Step Away From Your Son, Ma'am
Embedded in this - review? exploration? exegesis? - of a NYTimes "Modern Love" column, which is indeed mighty creepy, comes this little gem: "a degree of narcissism masquerading as self-awareness". It so happens that I'm perpetually afraid of that description applying to myself, which probably means that I'm already caught in the self-sustaining loop. Trying to blog doesn't exactly help alleviate the concern.
I don't make a habit of reading "Modern Love" columns, but I do make a habit of reading the aghast comments other bloggers have on them, and occasionally go to the source to drink in the bizarreness myself. Some people seem to think the author of this column is doing the whole thing in an ironic voice, parodying the Jocasta impulse, but I didn't get a sense of that kind of multi-layered self-awareness from my first read through (admittedly a skim) and I really, really have no inclination to reread it and consider multiple interpretations of the narrative voice.
One thing I find perpetually bizarre is the number of people who appear willing to write sticky things about their children and refer to their children and themselves by what are all too often their legal names. A grown woman might feel embarrassed if her mother or father had published accounts of her adorable childhood exploits, but that's not so bad, really. A more in depth, but sensitively imagined and carefully written exploration of a child's life, or a child's relationship with her parents, might be more emotionally difficult for the adult twenty years later, but - and maybe this is just the frozen New England emotional mileu of my childhood (but usually not my family) talking - there are some things you really shouldn't say when your kid's name is attached. Taken at face value, the essay in question is at best bizarre and not the sort of thing I'd want to even know about as a grown man.
The specifics mean nothing to me personally; my parents, I think, probably weren't threatened and driven to psychosis over childhood crushes in either direction even though there was one* of particularly long standing. But I'd say that I responded with some strength to the essay's general thrust because I do take the stuff in the previous paragraph seriously, in that recording the warped attitudes you have toward your child is likely to contribute to the child's own warping. A parent's love is frightening, and I've quite honestly come to feel that expressing that love to the greatest possible extent is not good for the kid. I believe that my dad loves me more than anything in the world, but he's very good at letting me know (frozen New England emotionality was the setting of my childhood, but inside my house we were pretty, ah, expressive) without letting it dominate our interactions to the extent that it could (or at least could have when younger). My mother was not, emotionally, a well person, and while I don't think she had any pathology resembling the one the author of the "Modern Love" essay evinces however ironically or un-, she did express her love for me to the fullest extent possible. The central dilemma of my two abortive stints in therapy was that 75% of my depressive issues can be summed up under the heading "I hate myself," but neither therapist could help me remotely uncover the reasons why. I've since come to a partial hypothesis. My mother's love for me, and her constant, intense, multivalent expressions of it, were warping. She was not bipolar in her depression, in the diagnostic sense, but the mood swings were pretty severe and doubtless exacerbated the intensity of her affection. My mother's love was probably the most important and inescapable fact of my life for its first twelve or so years, and it was probably the most important and inescapable fact of hers, other than perhaps her depression, from the time I was born until her death. This was not healthy for her and in turn it was not healthy for me, and I think this goes back much further than the first adolescent manifestations of my depression. My mother's love (I keep saying those words!) was too much. It was like drinking from a firehose. It was the brightest light I have ever known and it burned me as much as it nurtured me.
* My first crush on someone my own age**, more or less, was on a blond girl from preschool whose name I have on several occasions attempted to remember. My second crush on someone my own age lasted from kindergarten until she went to a different school, in third grade if I recall, and I was in love, or whatever that means to a seven year old. I just googled her name and I think I may have found her, and am about to write an email to confirm or deny. If I'm right, she's a graduate student in a scientific discipline at a prominent university in the northeastern US, and she looks very much like the woman that girl might have grown up to be (or at least one possible such woman), although the picture on her homepage, alas, fails to stir up within me that old magic feeling. I've long felt that my old loves don't wither, they just change (good!) or otherwise lie dormant (bad!) but perhaps if I reach far enough back into the past everything really will fade. I feel old but I'm still young, and I have time to find out, for better or worse.
** My first two crushes period were on (I think I've got them right chronologically) my dad's goddaughter's aunt (the only person not family who ever took care of me as a kid, and she was a longterm houseguest of my grandparents' and honorary family anyway) and my aunt (not by blood). Somewhere in there we also need to throw in Dick Van Dyke Show-era Mary Tyler Moore, although contrary to what you might assume I don't care for capri pants.
