A STRANGE THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO MY DEATH
As a boy, I looked up to the adults around me. They were so sure of themselves. They always knew what to do, and what I should do, or not do. There was no question that I was to follow their directions.
My father's mother, whose farm was next to ours, and to whose house I began running away from home when I was two, was a firm woman. She had rules and specific expectations. From early on, I knew where I stood with her. That consistency was a relief from the chaos of my home. She loved me fiercely, but she was clear about the boundaries.
She and the others expressed no doubts. They knew what to do. They knew nearly everything. Once, when my father was working on some plumbing in our house, I asked him if he knew how to fix everything. He repaired every piece of farm equipment he owned and used, plus our cars and trucks, and everything in the house.
“No,” he replied. “But I know I'm not stupid, and I can figure it out.”
That response gave me courage decades later, when I built a house for my own family, doing all the interior work (from the studs out) and repairing appliances as needed.
What the adults didn't know was generally not important, except for the weather. That was vitally important to my farm family on an hourly basis, but no one could know what the weather would really be like. The weathermen were just guessing.
I anticipated the day when I would be just as assured and confident. As a boy, I couldn't even be confident about little, minor things such as the way I walked, or shut my lips, or swallowed. According to my mother, I did them all, and much else, wrong. I certainly couldn't sleep to her satisfaction; she made that very clear. Nor did I do any of her work correctly! Nothing I did was satisfactory. She merely tolerated my efforts, but often not even that.
I was surprised to gradually learn, as the years passed, that none of what I saw in the adults in my life was true. Their opinions, preferences, and points of view were formed before I was born, and I never observed any change.
But that's not been true for me.
I've kept learning my entire life, and I've shared this with my children. I keep growing in understanding, changing, and discovering aspects and abilities about myself. It's as if I've never become “a grown-up.” I simply haven't gotten taller at the same time.
Did this continual change and learning happen to the adults in my life? I can't ask them; they are all dead now.
If this growth also happened to them, why did I not see any evidence or indication of it? They didn't seem to ever change.
Surely, I'm not the only one who has kept learning and expanding as I've gotten older.
Or am I?
I wonder, as each day of my life brings me closer to the end and my release.
© Duane L. Herrmann
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| Duane L. Herrmann |
With degrees in Education and History, Duane L. Herrmann has work published in print and online, in fifty-plus anthologies, over one hundred other publications (Gonzo Press, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Page and Spine, etc), plus a sci fi novel, eight collections of poetry, a local history, stories for children, a book on fasting and other works, despite an abusive childhood with dyslexia, ADHD, cyclothymia, an anxiety disorder, a form of Mutism, and now, PTSD.
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