What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Originally posted by Aunt Becky at Mommy Wants Vodka.

Gaps in geography made family gatherings occasions a rarity when I was a kid. It’s a shame really, because those were some of the best bits of my childhood.

I was an unplanned OOPS! baby, a brother ten-years my senior, my cousins even older. My brother, the target of merciless bullying thanks to a speech impediment, was tortured at school. After trudging home, I’d bear the brunt of his hurt and anger, as he verbally bashed me. My parents thought we should “work it out among ourselves;” unfair when the age difference left me at such a disadvantage.

By the time I turned six, my mother was deep in the throes of mental illness and self-medicating with the bottle.

I grew up watching her go through crisis after crisis, until she spent most of her days and nights alone in her bedroom. My brother, now sixteen, was off being a sixteen-year old mischief-maker while my father worked. I was very much alone.

The house became so filthy that I couldn’t invite my friends over without feeling ashamed, so I assumed responsibility for the chores. I washed walls, floors, dishes, trying to remove the grease from the stove. I repainted the bathroom with cans of paint I’d found in the basement. I was told that I was “old enough to cook for myself,” yet I’d never been properly taught how to cook, so I ate apples and overcooked scrambled eggs for breakfast and dinner.

Mostly, I didn’t understand. I’d been loved and now…now I wasn’t. I searched for any connection; any reason I’d suddenly become unlovable, why I’d stopped mattering. I tied the unrelated events together and became convinced that it was somehow my fault.

All of it. I’d made myself unlovable. I’d caused these problems. Every one of them. Magical thinking at it’s finest.

It got worse.

Anything, from receiving a poor test grade, to a bad day at school, to the stomach flu, seemed to initiate a crisis. It didn’t matter what was wrong with me; the attention was always diverted back to her. I learned that I did not matter…most of the time.

The intense loneliness; the shame of being a child who took care of her own parents, the guilt of wishing they were different; that I was different, it gnawed my guts. Perhaps my post about the intense rejection of autism I experienced with my son makes a bit more sense to some of you now.

My childhood wasn’t all gloomy, though. To cope, I learned to laugh, even when things weren’t funny, I learned to rely upon myself, and I became a model student. School was a place where my worth – my value – could be quantified by numbers. The higher the number, the better I’d feel…for awhile, at least.

But family gatherings, however few and far between, are some of my fondest memories I have. It was there that I spent time with people, grown-up people, who liked me. It seems funny now, typing that, but it was such a luxury for me.

One of my cousins, who is technically a great-cousin or something, was someone I’d always particularly cared for. He was a ground-breaking famous scientist, the kind you’ve probably seen on documentaries. Someone who traveled the world working hard to help certain species avoid extinction. It was an inspiration to me, even growing up in a houseful of scientists, that someone could actually live the dream and do real good in the world.

Brilliant, kind and soft-spoken, he always took the time to talk – really talk – to me. His kindness at a time when I felt so alone was a salve.

I’ve never forgotten it.

When his last child, a girl, was born, he named her after me: “Rebecca.”

That very same cousin died yesterday. Heart attack. Completely unexpected. Out of the blue.

My heart breaks for his family, for his fellow scientists, and for the animals he can no longer work tirelessly to save.

And I’m sorry I never expressed to him how much those small things he did when I was small meant to me. I regret that even though I know that there would never have been enough words to properly say what I meant. I could never explain how those small things changed me.

I don’t know that you ever can know how much those small can things mean. How simple gestures, random expressions of kindness and love, concern and caring, they can stick with a person forever. I’ve carried that lesson with me, always.

I probably always will.

Dona nobis pacem.

(give us peace)

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