I don't make a habit of reading "Modern Love" columns, but I do make a habit of reading the aghast comments other bloggers have on them, and occasionally go to the source to drink in the bizarreness myself. Some people seem to think the author of this column is doing the whole thing in an ironic voice, parodying the Jocasta impulse, but I didn't get a sense of that kind of multi-layered self-awareness from my first read through (admittedly a skim) and I really, really have no inclination to reread it and consider multiple interpretations of the narrative voice.
One thing I find perpetually bizarre is the number of people who appear willing to write sticky things about their children and refer to their children and themselves by what are all too often their legal names. A grown woman might feel embarrassed if her mother or father had published accounts of her adorable childhood exploits, but that's not so bad, really. A more in depth, but sensitively imagined and carefully written exploration of a child's life, or a child's relationship with her parents, might be more emotionally difficult for the adult twenty years later, but - and maybe this is just the frozen New England emotional mileu of my childhood (but usually not my family) talking - there are some things you really shouldn't say when your kid's name is attached. Taken at face value, the essay in question is at best bizarre and not the sort of thing I'd want to even know about as a grown man.
The specifics mean nothing to me personally; my parents, I think, probably weren't threatened and driven to psychosis over childhood crushes in either direction even though there was one* of particularly long standing. But I'd say that I responded with some strength to the essay's general thrust because I do take the stuff in the previous paragraph seriously, in that recording the warped attitudes you have toward your child is likely to contribute to the child's own warping. A parent's love is frightening, and I've quite honestly come to feel that expressing that love to the greatest possible extent is not good for the kid. I believe that my dad loves me more than anything in the world, but he's very good at letting me know (frozen New England emotionality was the setting of my childhood, but inside my house we were pretty, ah, expressive) without letting it dominate our interactions to the extent that it could (or at least could have when younger). My mother was not, emotionally, a well person, and while I don't think she had any pathology resembling the one the author of the "Modern Love" essay evinces however ironically or un-, she did express her love for me to the fullest extent possible. The central dilemma of my two abortive stints in therapy was that 75% of my depressive issues can be summed up under the heading "I hate myself," but neither therapist could help me remotely uncover the reasons why. I've since come to a partial hypothesis. My mother's love for me, and her constant, intense, multivalent expressions of it, were warping. She was not bipolar in her depression, in the diagnostic sense, but the mood swings were pretty severe and doubtless exacerbated the intensity of her affection. My mother's love was probably the most important and inescapable fact of my life for its first twelve or so years, and it was probably the most important and inescapable fact of hers, other than perhaps her depression, from the time I was born until her death. This was not healthy for her and in turn it was not healthy for me, and I think this goes back much further than the first adolescent manifestations of my depression. My mother's love (I keep saying those words!) was too much. It was like drinking from a firehose. It was the brightest light I have ever known and it burned me as much as it nurtured me.
* My first crush on someone my own age**, more or less, was on a blond girl from preschool whose name I have on several occasions attempted to remember. My second crush on someone my own age lasted from kindergarten until she went to a different school, in third grade if I recall, and I was in love, or whatever that means to a seven year old. I just googled her name and I think I may have found her, and am about to write an email to confirm or deny. If I'm right, she's a graduate student in a scientific discipline at a prominent university in the northeastern US, and she looks very much like the woman that girl might have grown up to be (or at least one possible such woman), although the picture on her homepage, alas, fails to stir up within me that old magic feeling. I've long felt that my old loves don't wither, they just change (good!) or otherwise lie dormant (bad!) but perhaps if I reach far enough back into the past everything really will fade. I feel old but I'm still young, and I have time to find out, for better or worse.
** My first two crushes period were on (I think I've got them right chronologically) my dad's goddaughter's aunt (the only person not family who ever took care of me as a kid, and she was a longterm houseguest of my grandparents' and honorary family anyway) and my aunt (not by blood). Somewhere in there we also need to throw in Dick Van Dyke Show-era Mary Tyler Moore, although contrary to what you might assume I don't care for capri pants.
posted by medrawt at
22:08
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