ her patients with no replacement, and it’s been impossible work to play the system). I hope, quite obviously, he finds the help he needs to come to terms with reality, and I plan on keeping a low profile, unless he comes to me. Doug is our peace ambassador, having always escaped Scott’s rage. I’m such an easy target. A lop-sided compliment, really. “You are safe to see what I can’t show the world.” Why this, why now makes me wonder if there’s a correlation with Andrea’s mother loss. She and her mom were so close, such good friends (Scott told me I can’t be his friend, but told Andrea he learned about love from watching her and her mother (throat punch)).
I don’t know how to end this. A good mother, impeccable with her word, must deal with a blatant fabricational delusion yet not take it personally, not grow resentful, still be kind and present and available, and hard though it may be, still continue to throw down bridges, ever hopeful for connection. A holy undertaking. A life-saving mission.
LBM 10/28/2021
