Helene's Memoirs

 

By

 

Granville js Johnson

 

 

Honeymoon #1, day 1, 1985

 

The water was cold yet refreshing as the sea foam glided over her steps, each shore-side stride forward slid slowly with the flowing sand, across her body and into the bubbling surf, cross-legged she would stumble and slide backward slightly with the retreating tide. She hardly noticed. The pain blinded her senses claiming all consciousness that would/should have been spent studying his eyes or perhaps gazing at the sky while being cradled in his arms.

 

Strong arms they were, strong hands as well. They held wood, metal, plastic and other tools of destruction with a masculine confidence that somehow evaporated when handling her soft skin. She bruised so easily, outside as well as within. Those hands hurt her skin almost as much as her spirit.

 

He hadn't hit or handled her roughly. He was much too proud to express, what affect his disappointment in her may have had upon him, in a violent manner: as if the expression of his rage, to her, would have only validated and empowered her hold upon him.

 

For such a staunch liberal and freedom-loving Irish "Son of the Isle," his attitude assumed and behavior demanded that she would be his wife to "honor and obey", without question! His paradoxical self-image, which often vacillated between sexist proclivities of male domination and liberal proclamations of oneness with all women, seemed to readily adopt the:

 

Fascist hide-bound ideas on the proper rearing of children: better to know their place in an adult world; better to know your place here.

 

"What do you want from me? We have done it twice  in one day. That's it, no more. I'm not some sex-crazed pervert or some sex machine. I'm not some monkey, here to perform for your pleasure. You are here for mine. You are my new wife in this new country. You know no one. You do not speak the language. I am your only friend. This is not your father's farm in Germany. This is Canada, our home. Get used to it."

 

"You don't want a man. You need a woman, to teach you how to be her wife. You would make a good wife for a woman."

 

He would rant, more embarrassed than angry, that he had been forced to give account to a woman, his new wife.

 

Anger, rage and other strong emotions, only occurred between men.

 

In his view, women, particularly, German women were beneath notice.

"If willfulness and wickedness are not driven out, it is impossible to give a child a good education.  The moment these flaws appear in a child, it is high time to resist this evil so that it does not become ingrained through habit and the children do not become thoroughly depraved."

 

J. Sulzer, German psychologist, on "child rearing" (circa: 1748)

 

 

Thus she, child-like, simply was of little consequence. As a good German woman-child her place was to obey her husband and master. Her parents would not be pleased at her resistance, nor would they be surprised. Her father and mother had long lamented their failure as parents in the "child rearing" of their only daughter, and golden opportunity to get it right, Helene.

 

Her spirit somehow, despite their best efforts, has remained unbroken.

 

Her husband, heir to her parent's legacy, is not amused. He is frustrated.

 

Honeymoon #1, day 6

 

"Oh my God! Four weeks now, four weeks pregnant, marooned in Canada. Why didn't I see it coming? Am I really that stupid? Married to a man locked in fear. Terrified of women in general and

me, in particular, he stalks and sulks in his fear. Like a young child he stalks about my home and life planning nefarious schemes for control yet never dreaming, for one must sense oneself to dream. Then sulking to wound and punish me when his scheme-du jour eventually fails to materialize. Stalking and sulking, then sulking and stalking, to now and again go honeymooning."

 

"I am pregnant. He is what he can never be: the father and dad of my child, yet I need him here. I need him now."

 

Her husband took it well when the take-at-home-test showed positive results. Surprised, though he knew she was not using birth control, he even seemed happy. His manhood intact,  he felt vindicated; he crowed and passed out cigars.

 

She cried and walked the seashore.

 

All part of the odious "honeymoon cycle" of fight-freeze-out-denial-pretence-kiss-`n-make-up-pretence-fight, etc., that was driving her into catatonic isolation; she was becoming a stranger-in-her-skin.  The cycle had phases that often took weeks to run their course. The cycle became their relationship.

 

Sixteen years of honeymoon cycles: Persistent, frequent, ever-present cycles of false hope, fear and flight, kiss and make up, until the next eruption. Never experiencing the communication with which to build a relationship. Never enjoying the simple yet vital common courtesy of trust within the commitment of marriage.

 

Withdrawal and isolation increased in time and intensity with each re-cycle, while joy, a rare concept at the best of times, shrank exponentially.

 

Determined to stay within her sense of growing self, Helene bore her husband's dysfunctional idiosyncrasies: denial, extreme moods, withdrawal, violent rages…etc., with the deft thrust and parry of the mythical struggle between the ancient Germanic warrior/gods, Brynhild, the mighty Valkyrie and Siegfried, her hero, husband and betrayer. Helene and her husband, super-egos locked in a power struggle for dominance and survival: his dominance, her and their daughter's survival.

 

Helene did not collect affirmations for all seasons or reasons. Now leaving her fourth to enter her fifth decade, she felt intensely reflective. She did collect notes to herself with quotes for future reference, sometimes gleaned from her avid reading. In this incidence, "For Your Own Good, How Child-Rearing Crushes Spontaneous Feelings,  Poisonous Pedagogy,  Hidden cruelty in child rearing and the roots of violence." Alice Miller (1980), was her interest. She had first read the book in German, in Germany, then bought the English version for him.

 

She stared at her old notes that seemed to historically define yet another venomous generational cycle, a culturally significant and dangerous parenting style, practiced by her husband, within her family, despite her resistance, as her parents  and their parents had faithfully followed their code of "child rearing".

 

The finely creased duo-tang page was coated with her fine print; the pencil strokes were fuzzy with age yet the implied message galvanized her thought,  "Save the children, save her child: Freedom is not free and must be given to be received, then practiced to be taught, thus, essentially, trusted to be passed on."

