I've been working on this Freudian case study of the sparkling husband primitive, and it's causing me to do more thinking and contemplation than usual. I'm not the thinking or contemplative sort of person; I'd just as soon shoot off my mouth and let the chips fall where they may, but if one wishes to understand the sparkling husband primitive, one has to understand the character of the paternal ancestor of the sparkling husband primitive.
The problem I have is that my whole and only personal experience with a father was a good one, a remarkable one, and so it's difficult to "relate" to something that was, uh, not so good.
Not that the sparkling husband primitive is getting off the hook, blaming someone else for his problems.
And so I've been thinking about my own father, who was well into middle-age when I was born, there being a very large gap between all of his older children--by the time I came along, teenagers and near-teenagers--and my younger brother and myself. I suppose their experience when growing up was influenced by he and our mother building professional reputations and security, while by the time my younger brother and I were born, they were already well-established and comfortable.
My father was a hospital administrator, in addition to being an R.N. (registered nurse) and C.R.N.A. (nurse-anesthetist. His wife, my mother, was similarly an R.N., both of them graduates of Bellevue Hospital in New York City, although my father had prior higher education, and yet more after he was an R.N.
I recall my father, who died when I was a teenager, as laid-back, mellow, at ease, although during their lifetimes, the older brothers and sisters insisted he had a hot temper. But as the older brothers and sisters were all liberals and Democrats, they were probably trying to blame their problems on some else, as liberals and Democrats usually do.
One time, when I was five or six years old, with a pair of scissors in hand, I cut out outlines of railway cars from paper I had found on my father's desk in the library. I cut out a whole lot of railway cars, everything from diesel locomotives to steam engines and tenders, Pullmans, box cars, cattle cars, gondolas, flat cars, refrigerated box cars, cabooses, whatnot.
Unbeknownst to me, I was cutting up the monthly paychecks of the employees of the hospital.
My father caught me only after I had innocently destroyed the last paycheck, and was somewhat upset.
However, rather than hitting me, or even yelling at me, he patiently explained to me that there was plenty of paper all over the house suitable for cutting-up, suggesting I leave all papers on his desk alone.
That was that; that was about the biggest "confrontation" I ever had with my father, and I suspect on the scale of things, it was a reasonably mild confrontation.
It is perhaps true that my relations with my paternal ancestor were different from the relations between he and the older brothers and sisters, and that difference could be laid upon my having been born deaf, without ears. I was a phenomenon of an unknown nature to the parents, who had absolutely no idea what to make of me, or what to expect of me.
I think they both ultimately made the correct decisions; since "intelligence" could not be determined, they would be satisfied if I simply learned and practiced good manners and courtesy, nothing more. No expectations beyond that, and if I naturally and instinctively "developed" beyond that, well, it was so much extra gravy or extra icing, for which they both proved enormously thankful to God.
franksolich was, and remains, an extraordinarily polite person, even under the most trying of conditions.
My father made the decision (my mother still being "out of it" from the sudden birth) almost the same time I emerged into this world that I would be raised in the real world, as if deafness did not exist. Of course, deafness existed--even a blind man would've seen it--but his thoughts were, apparently, that if I were forced to adapt to the world, rather than demanding that the world adapt to me, I would have an easier go of it.
He was always adamant, even in my presence, that the deaf who learn how to do things the deaf way, inevitably consign themselves to a sort of social and intellectual ghetto--and a very small, isolated ghetto at that--and so I learned none of the things deaf people do.
This attitude brought him much grief, especially from professionals.
But life usually does not, really, present one with opposing "choices," a good choice and a bad choice. Life more usually presents one with a bad choice, and an even worse choice.
In this case, the choice was bad, but the other choice would've been worse.
The only time I got the sense the paternal ancestor was disappointed in me was when I was eight or nine years old, and took some superduper psychological test for a physician. The physician sent the examination to be evaluated by a psychologist, who reported back that the prodigy franksolich possessed a "remarkable talent" for.....music.
In his youth, and in fact up until he died, my father had been a musician, a really good musician, both vocal and instrumental. His first college scholarship had been for music, and he always really really really wanted to do music, not hospital. But circumstances shoved him into teaching, and then registered nursery and finally hospital administration.
