The beginning of everything in my family is my mother. What was the name of that movie? Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. That’s Mother.
One last twist of the knife, I heard her say the other night during cocktail hour. One last slight that you know – you know DARN well! – won’t get by that tragic, malcontent, backwards-thinking ex-husband of yours.
You should go back to your maiden name, especially on TV, she said.
For me – in spite of all the slights, all of the disappointments, all of the big dreams that had amounted to exactly nothing … I mean, I lived in the house with him and witnessed him devolving each and every day … even for me, this feels like a bridge too far. At least too far without talking to him.
Then Daddy chimes in.
You owe him nothing, I hear him say. You gave him the best years of your life, and three beautiful children. And what did he do? Nothing! You are your own person now. Own who you are! Tell the world who you are!
But wait, Daddy, I say, trying to deflect (read: change) the subject. I’m getting married again, so I won’t have the name for long – and then I’ll have to make another decision.
Yes, yes, I know, he says. Do whatever Carson tells you to do, Sweetheart. Just don’t do anything that drives him away!
Of course, don’t do anything that drives away the Beautiful One.
The way I see things, Bernie doesn’t deserve that sort of treatment. He’s a lotta things, don’t get me wrong – arrogant, grouchy, terse, cold – but he’s also deep, and, as our daughters will tell you, has a very, very, VERY big heart.
But he also doesn’t deserve sympathy. He hadn’t been present in our lives for years. His mind, it always seemed, sat 30 miles away in a newsroom he hated with people he despised covering a community that he resented and loathed because he was never able to do what he wanted to do above all else: extract himself from it.
He hadn’t connected the dots. He hadn’t made his most fervent dream happen, which, in and of itself, is completely fine – working at The New York Times means you’re in rarified air. Working at the Chickotee Dispatch means you smell like the river.
Thing is, there’s plenty of air in the world that, while slightly less rarified, would have fit the requirement and would have moved us forward as a family unit – Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune. A little more focus, a lot less bitterness and his name could be on one of those esteemed mastheads.
He simply didn’t think – about us, about our family, about anything … only about himself, and that is still the case.
So, to that end, it seems, Mommy might just be on the money.
Gunnar Olafsson