morethanenoughtruth

Dale called last night at ten, and we were still talking after one.  I marvel that we are so satisfactorily bridging the generation gap, but wonder how he will get out of bed and face tomorrow.  He is a rural mail carrier in the marginally civilized portion of West (by-God) Virginia, his routes taking him into dark hollows that see him as their most important link with civilization.  Born in 1958, he is now pushing sixty, as husband, father, and grandfather.  When, as I often do, I reduce a person to a word, my son Dale is integrity.   Some chalk that up to stubbornness; I see it as having the courage to be real.  Dale is who and what he is, no more, no less.  His equilibrium is linked to his inner ballast; he doesn’t do courtesy or propriety, but his own brand of kindness and honesty turn him out to be a true gentleman.

Dale is my eldest, agreed by his siblings to be the smartest.  I don’t have an opinion on that score; to me they are all three, Dale, Lane, and Kurt, equally tack smart.  The Kelsey Martin gene seems to be dominant, be that for good or for ill.  His knowledge as an autodidact does appear encyclopedic, due no doubt to his obsession with the science and history channels, crossword puzzles and Scrabble.  The New York Times puzzle always loses expeditiously to Dale’s pencil stub.  During one frightening visit, our play demonstrated that I could no longer beat Dale at Scrabble, ever.  I must be losing it, or he has achieved a competitive level I can’t match.  Time will tell.

Maybe with his three hour call to his mom he is working off a bit of guilt since for the first time ever he forgot my birthday card.  I was anticipating its arrival with birthday girl glee, but the mailbox remains stubbornly empty or trashed with commerce.  No wonderful card with just the right sentiment, the perfect words to say he loves me for my own true self, not for having given up all to bake cookies and live vicariously through achieving children.  It must take a lot of reading to weed out the trite and select that just-rightness versified.  I do prize him for that.  He loves his mother, as do all three in their own uniquely tormented ways.  I was far from being a perfect mother, having my own agenda which didn’t make of raising a passel of kids priority one.  They each have their own unique rage which they hang on the horns of my own, complementary dilemmas, theirs and mine still snorting and pawing the ground.

If…if only…if only I had done better, they could love me without having to work so hard at it.  I should have been an everywoman.  That would have made it right.  No!  Not that again.  That is a well-rutted track that I have trod a million times and more, looking for the perfection that eludes and runs away laughing in its banshee voice, bouncing off trees and rocks until it damps to the soft resonance of the swamp and gets tangled in spikes of cattail reeds.  There it dies, as well it should.  R.I.P.  “Rrrrrip, rrrrrip, rrrrrip,” agree the frogs.

This is a story that can be told, that should be told, that must be told.  Truth is a fine blanket that covers all with understanding and forgiveness once all is known.  One day I’ll get around to it.