2018—HEAD ON COLLISION Part 4n

Presently, I am reading
(and will be quoting from)—

The Great Alone

By Kristin Hannah

Italicized commentary is my own

It is 1974 Leni, the main character who is in junior high, reveals the plight of families of war veterans, who return from battle suffering the tormenting effects of PTSD.  Over the last four years, Leni, whose father’s vicious temper could not hold a job, had attended five schools without ever fitting in, but having recently moved to Alaska, she, remaining ever hopeful, meets Matthew.

“They were kids, she and thirteen year old Matthew; no one asked their opinion or told them anything. They just had to muddle along and live in the world presented to them, confused a lot of the time because nothing made sense, but certain of their subterranean place on the food chain.”

“Mama had been sixteen when she got pregnant.  Sixteen.  Leni would be fourteen in September. Amazingly, she’d never really thought about that before. She’d known her mama’s age, of course, but she hadn’t really put the facts together. Sixteen.”

Mama, feeling guilty over having let her parents down, held her diminished self image semi-responsible for the beatings she’d endured at the hands of the husband she loved, whose mental state had returned from Vietnam Nan blistered and twisted beyond recognition.

“Come on, sleepyhead!” Mama called up bright and early the next morning. “Time for school.”

“It sounded so ordinary, something every mother said to every fourteen-year-old, but Leni heard the words behind the words, the please let’s pretend that formed a dangerous pact.  Mama wanted to induct Leni into some terrible, silent club to which Leni didn’t want to belong. She didn’t want to pretend what had happened was normal, but what was she—a kid—supposed to do about it?”

Leni, afraid of her father’s drunken rages lashing out of nowhere, felt as if an evil potion released a mindless beast, which, having broken free of its tightly coiled leash, felt its piercing, red rimmed eyes morph into burning coals, which, upon sighting her mother’s lovely face, pounced, leaving Mama's heart as wounded as the purple swellings that, time and again, had distorted her beauty just as the far reaching, devastating nature of war had left the man she’d loved, mentally injured and emotionally crippled beyond repair, because the damaging effects of man’s unchecked brutality proves so contagious as to leave no innocent victim unharmed.  As unresolved fury feeds the flames of vicious cycles, multiple generations of innocent children are ensnared within a heart wrenching net of desperate despair, which, somehow, must change for the better before mankind's head on collisions stoke global fires that burn its offspring, worldwide, to a crisp.

“Leni felt a rise of anger; it unsettled and confused her.  Fear and shame she understood. Fear made you run and hide and shame made you stay quiet, but this anger wanted something else. Release.”

“Don’t,” Mama said. “Please.”

“Don’t what?” Leni said.

“You’re judging me.”

It was true, Leni realized with surprise. She was judging her mother, and it felt disloyal. Cruel, even. She knew that Dad was sick. Leni bent down to replace the paperback book under the table’s rickety leg.  “It’s more complicated than you think. He doesn’t mean to do it. Honestly. And sometimes I provoke him. I don’t mean to. I know better.”

The key to unlocking change for the better—in home after home—is self awareness, which acknowledges the fact that within the far recesses of every human brain animal instinct, cat-napping in its passive state, awaits our defense system’s signal to rouse demon-like tendencies, which leap out of the bowels of every guilt-ridden human spirit.  Each time Dad's red rimmed eyes burned with fury or turned green with envy, a handsome hunk, whose inner strengths had won Leni’s mother’s love, loomed dangerously over her petrified stance, growing ever more Hulk-like with every growling lurch 'it' took toward her darkened self image, which upon being bashed, felt rightfully (?) trashed.

“It hadn’t always been this way. At least that’s what Mama said. Before the war, they’d been happy, back when they’d lived in a trailer park in Kent and Dad had had a good job as a mechanic and Mama had laughed all of the time and danced to “Piece of My Heart” while she made dinner. (Mama dancing was really all Leni remembered about those years.)  Then Dad went off to Vietnam and got shot down and captured. Without him, Mama (still a teen-ager) fell apart; that was when Leni first understood her mother’s fragility.”

1974

“... a line of cars waited to fill up for fifty-five cents a gallon. That was something everyone was angry about these days—gas prices.  As far as Leni could tell, adults were edgy in general, and no wonder. The war in Vietnam had divided the country. Newspapers blared bad news daily: bombings by Weatherman or the IRA; planes being hijacked; the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. The massacre at the Munich Olympics had stunned the whole world, as had the Watergate scandal. And recently, college girls in Washington State had begun to disappear without a trace.  (and that leads me to ask—how much has changed—for the worse?)  It was a dangerous world.  Mama had explained it to her. The war and captivity had snapped something in him. It’s like his back is broken, Mama had said, and you don’t stop loving a person when they’re hurt. You get stronger so they can lean on you. He needs me. Us.”

“Dad wanted a new beginning. Needed it. And Mama needed him to be happy ... So they would try again in a new place, hoping geography would be the answer. They would go to Alaska in search of this new dream. Leni would do as she was asked and do it with a good attitude. She would be the new girl in school again. Because that was what love was.”

Or had Leni’s image of love become as twisted as was true of her mother's darkened self image and her father’s tortured mind?  As nothing stays the same, this family was in dire need of help before explosive beatings left one of them dead rather than broken boned and black and blue, and here's why that's true:  It's a given that change is the only constant in everyone's life suggesting that, over time, every situation gets better—or worse—And speaking of human vulnerability in need of spiritual support and hospitalization, I believe today's train of thought is about to switch tracks, leaving Leni, Mama and Dad to face whatever fate has in store for their family so as to transport us toward  1978 when another kind of head on collision (resultant of a drunk driver passing out at the wheel during a downpour) landed me in intensive care following my first life-threatening surgery ...