Undone

I once knew a woman
We both worked together at a firm in the midwest
She was the Senior Office Secretary
And I was the receptionist
She was, to me then, a bitter old woman
a bit shabby in her dress
yesterday’s fashion, wrinkled
and she had a reputation for going to the bars after work
with the guys.
Some mornings afterward, she’d be sick in the bathroom.
She was sharp as a tack, though and brilliant, smart and clever.
She knew the history of the place, from filing to personnel.
Work did not flow well without her steady, unflappable presence.

She had a daughter but no husband
I was so young
I did not know then
what a prison marriage is
what an injustice single motherhood is
I did not yet know that all the love in all the worlds cannot erase
poverty
cruelty
or that shadows of abuse cut deep wounds that still bleed real blood
generations upon generations later
and steal the safety that makes intimacy possible
the intimacy that supports family bonding,
that bonding of parent and child,
healthy bonding
especially between mother and child
facilitating the passing down of all the information necessary
for survival
and not only survival but the ability to thrive
—to dream and create and live beyond survival—to thrive
as all creatures
from monarchs to swallows, and crickets to trees
in this life and all lives ...
GONE.
I did not know that such things made us GONE.

Although my mother was a pagan when she had me,
she joined a church to survive my father’s inherited patriarchy
I do not think he meant it, but he also did not mean to not mean it
and her own survival of abuse.
And that saved us all, I think, but it did warp me.
I lived.
Anyway, I am ashamed to say I absorbed the cult’s messages.
I had a simplistic view and wondered why she drank.
I dissociated my own mother’s drinking, interestingly. Maybe someday we’ll get to mine.

Once when we were alone in the office, she confided to me
that her father drowned himself on her birthday.
He sent her a card that said, “I hope you have a happy birthday.”
And later that day, she found out he had drowned himself.
She explained she came to understand as an adult he did not mean his death
as any “gift” to her,
only that he wanted to end his pain and to say good bye.
He loved her, she knew.
But as a child she had been wild with grief and remorse,
and believed her birthday and all her life to be a curse.
She was not sure it was not a curse, even now.
She could not understand how an adult could make such a mistake
I believe the technical term she used was “to be such a shit as“
to send a child a card like that.

And I began to understand that life is not a kind place
And people come to you from paths that lead from a multitude of different places.