The
Law of Compensation?
(…or, ‘Normal vs. Abnormal Behavior’)
One
generation succeeds another, and to each one, each one seems to have its own
certain idiosyncrasies, character blind spots, ravines that remain infinite and
unbridgeable.
This may sound a tinge self-pitying but
it isn’t meant to be, it is meant to strike a match to the unlit candle, of
normal and abnormal behavior.
I paid foster home care, one third of my
pay check to the foster home, and one third of my check for their hospital
insurance leaving me after taxes $100-dollars for nine-years; I paid this so
the foster parents would love my children, threat them kindly: they never sent
back the checks, they never paid for their food, I did, but this of course, was
the law of compensation, my children hated me for leaving them in such a
situation, — and loved the foster parents all the more: this was my
compensation for drinking too much, too long, for not finding a good paying job
back in those far-off days, where there wasn’t any full time jobs available for
a recovering drunk; my ex-wife hospitalized, more often than not, with
emotional problems. And here now they were adults, never did it rise to any
interest or effort on their behalf to recognize their parents as parents. It
was squashed, like a tomato. It was stifling.
They were not even scarcely conscious of
respectful feelings, as they have taught their children to react likewise,
similar to the revengefulness their mother taught them: to use their children
as weapons, shields against their grandparents.
I, myself was in an orphanage for four years, because my mother couldn’t
afford to take care of me and my brother, while she worked, as a meatpacker for
Swift’s Meats. And my mother likewise
was in an orphanage because of her father who had come over from Russia and
when his wife died at age thirty-three, it caused a hardship, and he went off
to WWI. No one was mad at anyone for
such hardships, disappointed perhaps, but the whole family never split up
because of it. But this new generation, evidently is, so I ponder; or a good
portion of it.
So the children held their grudges firm,
and went about living without knowing their father, now adults. Grizzled men
and women, for I had a daughter also: like to like, same to same as her
brothers. And I remained discreet in the background, not to cause trouble;
knowing they will learn in time, what only time can teach them. Plus, why go
where you are not welcome.
I had bought a house for them once; the
renters burnt it down, before I could move the children in it. What could I do?
What did they want, to prostrate me, for a wrong I never did: it was never
abandonment, it was misfortune, and those checks I sent, were cashed monthly.
And as for the insurance, the foster care parents could pick out nearly any
hospital or clinic in the cities.
Oh well, with my children’s scanty eyes always trying
to make me pay, or walk lightly on eggshells, again I say, I left well enough
alone.
Myself, not having a father, how I
wondered could they so easily throw one away.
I would have given my right leg, eye, arm, you name it, I would have
given it, I do believe, even if I could only have seen my father at his
beckoning call, whenever. I did see my father once from a distance, and I still
cherish it.
Well, as I was about to bring out, so
there is a law of compensation involved here: that drinking always has—sooner
or later—its price to pay. And I saw by not causing trouble, staying my
distance, going away, as I have, becoming as good man in my own right, I didn’t
need anyone to tell me this, I am who I am, and I am who I became, good man: I
was hoping their children would judge
them as they have me, for they have committed the same sins as I: but then I
said, ‘No’ it would not be a good man to wish such a horrid thing upon them,
and I withdrew the curse.
I suppose if any good has come out of
this, it is that they leave me alone, in peace, and don’t have any more
expectations. I have learned you don’t need to give a person a reason to hate,
they will if they want to; and to be honest, when you have expectations, get
rid of them for other people, they cannot live up to your prospects, you are
doing an injustice to them and yourself.
March, 2014 (reedited September, 2014)
