The Dynamics of My Mother and Father

At eighteen years old, what I didn’t know … was that my father was not allowed to go into Berlin during the Cold War.

I did not know … was that my father had designed the laser guided missiles that were pointed at Russia, the Eastern European countries, and East Berlin for NATO during that time.

There was much that I had been kept in the dark about for my own safety and security.

There were lots of weird rules in my family that we were taught when I was a child.
I now understand that the circuitous ways required to get to my father in an emergency, were for them to know who I was … should the need arise.

As a child, I knew I lived in a house of secrets. My father could be gone on “business trips” for months. We never knew where he was. Nor were we allowed to ask.
He would just appear and disappear. His appearance was a moment of happiness and excitement.
He was a ghost that moved in and out. Like a ghost he would be gone and then be back like a returning hero.

His smile would light up a room. He was handsome and full of humor and stories. Life always seemed brighter when he was around. He was complicated, interesting, and there was a deep knowing that he understood the world from a particular viewpoint that most would never know, see, or ever understand.

It was always enough to have him back home and it felt whole and good.
My mother had an inner strength that could handle most things really well. Her personal structure allowed a flow that worked like a greased wheel … if allowed.

I watched as most of the wives of the men … my father worked with … all became alcoholics.
I did not understand why that was, but it was very noticeable.
I can now see and understand that it was their personal coping mechanism to their husbands being gone for such long periods of time and them not being able to have any contact with them during those absences.

Alcohol was never my mothers’ crutch. And I am very grateful for that. My mother never drank if she was alone. Only with my father in a social setting. And she was a light weight (which I too am) and never drank more than one or two rum and cokes with a bit of lime in a day.

My mother’s pattern was to handle things well … until she couldn’t.
Six times in my childhood my mother would have these “nervous breakdowns”.
I did not consider them “nervous breakdowns” I considered them “ego breakdowns”.

That was because something would happen, and she would suddenly break like a raku pot.
What broke were the illusions that her ego kept trying to cultivate as real.

The culprit every time was a letter from her mother.

Her mother was a vicious, mean-spirited, angry, manipulative person that would write these letters that were so horrific, that they would cause my mother to collapse into despair, break her spirit, and make her fall into terrible depression.

I am sure you wonder what kind of parent could say such things?
I often wondered that myself.
The level of vitriol that my grandmother was capable of writing on a paper was a toxic, infectious work of art. A masterful manipulation of facts to fit her intention to cause suffering and pain to others. Her letters were destined to make others collapse. And in that collapse … she would win.
Her intention was always to make others responsible for her actions, inactions, choices, circumstances, and her personal pain and trauma.
Nothing was ever her fault. It was always the fault of others.

To this day, I do not respond to such hateful interactions because I also know that such souls hate themselves more.
I learned from a young age, that there is no reasonable response to such levels of dysfunction. And I learned to step away from such souls as they have to go down a path that is not mine to do in this life.
The best response to such patterns of behavior is no response at all.

Such soul’s feed on the negativity because that is what they learned as a child and that is their normal.

And I learned what the Dalai Lama speaks of, “If you cannot help at least do no harm!”

My father and I had a pact for me to get the mail before my mother got home from work. If there was a letter in there from my grandmother, I was to open it with the steam from a kettle and read it.

If it was good … I could seal it back up. But if it was bad, I was to destroy it.

That is why I know what those letters said. I read all of them that I could get my hands on.

They were shocking in their intent and content! They were so distorted and filled with such hate that they would take my breath away. They were so twisted in their logic … that a weak mind could fall into the chaos of their intended confusion.

The ones that sneaked through, caused such suffering and despair in my mother that it could often take her months and sometimes years to recover.

To her credit. My mother first went to a psychiatrist when I was 4 years old.

Now, that is 1964, and in our world in Texas, if you were seeing a psychiatrist, that meant you were nuts!

It could have been a terrible (potential) embarrassment to my father, and we were sworn to secrecy.
What happened in our house … stayed in our house.
(This is probably why I am still so good at keeping the secrets of others)
My mother was gifted to have … as her doctor, a Jungian psychiatrist named, Dr. Moore.

This man literally saved my mother’s life repeatedly. He deserves sainthood on the other side!
He could see that my mother was not crazy, she was terribly abused emotionally, mentally, and physically by a psychotic mother who clearly had a horrible personality disorder. My mother’s parents were terrible alcoholics and unrepentantly abusive to my mother throughout her childhood.

It is amazing that my mother survived. The fact that she never lost her sweetness, her caring demeanor, or her desire to help others, is remarkable.
People wonder at my inner strength and fortitude, but my mother taught me by showing me that when you are down and need help, it is not a negative reflection on who you are to go get the help you need.

On the one condition … that you just did not tell the neighbors.
Friends and neighbors were on a “need to know” basis, and my father made the command decision that most never needed to know.
Because of this habit I learned as a child, I learned to keep my own counsel and to go to those wiser than myself if I needed support or insight but to always listen to my inner voice first and to not let the voice of my fear, anger, hate, or upset dictate the course of my life. Nor ever allow the projections of others to determine my destiny.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I can get very angry. When that force comes out, it is most often to protect the innocent or others being abused.

But I learned at a young age watching my mother that allowing the inner victim to have primary control over one’s life is never going to be a good thing in the long run.

Watching my father, not have the emotional bandwidth to deal with the emotional upsets of the past or the upsets that impact women frequently, helped me again take responsibility for my own emotional states. I learned that my father did not respect emotional outbursts and that such things shut him down. He could handle if you spoke objectively about what you were feeling, but the moment you got emotional he would blank out and I would lose his attention.

They both taught me a lot in my observation of them. My father taught me to observe the upsets of others with a more detached eye and my mother taught me that being a basket-case occasionally was probably normal.
So, on one level I had permission to express what I was feeling (just not around my father). And on another level, it was a positive and helpful skill to observe the dramas in the lives of others and to be the safe space for them to express it.

How I saw it (even then), was that both my parents taught me incredibly valuable skills for dealing with the world and with life.

My father showed me that men (more often than not) have a limited capacity to deal with women’s complex and deep emotions. Feelings made him uncomfortable and while he loved all of us, he did not know how to properly respond. He would not stop loving us if we were having intense emotional outbursts, but he could only take emotional expression for so long before he had to step back or go away.

My mother taught me that holding emotions in, causes depression, anxiety, and a heightened reactive nature to anything that was out of her ordinary reality.

She taught me that structure and order in life supported her emotional and mental stability. Things that she could control assisted her in having faith and confidence in her abilities.

While my sister did not enjoy an environment of such vast contradictions, I found it interesting and oddly helpful.

What is clear to me, is that I picked my parents perfectly. They were everything that I needed and showed me the important truths in the reflections of their actions.

What they had to offer what exactly what I needed to learn.

Even as a child, I deeply understood that truth.

As my sister acted out in the typical pattern of a child not getting what it wanted … I learned that what they offered was actually going to be more helpful to me than them placating to my demands.

I thank the stars every day for that understanding.

Life was never going to give me everything I wanted.

Life never had that intention.

Life was here to give me strengths, awareness of my weaknesses, and tools to help me move from one perceptual position … to hopefully another.
One that had greater clarity, finesse, and a deeper understanding of truth.

~Suzanne Wagner~