3. The Power of Love
I was in my father’s car. He was driving, which often would make him nervous and make him lose it. My mother was in the car, and one or two of my brothers.
My father used to play cassettes in the cassette player. I eternally thank him for that. His music taste at his age was different from what mine is at his, but I love music and I thank him for putting music into my life. I am also thankful to all my brothers for the same reason.
Back in my father’s car with music playing. Jennifer Rush sings in overdone intensity a love song called “The Power of Love”. I am 11 years old. My parents have been divorced for some 7 years. We are in the car. The chorus goes: “Cause I’m your lady, and you are my man”. When my father left home he moved to live with his secretary from the bank he worked as an accountant.
By then I liked the song. Intensity, passion, crescendo, and climax. Some day, or maybe that very day while we were in the car, my mother said something to me like: “He made an oath that marriage would last until death does us apart!”. She was offended. Seven years after they divorced.
Paradoxically, in those days my father would still request some tenderness from my mother. I remember on weekends he would bring me back home after spending the day together in the zoo, in the market buying stickers, or at his office. He would usually not come into the flat, would stay in the landing in front of the door, and I vividly remember he sometimes asked my mother to kiss him in the chicks, which is a very usual thing to do in the culture in which I was raised when you greet a relative or a friend. My mother always rejected his request. It was a very pathetic situation for me to witness, although at that age I could not really understand the complexity and the fuckedupness beyond it.
As a kid, I thought my parents were right. They were my model whatsoever. Who else? As a result, the religious beliefs of my Catholic mother, regardless of how detached from reality, shaped my mindset and my brothers’. Here comes the bottom line: if my father had taken an oath (decades ago, before almost everything that happened since), and if he had not committed to it properly, then my father was a liar before anything else, whatever the reasons for that lack of commitment were, whatever his actions after the divorce were. Those were never discussed at all. And being a liar is a very bad thing to be if you live according to the sacred texts and not according to the human condition and all its complexities. My father, in the eyes of my mother, was an unfaithful, lying sinner. And when I would misbehave, my mother would complacently drop it to me: “You are just like your father”.
Yet my father took me to the zoo, to the market, to his office, and he would buy me new shoes… And I actually enjoyed the weekends with my father. And he was the trigger of some of the most amazing moments of my childhood: the days when he would come pick us for a weekend driving a brand new car. It happened three times. And it was probably the closest I have ever felt to being a millionaire. At least for a couple of hours.
In summary: the person who sometimes brought a bit of joy and excitement to my life was a sinner according to my mother. I do not remember a single moment in my childhood where I would have free, unconditional, guilty-free fun. The concept of fun was under suspicion at home, at the school (I will need to develop my school years in a string of posts to come). Still, my brothers and I did not surrender to the guilty-driven mentality of my mother and of half of her family (I will explain in another post my family-tree complexities) and tried to have fun.
Ironically, even if my mother was a firm believer in a number of moral rules outlined by Catholicism, she was absolutely incapable of ruling the family by setting limits and gaining authority. I do not remember one single occasion when she would come to me and educate me, treat me like a son and herself as a mother, and give me educational advice to make my life better, not holier.
Years later, decades actually, I understood that she only tried to indoctrinate me. Like she did with her pupils when she became a catechesis teacher in her late fifties. With one difference: she actually fiercely rejected my rejection of religion. The first time I remember facing my mother and standing for myself was the time I told her I was not going to take the sacrament of Confirmation. I must have been 12 years old. She got angry with me and disappointed. It did not matter that until then I had been a submissive, obedient, nice, fearful, devoted to mum son. Her disappointment started that day and lasted forever. If I had had a chance to feel loved by my mother it went down the drain the moment I confronted her religious beliefs. To her, I was one more missed opportunity to fulfill her wish of creating a happy, holly, devoted God fearful family. One more downfall of being the last of 9 siblings.
My daughter is six. My wife is a Christian. My daughter is not baptized.
