Family Relationships: Handle with Grace and Compassion

Three years ago I moved back home to live with my mom. This is may be out of the ordinary for a person in her thirties, maybe not. What was out of the ordinary was the fact that she and my dad were also living together, as roommates, after almost 20 years of being split up. It was an opportunity for me to enjoy the blessings of a two parent home.

Wouldn’t it be marvelous if it were as easy as that? The hard reality showed quickly. It was pretty apparent that my dad was still reactive and quick-tempered, at times downright cruel. My mom as result was defensive, cold. These dynamics don’t make for happy holidays.

Here’s where you ought to know that in general I choose a why not attitude when it comes to life, preferring to see potential and possibility, assets and outlines of silver or gold in most situations.   So it was that after talking to my brother, that year became the first that my mom and dad and I, and my brother and his wife, spent a weekend making cookies and decorating the house.  It was the warmest weekend we had ever spent together as adults.

Of course this is Life, the great balancing act, and so with one great step forward came the back lunge, too.  It was Christmas afternoon, in fact, readying the house for the incoming 30 visitors, that our “stuff” came to a head.

Sparing the gory details, I will say that the other new experience was me, on Christmas day, for the first time standing calmly in the face of dad’s verbal attack. For the first time really seeing him, seeing his experience. I saw him squirming and barely in his body, saw him tortured and so gripped by a need to control that he couldn’t breathe, saw him as an traditional example of authoritarian male completely at odds with himself. Saw the truth: this, this broken man here is my dad.  It was clear to me that what he needed was what I had been brought up unconsciously to provide. Dad was addicted to his way of being, coursing on the adrenaline of a mean-tempered rush. The pay-off would come from the fight we were about to have, that he didn’t know he had instigated and certainly would refuse to see when it was done.

From what I’ve heard maybe the right word for what happened here is grace, that little pause where you see something differently for no explanation. In that small second I was able to change my behavior. Of course I had put years of work in to being prepared for that day. But it’s the choice inside that small second that is the miracle to me. When I chose, in a split instant, to love a little more.

I put my hands on my dad’s shoulders when he was done and let them lay there. Twice he tried to fling them off.I used a gentle voice and said dad, it’s Christmas. Please, just calm down.  He literally flailed like a child in a temper tantrum might.  I held my ground.  I asked him to look at me.  I did not move and oddly, neither did he. We he finally did look me in my eye, after I asked him steadily several more times, the emotion of it all had made him teary.  I was crying, too, but holding my ground.  I finally said something like you don’t get to treat me like this.  No one does.  If it happens again I will walk out that door and this will be the last Christmas we will ever spend.  I didn’t raise my voice.  I simply spoke my truth.  I also told him I loved him and was really hoping to have a family Christmas together.

My dad then did something for the first time, too.  He apologized.  Christmas went on as scheduled and by the time our guests had arrived was truly a festive time.

I don’t want to mislead you here, my dad’s still got that mean side.  It’s less though, and what I’ve decided in a pick your battles sort of way is that he is who he is and that I can’t change.  But when he crosses the boundaries of who I am I let him know by being honest, not reactive.  And it’s brought us closer, a lot.  I share credit with him for that, with how he acts when I don’t react, in response.

This Christmas it will be the fourth time mom, dad, my brother, his wife and daughter, and myself spend a weekend decorating and baking cookies and enjoying one another.  We look more and more forward to it every year.  I share this here in hopes that someone might read it and perhaps realize: so long as you’re living, there’s hope.  The holidays will be what we make it, a step forward – a lunge back, lots of battles to engage or sail past, and just maybe some grace, or tiny miracles, too.  It’s the season, regardless the commercials and all the sales, of charity and love.  Being that, choosing it, is my holiday wish for you.

Photo courtesy of Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/digicana/4172017957/sizes/z/in/photostream/