2014
I remember when I grew aware of the insults that Gram flung at Mom …
I don't remember the exact day, but my sense of clarity, in terms of
Memory proves so glaringly detailed as to offer me the ability to describe
Exactly where each of us was standing:
The year is 1962
It is summer.
I can be seen standing near the staircase, which descends into our unfinished basement. This staircase is right next to the doorway leading into our cheerful kitchen.
Gram is standing, with her back to me, near our double oven.
Mom is standing, facing Grandma's wrath, head on.
We three resemble the cars of a train, linked together, while running on a track that tunnels through the dark until, listening with attention to detail, my awareness is shocked to absorb words, zinging flashes of lightening furiously through the air ...
(I am eighteen, newly graduated from high school and dating about ten guys, when Grandma's negative attitude turned her tongue on me … but more about that shocking turn of events in tomorrow's post...)
Upon listening to the insults that Grandma flung, angrily, at my Mom, I remember feeling shocked upon hearing my mother's mother say:
"I have more smarts in my little finger than you have in your entire body!"
Until that day, I'd not listened to the content of their fights. In fact, reflection suggests that my brain had turned the content off, so that all My awareness had absorbed was noise.
If you ask why my attentiveness to detail proved different on that day from any other, I'd reply:
I'd not paid mind to the content of their fights until grandma felt that she'd had reason to loosen her tongue against me ... more about that shocking turn of events in tomorrow's post ...
Before Grandma's negative attitude had lashed out at me, here's what I'd thought:
I can't believe my mother fights with her mother, who is an old lady.
On that day in the kitchen, after having felt whiplashed by Grandma's razor-sharp tongue, myself, my thought process changed in this way:
I can't believe this old lady hurts my mother, who does her best to take good care of her mother's needs, every day!!
So, what, in truth, had changed?
Rather than standing to the side as an impartial observer, I, having experienced the pain of whiplash, had just cause to feel inflamed for my mother and me...
So, what in truth had reason to change?
My attitude.
After Grandma's tongue had whipped into me, my attitude concerning their fights had reason to wisen up ...
If you ask what that particular fight between Mom and Gram had been about, I'd reply:
The butcher
Mom, who was in her late forties, was
About to call the kosher butcher to place an order
Gram was telling her adult daughter, for the millionth time
What to say
Mom, in defense of her intelligence and experience
Had expressed a daughter's frustration with her mother's lack of respect …
Gram's answer demonstrated her need to control
Her grown daughter's every move ...
'Put downs', which indicate need to control the minds of others
Signify the fact that a power struggle is taking place
And so, upon reflection into deeper truth ...
Every impassioned argument I'd overheard between
My father and his mother-in-law and
My mother and her mother had actually concerned
Four concepts, which serve to make or break family harmony:
Self awareness
Self-respect
Mutual repect
And
Attitudes concerning need for personal growth, all around
Retrospectively
The interrelated nature of these concepts led to my creation of
THE LINE OF CONTROL
PS
Epiphany results when the expansion of a narrow mindset creates a wide-eyed change in attitude
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