Pandora

There is an imperfection in my back that gives me suspicions. I conjure up imagery of hospital stays in my early childhood. Maybe it all happened at the same time as my head injuries.

Maybe it traces back to my development in the womb. There is no easy way to find out.

There are plenty of ways that we are browbeaten into not asking the hard questions. Do not open the box! They laugh at your weakness, your predilection to curiosity.

Zeus taunts Pandora, "You will only bring suffering into the world with your stupid, meddling nature."

If you could only learn to listen, you could save yourself so much trouble. Just settle for impartial answers and ignorance.

The thing they don't tell you about Pandora is that she was snooping in her own psyche. There was no violation of privacy, no boundless curiosity that ran roughshod over norms and propriety. No uncontrollable, impulsive fingers tinkering with the clasp of a lock. She was revealing hidden knowledge about herself. Her own story was hidden from her and she had every right to uncover it.

The story she uncovered was suitably horrifying, but also freeing. In the end, it is that thin wisp of  hope that gets us through.

You never said, "Your mother is an essential part of you. Who she was, the woman I loved, her nature as a human being are important and make you who you are. Those qualities shape you and inform your personality and you and she are both valuable. Let me tell you stories of the things about her that delighted me. Let me be a mirror and reflect back the things I loved about her that I see in you." No, you were selfish. You wanted to spare yourself the pain of revisiting that time in your life.

You wanted to replace her and to revise your own history, rewrite your life, lift up the house and give it a new foundation, live above the flood.

You could have spared me many questions. You could have spared me a nervous breakdown and a dark, cold, perpetual fear of going mad in my late teens and early twenties. That would have been nice.

You are denying the fundamental nature of life. Life consists of acts of bravery-- honesty and self-revelation, willingness to express one's true nature and accept consequences, opening the doors to upheaval and change. Anything else is stagnation.

In the end I do not fear madness or misunderstanding. My mother is dead (too early) and no one can really answer the questions I have to ask. All I know for certain is that her life was much more difficult than mine. She has given me everything good that she had to give and lived the remainder of her life suffering all the torments that issued from that box-- the illness and misfortune that plague good and evil alike.

That slim strand of hope did not serve her well. Maybe she gave all her hope to me.

I know that it will see me through.