 

Notes                                         Child Rearing, Germany, Death begets Death

 

"People with any sensitivity cannot be turned into mass murders overnight. But the men and women who carried out "the final solution" did not let their feeling stand in their way for the simple reason that they had been raised from infancy not to have any feelings of their own but to experience their parents wishes as their own. These were people who, as children, had been proud of being tough and not crying, of carrying out all their duties "gladly," of not being afraid - that is, at bottom, of not having an inner life at all."

 

"For Your Own Good, Poisonous Pedagogy", Miller, 1980. Page 81

 

"Welcome to the void", thought Helene.

 

"This perfect adaptation to society's norms, in other words, to what is called "healthy normality" carries with it the danger that such a person can be used for practically any purpose. It is not a loss of autonomy that occurs here. Because this autonomy never existed, but a switching of values, which in themselves are of no importance anyway for the person in question as long as his whole value system is dominated by the principle of obedience. He has never gone beyond the stage of idealizing his parents with their demands for unquestioning obedience; this idealization can easily be transferred to a Fuhrer or to an ideology. Since authoritarian parents are always right, there is no need fortheir children to rack their brains in each case to determine whether what is demanded of them is right or not."

"For Your Own Good, Poisonous Pedagogy", Miller, 1980. Page83

 

"Fuhrer, be damned," the words rumbled through her throaty whisper.

 "But those who have spontaneous feeling can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves. Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot."

 

"For Your Own Good, Poisonous Pedagogy", Miller, 1980. Page85

 

"True to ourselves, our legacy, our humanity, our destiny, we simply can be ourselves, and will…always."

 

No! She could not, would not pass this barbarous practice on, ever. She would break this cycle as well. Her beautiful daughter,  Astrid will know and love herself.

 

Oh, how she lamented her marriage, or rather, whom she married. He is Irish, a good man, yet his social belief system and parenting style has remained ultra-conservative, circa: Pre-World War 2, Germany: A time of child rearing, war  and subsequent genocide of the Jewish people, all achieved by initially breaking the spirit of Germany's children.

 

Thus to produce spanning generations, a society of emotionally crippled parents, governed by the fear

of disobedience and the rage for control, to create a society of murderers: the emotionally and psychologically dead, dealing death to millions.

 

Her husband, now, in hindsight, seems to have been locked in his version of that unhealthy cycle, from the beginning, that first "honeymoon"is Greece.

 

They had met in Greece. It is HOT in Greece.

 

Romance lives in Greece.  Romance wrote loving letters for two years between Germany and Canada, hoping for a "happily-ever-after" sort of ending, a forever more beginning. Romance sent emails of regret that it could not follow them to their new home in Canada (much too cold for Romance). Romance remained in the sun.

 

Reality, Romance's evil twin, followed them to the new land and life. Romance loves illusion; Reality is big into cycles, especially, the `ol honeymoon-go-round.

 

Romance and Reality be damned, she had stayed for her child.

 

Honeymoon #192, day 1, 2000

 

Las Vegas

 

Dumped in Vegas, land of the instant marriage. Divorce is quick as a bullet, in Vegas.

 

The waitress seemed as tired as she was peeved; he was high on his plan to wow-and-woo his wife and daughter with wine and shine in Vegas.

 

Helene had seen it all before.

 

Her daughter, Astrid, was also too familiar with her father's tiresome manic nervousness. His self-imposed stress over the importance of these four days in Las Vegas: The honeymoon of all honeymoons, calculated to fix all the problems of their familiar relationship, while wallowing in the vain glorious glitz and not having to say one utterance of clear communication or expression of real emotion, was obvious to both of the women. Astrid watched her dad's invasive attempts at heavy-handed flirtation with the attractive waitress, and counted the minutes it would take for her mom to draw him up short.

 

Two martinis and a second wine order: "Almost 9.5 minutes, a new record",  Astrid thought, "mom must be really tired."

 

Helene, the lion, big and beautiful, regal and powerful, yawned then snapped. Patience, even the patience of a pride-mother with her own, can be worn out. Helene's fizzled and winked out, a lazy bubble bursting.

 

Astrid watched and felt an ominous chill. Helene's daughter was suddenly afraid, very afraid. There was a cold finality in her mother's eyes that she had never envisioned during her brief sixteen years.

 

Her mom was done. The seemingly endless cycle of the honeymoon-go-round was over, forever. There would be no more honeymoons.

 

Astrid watched carefully as her mom whispered to her dad, softly.

 

Her father lost it, with the whole wide world bearing witness.

Everyone in that over-heated restaurant quickly knew far too much detail about their lives.

 

Her father was repeatedly asked to leave. He did, screaming for justice as he paid the bill. Probably screamed, cried and cursed all the way home. Helene hoped he would move out before they returned .

Helene went for a long quiet walk through the loud casino, crying.

 

She took a solo car tour to the Zion National Park, two hours outside of Vegas while her daughter, fortified with room service, watched movies in the suite and scrutinized other diversions throughout the hotel. Each pondered, where to go from here, perhaps anywhere.

 

"Cool," thought Helene, remembering the image of her husband's fast-retreating back

 

Astrid and her mother plan to go for a drive through the Grand Canyon tomorrow, then Death Valley the next day, before going home when the pre-paid hotel room runs out. Helene has thrilled her daughter with the assurance that, they'll be driving through Death Valley in the hottest time of year during the hottest time of day.

 

"Way cool," said Astrid, watching the rolling heat waves, just outside their four-wheeled air-conditioned oasis.

 

Hello life. We're otta here.