Letters From Mama: An Expert on Love

At the beginning of our marriage - okay, for the first six years - I felt that it was my Christian duty to visit Mama and love her with my simple presence.  The visits were excruciating for Kristine.  Mama was very good with the condescending comments and seemed to whip them out at will at the worst times.  Kristine would cry on the way home some days.

It was worse for the children.  Mama had a cupboard full of toys.  So many toys, a large commercial daycare would be entertained for a month.  But my kids were only allowed to take out one toy at a time and play with it.  Then, before they could play with something else, they had to put the toy back.  That ruined all the fun.  Every parent knows that a kid hasn't had any fun unless every toy and non-toy is strewn all over the floor, in the sink, and flushed down the toilet.  Sure, they have to learn the responsibility of cleaning, but, gosh durn it, the kid has to have fun!

Then the floor to ceiling, full wall length, bookshelf in the dining room.  It was full of kids books and other books for any age.  Picture books galore, piled up to the ceiling.  A child's paradise.  But, again, one book at a time.  And if one of my kids grabbed two, they lost the book reading privilege altogether.

One day, with all of this love, we received the following note from Mama, in reference to one of our visits:

*****

Dear Joseph and Kristine! :)

[Addressing this note to Kristine was big deal.  Mama would just as soon forget that she existed than have to speak to her in a cordial manner.]

Thanks!  Thanks!  Thanks!  for the gracious day yesterday!  Even enjoyed the humor-filled, love-filled talking about your arguments and will keep you lifted up to [God] that He would, in the midst of them, ever so graciously keep you reminded of His helps in His Word so that even in private you will be able to have them infused with humor and agape love! :)

[So glad that sentence ended.  I was losing my breath just reading it. 

What does she mean by the word "even"?  I find it a little odd to have it placed in the position it is placed.  It's almost as if Mama was saying that she normally didn't like talking about marriage with me.  Unfortunately for her, I flaunted all of it.  My joys, my faults, my fights, my kisses, my flowers.  Every bit of raw humanity that made up the intimate love I felt for my bride, I threw it at her. 

Come to think of it, I think I did it purposefully.  I hated how she beat my dad and kicked him out of the house to sleep behind a bank sign night after night.  I hated the yelling matches they had at night.  I hated how she burned into my heart, a seething hatred for the man he was, which I discovered later, was nothing but a pack of lies.  I wanted her to see the beauty of real love in all its chaotic color.

And it obviously backfired.  She used everything against me, positioning herself to be the "counselor" for Kristine and I.  She had the audacity to imagine that she held the keys to a perfect marriage.  I knew her keys and they were fake.  They only worked as long as it meant she was the one being worshiped.  If not, they were not keys at all, but firebrands to be thrown in the eyes of her enemies - which happened to be her little children.]

So sweet was the attention from your daughters.

[Mama.  They hated going to your house!  They were miserable!  They gave you attention so they could get you to give them more toys!  And you blew it.]

Hugs and kisses and love, 

 

Mama :)

*****

Some days, I hate myself for subjecting Kristine and my children to her antics. 

Letters From Mama: Flattery and Sweet Lips

I received this letter from Mama on May 1, 2002, exactly eight months after I was married to my beautiful bride, Kristine.  Remember, in her letter imploring me to not get married, she warned me that my life was going to be miserable if I didn't get her permission first.  Of course, I went ahead and got married.  Any man would have if it was Kristine he was getting married to.  She was worth the risk.

Let's read (I have changed the names of some parties for their privacy):

*****

Dearest, dear Joseph,

[Yecht!  Again.  Treating me more like a lover than a son.  I might be splitting hairs here, but it does still strike me as a bit creepy.  Sure, I was pretty freaking hot, but...nevermind.]

Almost a year ago we were over at the Lollapaloosas and on their hallway wall, I noticed plaques with their family's name meanings, and the one for Joseph caught my eye, and I asked Ursula if I could copy it down, and she brought me the sweetest little piece of note paper, farm-harvest-pioneer days illustration, and the verse printed at the very top of it seemed very much a blessing:

God will bless all your harvests. - Deuteronomy 16:15.

[Well gee gads Mama!  Why didn't ye gallivant across that there verse before you wrote me that durn letter back yonder 'fore I got meself hitched, eh?

Get used to the run-on sentences. She loves them!  ]

Here's what I copied down:

"JOSEPH, Increasing Faithfulness.  The wise in heart shall be called prudent: and the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning. - Proverbs 16:21."

I took it as a promise from God to me concerning you, and saw that it matched the plaque on top of the wardrobe in the boys' room upstairs.

[Wait.  So, a year ago, she came across some plaque that says that God is going to bless me, that I am wise and prudent, and all that lip sweetness crap, and she STILL wrote me a letter telling me that I was an idiot and needed to get right with God (Mama) and not get married?  Why was I a fool then, but wise now?

It's an easy, yet complicated answer.  Mama had this idea from Bill Gothard's seminars and all the hyper-patriarchal (matriarchal?) material we consumed at our church, that it was required of us to get our parent's permission to marry.  She would be against it all the way up until the vows.  Then, a marriage was written in some heavenly book and could not be broken, thus Mama had to accept it as reality.  As much love as was possible then spewed from her, including "love" that reprimanded for not being holy enough.

It's like my father spoke of when he was a family crisis lawyer.  He called it the "glow after the blow".  The intense lusty love that a man feels for his wife after beating her.  It felt just as fake - partly because she explained it to us as such.]

As I pass that plaque often, I am reminded; and as I use the little slip of notepaper as the bookmark in the first of the 5 portions of the Bible I am reading in, I am daily reminded.

[Hint hint.  I am wise and you should listen to me because I read five parts of the Bible every day.]

And each time, I am reminded, I am more and more glad, and my heart swells with increasing thanksgiving to God, because I see the promise being fulfilled: that you are increasing in faithfulness; and I see the sweetness of your lips increasing your learning, and making you wise in heart!

[Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!  Anyway, I was a good kisser, but I don't know how she knew that.  And, yes, kissing a lot sure as heck teaching a body how to do other things.  It always leads to something else - good kissing, anyway.

Can you hear the flattery?  I wonder what I did to deserve her "praise".  It was probably one of my weaker moments where I asked for "counsel" from her because I felt it was what Bill Gothard's god would have wanted me to do.  I brought so much unnecessary pain and suffering on my family in those years.  My mother ate it up, though and, with letters like this, groomed me for more.]

I love you, Joseph [Dammit!  Call me Joe!  She always refused.  It was a power thing.], and I am glad God let you be born through me.

[Now WHY did you have to bring THAT into the picture!  Holy galoshes! Please explain to me why you have to use that word picture.  Blecht!  I need a shower.]

P.S. [Uh oh...]  a side note:  that little box of note paper you gave me, that says "On that note:" on each sheet and is covered with musical things, gives me fresh delight often each day, and I am grateful all over again each time to you for giving it to me.  Thank you!

[All that for some dumb paper?  Seriously, why?  She's like the Scarlett O'Hara of the ghetto.]

*****

That's it folks.  Another creepy one from the archive.  Now go take a bath.  I'm going to work on my sweet lips - on Kristine, mind you.