Time
I've been away for quite some time. Life has intervened in my life and writing has shifted to a backburner issue. It takes so little to unbalance a plan, a need to communicate by writing about various issues and subjects.
The first derailment was the return of my son, once married and a father of one. His life came crashing down around his head after his wife informed him that their marriage was over on Chritmas Day, 2005. He has taken the blow hard and has devolved into depression and way too much alcohol consumption. I gave life to this person once and yet today it seems as if the gift that I once gave to him is in grave jeopardy, a gift that is withering; the roots drying, decaying and morhphing into a soul I hardly recognize. The fight that I am now engaged in appears to be hopeless because my son has no hope and his heart is full of, what I can only perceive to be is self hatred at his chalking up just one more loss. I can't make it clear to him that life, all of it, is a series of wins and losses and that if he can just stay in the game, he will learn how to roll with many of the punches that life seems incapable of not dealing to those of us who live it.
He has little contact with the life, his son, that he helped to create and the anger that dwells in my heart for his ex-wife is so palpable that I cannot even begin to think of myself as a grandmother. To be sure, my son was as responsible as she for their marriage coming apart at the seams. Unfortunately, their relationship was doomed from the very beginning.
She came from a very wealthy family. We have always been middle class, broke on far too many occasions, but never dirt poor. Her family has always had private school education, trust funds, and maids. Our family has been maids, largely attended public schools, and have never been able to scrape enough together to even begin to spell or dream the words "trust fund."
Her father was supposed to have paid for their college education while supporting them throughout the entire process. A bad mix of intended largess and need, something that I warned my son about before he decided to walk down the aisle and take his vows. But he was confident that I, after living more than fifty years, didn't know the players in the game, and that his future father-in-law, nee, the entire family were kind and loving people. To be sure they must be because a wedding was thrown together almost over night attended by over four hundred people after the announcement that a baby was on the way.
My son moved hundreds of miles north from our home to be embraced by this new clan; or so he thought. I can't really say when the marriage began to unravel. Maybe it was right after the honeymoon ended and his new wife neglected to order any of their wedding photos. Or maybe it was when my son's father-in-law, a few months after they had been married asked my son, what appeared on the surface to be an innocent question; "So, you know son, I'm not out in the world as much as I was as a young man, so exactly what do you people call yourselves today?"
The question came from left field because race had never been discussed, at least in his presence, by my son's to be wife's family. My son, like our other two children are bi-racial. All of his life his has been mistaken to be either Latin or Puerto Rican when in fact he is an "other," the only designation on federal forms that indicate a person that has mixed parentage (black and white).
Like so many years ago, decades really, far too many politcally correct white people still judge people on the color of their skin - rather than the content of their hearts. So, for years I have tried to raise my son with the reality of being black, while praying that life and society has moved beyond the scars that I still carry with me today from growing up black in Ohio during the 1940's and 1950's. But even in those days there was a sense of respect from whites... that is, my father was once rebuked by a small white boy who called him "Mr. Nigger." So, apparently within the confines of the upper classes, in country clubs and god knows how many board rooms; white,entitled males still struggle with the concept of what to call black men when they know their names.
My son, raised in my household, a place where the mom, me, has been a practiced smartass all of my life, responded to his father-in-law with, "Well, I prefer to be called John (not my son's real name which is unusual enough to omit for his privacy)." What ever occurred in the mix of those two lives who once thought that they should join to create a life and then, at some later time, fragment their lives into a thousand pieces, escapes me today.
So, my blog has taken a backseat while I try to help my son to ressurrect his life. The struggle is continuing and there are far too many days when I feel as if I'm losing the battle. My husband is frustrated by the fact that it appears that we are re-raising a twenty-nine year old man, soon to be thirty, and yet I know that if our son were to fulfill one of his many plaintive "I'll either kill myself or set it up for someone else to do it" would be an earth shattering and life altering event for both of us.
