January 31, 2015
  
A Facebook friend posted a horrible video of a child being brutally beaten by its mother. The video spoke for itself, but my friend added a comment about how it was never right and always assault to strike a child, etc. I disagreed with her in my mind, thinking of untempered brats I have known, and  remembering how we had been brutalized by our father from time to time and came out all right. But then I thought again. I can’t speak for my sister, but I’m not at all sure I “came out all right,” nor that our father’s brutality wasn’t the cause of it if I didn’t. I‘ve never struck anybody, so the purely social part of the equation balances. On a few occasions I’ve come very close, but deep-seated aversion kept me from it. I’m counting that as good. I have, however, defended myself, and am able at that. The problem is that when I think of my father, in those first seconds of remembrance before I am able to guide my thoughts, I think of the times he struck me or my sister (did he strike mother? Not in front of us), and of the thought that went through my head each time when I was big enough to make good on it: wondering whether I should fight back and knock him to the ground, as I knew I could, and end the reign of terror. Each time I hesitated, not because I was afraid of him, but because I couldn’t anticipate how the world would change in the moment after. I actually pitied him a little, for his brutality was never associated with correction or passion or drunkenness or the things you read of in novels, but always with our “getting smart,” with our contradicting him or failing to obey or to act in a way that was, he imagined, respectful. Someone should have told him that was the thing most counterproductive to respect. I must force myself past that ugly remembrance to get to any other memory, happy or dull. One time in particular: a high school boy by then, I was standing at the head of the basement stairs and had said, I suppose, something that irritated him. He came wheeling from behind the refrigerator and punched me in the face. I thought, “I can pull you down the basement steps and make sure you never walk again.” But I didn’t. The cold, cruel thing is that the moment keeps boiling up in my mind because something inside me is not sure I made the right choice. Into death he took the idea that he was an excellent father. In fairness, sometimes he was. Writing those words made me think of a time when I had pneumonia, and he was told to fill the bathroom with steam and make me sit in it, to clear my lungs. He sat with me, holding me from behind on the toilet seat. I couldn’t have been more than 3 or 4, but I remember distinctly, clearly, indelibly his kindness and solicitude at that moment, the touch that almost never came unless it was a fist, and my wondering if I had two fathers, one of whom I had never seen before, who was kind and sweet and cared for me, and held me in the steam while I got better, who now had come to take the place of the other one, and all would be beautiful forever.

In Z’s waiting room a radiant 4 or 5 year old moved over beside me to show me the games he was playing on his father’s I-pad. His social skills were perfect, confiding and gracious, making sure I understood what was going on with the Roadrunner and the Monster Trucks. We had our time together, then his father came out of his appointment and beheld us, shoulder to shoulder, peering into the screen. Dad’s face was perfectly torn between panic and the desire not to panic lest his son be warped in some way by it. I decided not to help him. In other ages I would have been thanked for keeping his son–whom he had left alone–amused and safe. I am not sure we have the right to all our paranoia.

Sleeping without medication now, but there are still spasms of coughing during which I must lean against something to keep from falling down.

Ordered giant horsetails. In one sentence the lady told me they wouldn’t be hardy in my area and that I should not put them directly in the ground lest they take over everything.