Deceit, Betrayal and Masters of Illusion

In my most recent entry I hinted that I would delve into my view of my parents’ relationship in a future post and since I do my best work when I’m on a roll…; hang on! Things could get rough.

My childhood seemed like a fairytale to me; a mother and father and a brother and we all lived in the same house. We got together with aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents for birthdays and holidays. Ours was a typical all American family; at least it seemed like one to me since I had nothing to compare it to. I enjoyed a childhood of innocence, oblivious to the drama and turmoil which swirled around in a parallel universe that I knew nothing about.

Throughout my childhood, right on into adulthood, my mother concocted this yarn which was my life. She went to great lengths to protect the elaborate illusion she’d created. The fact is, she protected it to her grave. Until her death I continued on, unaware, never suspecting that the person I trusted most had betrayed me.

It wasn’t until my mother’s death that her story started to come apart at the seams. Since my aunt was the only living keeper of family secrets at the time of my mother’s death, I tried to dismiss her accounts of events as the vengeful rantings of a jealous sister.

My aunt and my mother had a love/hate relationship. They came from the same emotionally detached family and were emotionally detached from each other as well. While they loved each other, there was an unspoken rule against expressing it. They had this thing they would do that I witnessed as a child, but again, I was protected from the true meaning of the exchange until later. Mum brought something over to my aunt one day and when she handed it to her their hands touched and they both said, “Eww!” and pulled back their hands and wiping them off on their dresses. After my mother died my aunt explained that this was actually a little thing that they always did that no one knew about but them. It covered up their embarrassment of the fact that even though my mother was saintly and my aunt was devilish, they still loved each other. (Can you say dysfunctional functioning?)

As I mentioned previously, I was told that Mum wanted to call off her wedding to my father well ahead of the wedding but my father was so needy and clingy that she couldn’t bring herself to break his heart and reportedly, on some level she was afraid of him because of some way he’d handled her arm; the details are sketchy there. At any rate, it is all gum under the table now.

My mother made a valiant attempt at making life seem normal and happy. She went to great lengths to keep up the illusion that everything was just fine when in fact she was an incredibly unhappy, lonely woman who never felt that anyone understood her. She seemed to enjoy playing the martyr, sacrificing anything that might have made her happy, for others. Her sacrifices almost always went unnoticed and unappreciated by others but my mother was a deeply religious woman who believed that whatever sacrifice she made for others would be paid back ten-fold in heaven. She really was a true martyr but honestly, sometimes her martyrdom bordered on outlandish even when her motives were pure.

Over a period of several months after my mother’s death, I was able to piece together a much more realistic picture of my childhood by matching the steady stream of truths my aunt felt obliged to share, with the scraps of my mother’s writings. (I had been able to salvage these on the day of her death while cleaning my parent’s house in preparation for the people who would be coming to pay their respects.) I followed up these two resources by questioning other family members and searching my own memories until I feel like most of the pieces fit. The biggest illusion of all though was the one Mum created to give me the security she never felt as a self-proclaimed, borderline mentally ill child and that is the illusion everything was normal. My mother would never have admitted failure and abandoned her marriage without a stellar reason because her vows were more to God than my father and she would never break a vow to God willingly.

I’m sure then that Mum must have been blindsided when she was betrayed while doing the Lord’s work. She’d met a young woman at work and began witnessing to her about the love of God. (That is quite possibly the only love my mother truly ever understood; the love of God.) My mother held bible studies with this woman over a period of some months and the two became fast friends. Eventually my father struck up a friendship with the woman’s husband and our families began spending a lot of time together, especially on weekends. I was just a little kid so I’m not sure on the timetable here but at some point we ended up living next door to each other.

My mother and father had a gold mining claim on which they had built a cabin and we spent nearly every weekend there. More often than not, this couple would be at the cabin with us.

It wasn’t until my aunt spilled the beans after my mother’s death that I was finally able to make sense of some of the events surrounding my parent’s friendship with this couple and their sudden departure from our lives years later.

My father and this woman’s husband became friends. They worked together and even opened a business together (the name of which was a combination of my mother’s first name and her convert friend’s name; by this time my mother had been rewarded with seeing this woman baptized into our church. To her this meant she’d earned another star in her crown in heaven).

My father and this woman’s husband had an over-the-top competition to outdo one another with practical jokes. A prank which resulted in my father’s back pocket being filled with water at work triggered the longest water fight I have ever been witness to. It lasted from sun-up to sun-down on an unseasonably warm day in November in the mid 60’s. It was hilarious to watch and to take part in; the whole neighborhood was involved at some point during the day. They chose and changed sides on a whim so I was never sure who was on my side. I am trying to hang onto this as one of my most favorite childhood memories because it really was one of the most fun days in my life; however, it’s tainted with sadness and betrayal like most of my childhood memories. Why don’t people realize that lies are betrayals and that they are every bit as hurtful?

Eventually my father had an affair with the star in my mother’s crown; all tarnished with treachery and deceit. My aunt confirmed what I’d long suspected. I know her story is accurate because I can perfectly match her version with my own.

It was a cool evening, just after dark, probably early November. I was in kindergarten at the time. Mum had me loaded in the back seat of our 1949 Willy’s, hart-top Jeep; my brother was in the front passenger seat. It seemed like we waited forever for Mum to come out of the house but she didn’t get in so we could go. My father wouldn’t let go of her arm. It was cold in the Jeep but when my father told us to get out and go in the house, Mum told us to stay put.

I am sure my brother probably knew they were fighting, he was 15 at the time; but I didn’t have a clue because part of Mum’s illusion was to never let us hear them fighting. They would retreat to their bedroom and close the door. You could tell there was a lively discussion going on but you were never privy to the details no matter how hard you tried to eavesdrop. My mother was a master illusionist.

That cold, inhospitable evening, my mother confronted her best friend and her husband about their affair. She planned to take my brother and I and leave my father. She had already made arrangements to go share a place with her sister (the same aunt whom in later years would help me fill in these gaps in my view of my childhood). My father apparently came unhinged and was determined that this was NOT going to happen. My parents eventually retreated to their routine of closed-door discussions but the age of innocence was passed and nothing would ever be quite right between my parents again.

This segment is running long so I am posting this in two parts.