Forgive me for sharing a bit of my pain and angst and if you believe, please pray for me and my son!
The first derailment was the return of my son, once married and a father of one. His life came crashing down around his head after his wife informed him that their marriage was over on Chritmas Day, 2005. He has taken the blow hard and has devolved into depression and way too much alcohol consumption. I gave life to this person once and yet today it seems as if the gift that I once gave to him is in grave jeopardy, a gift that is withering; the roots drying, decaying and morhphing into a soul I hardly recognize. The fight that I am now engaged in appears to be hopeless because my son has no hope and his heart is full of, what I can only perceive to be is self hatred at his chalking up just one more loss. I can't make it clear to him that life, all of it, is a series of wins and losses and that if he can just stay in the game, he will learn how to roll with many of the punches that life seems incapable of not dealing to those of us who live it.
He has little contact with the life, his son, that he helped to create and the anger that dwells in my heart for his ex-wife is so palpable that I cannot even begin to think of myself as a grandmother. To be sure, my son was as responsible as she for their marriage coming apart at the seams. Unfortunately, their relationship was doomed from the very beginning.
She came from a very wealthy family. We have always been middle class, broke on far too many occasions, but never dirt poor. Her family has always had private school education, trust funds, and maids. Our family has been maids, largely attended public schools, and have never been able to scrape enough together to even begin to spell or dream the words "trust fund."
Her father was supposed to have paid for their college education while supporting them throughout the entire process. A bad mix of intended largess and need, something that I warned my son about before he decided to walk down the aisle and take his vows. But he was confident that I, after living more than fifty years, didn't know the players in the game, and that his future father-in-law, nee, the entire family were kind and loving people. To be sure they must be because a wedding was thrown together almost over night attended by over four hundred people after the announcement that a baby was on the way.
My son moved hundreds of miles north from our home to be embraced by this new clan; or so he thought. I can't really say when the marriage began to unravel. Maybe it was right after the honeymoon ended and his new wife neglected to order any of their wedding photos. Or maybe it was when my son's father-in-law, a few months after they had been married asked my son, what appeared on the surface to be an innocent question; "So, you know son, I'm not out in the world as much as I was as a young man, so exactly what do you people call yourselves today?"
The question came from left field because race had never been discussed, at least in his presence, by my son's to be wife's family. My son, like our other two children are bi-racial. All of his life his has been mistaken to be either Latin or Puerto Rican when in fact he is an "other," the only designation on federal forms that indicate a person that has mixed parentage (black and white).
Like so many years ago, decades really, far too many politcally correct white people still judge people on the color of their skin - rather than the content of their hearts. So, for years I have tried to raise my son with the reality of being black, while praying that life and society has moved beyond the scars that I still carry with me today from growing up black in Ohio during the 1940's and 1950's. But even in those days there was a sense of respect from whites... that is, my father was once rebuked by a small white boy who called him "Mr. Nigger." So, apparently within the confines of the upper classes, in country clubs and god knows how many board rooms; white,entitled males still struggle with the concept of what to call black men when they know their names.
My son, raised in my household, a place where the mom, me, has been a practiced smartass all of my life, responded to his father-in-law with, "Well, I prefer to be called John (not my son's real name which is unusual enough to omit for his privacy)." What ever occurred in the mix of those two lives who once thought that they should join to create a life and then, at some later time, fragment their lives into a thousand pieces, escapes me today.
So, my blog has taken a backseat while I try to help my son to ressurrect his life. The struggle is continuing and there are far too many days when I feel as if I'm losing the battle. My husband is frustrated by the fact that it appears that we are re-raising a twenty-nine year old man, soon to be thirty, and yet I know that if our son were to fulfill one of his many plaintive "I'll either kill myself or set it up for someone else to do it" would be an earth shattering and life altering event for both of us.
Forgive me for sharing a bit of my pain and angst and if you believe, please pray for me and my son!
posted by taylorlee at 9:53 AM
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