Saturday, October 3, 2015

Let the Cycle Be Broken



I made my mother curse yesterday.

While I admit that first sentence was a cheap literary hook, it is nonetheless true. I was asking her about her father and more pointedly how he talked to her. I wanted to hear the actual words, not just the ‘blankety-blank’ she’d said before. Apparently he had quite the dark vocabularic collection. I’m not sure where my grandfather learned to talk in that way but I’ve heard his father was a sailor. Maybe it was passed down. One thing is certain. It did not pass down to my mother.

While I appreciate the many traits that both my grandparents passed on to my mom, it is difficult to understand why the mere sight of my mother seemed to incite her father to anger. In his defense it seems he had some mental issues and even checked himself into a mental health facility for a rather drastic treatment of a frontal lobotomy. As he seemed unable to keep regular work, due to this or because of the times – it was early in the Great Depression - there was seldom adequate food, clean clothing, and no semblance of a regular schedule of mealtimes or bedtimes. My grandmother, although a self-educated woman only formally completed  the eighth grade.

Studies show that children who are raised with this kind of abuse dole it out to their offspring. By all rights my upbringing should have been similar or even worse. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if you had speculated on what kind of life my mother was going to have after growing up in a home where absolute squalor and verbal abuse dominated, you would be off the mark.  That is why I never heard her repeat those words until yesterday, and only at my urging.

You see, at a young age she transferred her affection to her heavenly Father and imitated Him instead of her earthly father. She was a pastor’s wife during my growing up years, and a gentle loving mother. She has maintained a warm relationship with her siblings. In what could be her retirement, she owns partnership in a local Business College, teaching and giving encouragement and guidance to students who have lost their way, both in life and employment. She hosts coffees for the neighbors in her community, encouraging the women, often giving money here or there to people who need it. She holds a bachelor’s degree and is by far the most well-read in her peer group. My mother, a soft-spoken and extremely articulate woman has spent her 84 years in giving back to the world and her God. Not only that but all four of her children are successful, upwardly mobile citizens who have followed her example of faith and altruism. I’d call this breaking the cycle.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Always Mercy

Being a new devoted Doctor Who fan, I can't resist a stab at some thoughts on Episode 2 of Season 9. Aficionado's may wish to go and fetch a cup of tea whilst I give a little insight to the rest of you.

The Doctor Who series is a BBC original television show which began in 1963, went into dormancy in 1989 and experienced a revival beginning in 2005. It features the Doctor, a Time Lord who travels through time in a  Blue British Police Box called the TARDIS (acronym for time and relative dimension in space).

The vulnerability and ultimate triumph of mercy is showcased quite brilliantly. The Doctor responds to an ominous and pitiable summons from Davros, the creator of the Daleks, robotic machines who are quite possibly the biggest evil threat he faces. We are shown a flashback where the Doctor has saved Davros' life as a child, and during the course of the episode we learn that it is the Doctor's compassion for this boy-turned-evil-mastermind that has allowed the birth of so much evil, and indeed been the primary reason for the predicament that the Doctor and his friends find themselves in at the moment. We are drawn in horrified fascination to the Daleks whose individual and collective mantra is 'EXTERMINATE!', but we are also drawn to the Doctor because he is good, and it doesn't hurt that he is usually able to get out of fantastically bad circumstances, managing to also rescue his companions and any other such innocents.

As Davros begins to tighten the noose on the Doctor he makes a pitiful plea for the Doctor to help him see the sunset and even sheds real tears. There is some cheesy comment about how they are in this moment on the same side, and the Doctor's compassion once again leads him to offer help by giving some of his lifeforce to the (apparently) dying Davros. He finds himself, in his attempt to help, led into a trap, being drained of energy which is used to strengthen the Daleks even more.

This tragedy is then turned to victory when the Doctor's current companion Clara, trapped in a Dalek's apparatus is able to articulate 'mercy' through the Dalek's voice box - which concept is unknown to the Daleks, but enabled by the Doctor's sacrifice of energy - to recognize her and save her. 'Always mercy.' the Doctor says, in what appears to be a spiritually teaching moment.

At one point a question is posed, 'Davros made the Daleks, but who made Davros?' As far as I can determine, the question is never answered, within this episode anyway.

You connect the dots. I did.