Tending love in a time of trauma
My mother grew up in a violent home. But violence was not the totality of her life.
Between saying good-bye to 2020 and wondering what a new year and a new presidency will bring, I am filled with ambivalence. The prospect of normalcy feels impossible, and not just in terms of gathering, eating out, and traveling. Something has been unveiled or unleashed in our midst, and we can’t—we shouldn’t—unsee it.
Maybe instead of normalcy the best we can hope for is something like remission. By the 2020 election, the cancer had already spread. We live in that perilous waiting, trying to hold onto some semblance of what life was before the diagnosis, the chemo, the constant sitting by the phone for test results. In the meantime, people still get married, get promotions, and welcome new life. Remission means we can breathe for a few moments, can gather ourselves without the specter of illness lingering.
This sense of reaching out for normalcy in the midst of deathly prognosis has been my 2020. As we turn to 2021 I’ve been thinking about my mother, who died of lung cancer when I was 25. She grew up in a violent home with an alcoholic, abusive father. Everything in her life could have added up to her continuing the legacy of violent dysfunction. But she didn’t.