Since it seemed to be in the genetic make-up of the family, my father encouraged all the older children to do music. They all complied, and did okay, but they never were too enthusiastic about it. Now, my father had created a lot of children, and thought that by rights, at least one of them, if not all of them, should be in music.
And then this thing.
The psychologist, as was the custom at the time, had evaluated my psychology "blind;" that is, he knew only my age and gender, and no other other conditions or circumstances; he had absolutely no idea he had determined a deaf child to be "remarkably" musically-talented.
My father's reaction was obvious; "what did I ever do to God, to get punished like this?"
He was however aware that an unfulfilled talent (unfulfilled either voluntarily or involuntarily) can lead to all sorts of frustrations and resentment, and quickly went to see the psychologist in Omaha, to see if they could devise some sort of imaginative way to teach a deaf child music.
The psychologist and my father were always coming halfway towards an idea, some sort of revolutionary idea never thought of before, but they were always nixed by physicians who said no, it would put "too much pressure" on a child.
So that had to be dropped; nothing ever happened.
Children are not carbon-copies of their parents, and my father had two "belief systems" which I rejected even before reaching the age of understanding, and which I still utterly reject today.
One of them was this notion that one must "plan," leaving nothing to chance. Of course, my father was a child of the twentieth century, when "planning"--industrial planning, economic planning, social planning, financial planning, retirement planning, family planning, &c., &c., &c.--was all the vogue, much to the detriment of the condition of mankind, because "plans" do not cover even a minuscule range of unexpected contingencies.
("Plan" is different from "goal," remember; I believe in goals.)
The other was this notion that science, medicine, and technology can cure all.
Science, medicine, and technology have their uses, but they cannot cure all.
My father was an utterly professional man, perhaps best illustrated when I was three and a half years old, and ran out in front of a moving automobile, cracking the skull, breaking the jaw and one shoulder, smashing the rib-cage and puncturing one lung, crushing the abdomen, breaking the hips and one leg, plus sundry assorted miscellaneous internal damage.
To make a long story short, all of the wrong things were done, all of the most-inappropriate things were done, and I was deposited on the countertop that divided the hospital administrator's office from the hospital waiting room. But by one of those odd flukes of time and chance, doing all the "wrong" things saved me for posterity.
The car in whose front I had run had been followed by a policeman, a 19-year-old kid just three days on the job. Slamming on his brakes, abandoning his motor vehicle, he panicked, and scooped me up as if a bag of potatoes. He had been a state champion in track, and immediately sprinted to the hospital three blocks away, leaping over fences and hedges "as if he had wings" (quote of an observer).
Among other things that happened that hot August morning was that instead of pulling the fire alarm to indicate "accident," someone pulled the air-raid siren, indicating a nuclear strike against the town.
Anyone who says "nothing ever happens in small towns" is an arrogant idiot; this whole thing was like out of James Thurber's The Day the Dam Broke, hundreds of people running amok all over the place as if chickens with their heads cut off. I don't remember any of this stuff, but apparently it made a great impact upon those older than me, who do, or did.
Anyway, when brought to the hospital, I was unrecognizable; my father and the physician at first thought I was some Mexican kid who had run out in front of a semi-truck speeding down Highway 30. And the kid-cop, after depositing me on the counter, fainted, incoherent. I couldn't be moved, and so the emergency-room was moved to the waiting-room.
As I said, the people working me over had no idea who I was, until the physician directed my father to turn the head. As my father groped to turn my head, he saw the child had no ears.
He didn't miss a beat.
I have no idea what the sparkling husband primitive expected, or expects, of his paternal ancestor, but my attitude has always been that there is no greater Love than putting a roof over someone's head, putting food on the table and clothes on the body. Love in action, not in words.
To demand that one "deserves" more than that, is to be utterly selfish and egotistical.
The paternal ancestor of the sparkling husband primitive appears to have not been the Nicest Guy in the world, but as for franksolich, well, I think I owe my own father a great deal more than what he ever "owed" me.
