I think the apple’s rotten right to the core
from all the things passed down
from all the apples coming before
- Charli XCX
My mother said something to me yesterday that has since stuck with me. She pointed to my father and said this is what happens when you let unresolved familial trauma dictate your life. It stuck with me because this simple phrase contorted him in front of my very eyes. He was no longer a vindictive entity in my life. He was a boy. A boy who kicks and punches at the world that took his dad away. A boy left with such a deep wound of loss and confusion he cannot even begin to acknowledge for fear it may be too much to handle.
I have only seen my father weep once. Upon the news of the death of his brother, he called my mother and - halfway through explaining the news- choked. He began to swallow air so desperately that it seemed as though he was determined to inhale the matter that was once his brother. To hold him one final time. Then came the tides. Swallowing his words in a futile attempt to prevent their concrete grip upon the world.
I mention this because I think I, for one, am too comfortable with pointing to my family, the people who are supposed to have it all figured out, and blaming them for the pain and anguish they invite. I am fast to attribute their negative traits to their worth.
Yet, in that moment when she pointed to the anger and defensiveness in my dad and found its origins not to be determinants of his character but rather an amalgam of his upbringing, he was painfully human. No hint of bravado or emotional distance could mask the visceral pain of a messy divorce, a childhood spent moving from place to place and a consequential inability to cultivate meaningful connection. A mother who greets him with a quirk of a disappointed frown when surveying him, never failing to comment on his choice of clothing or haircut. A mother who would unleash profane screeches for the mere crime of being in her sight, often called 'useless’,‘a burden’ or ‘mistake’ while growing up. He never had a chance to be a kid.
However, his mother recounts the rigorous expectations thrust upon her and her sister as young children during World War Two. It was expected she had to be her own parent, her own provider and her own protector. She learned to live with very little and keep the house running as her mother cried out for her husband on the front lines. She never had a chance to be a kid.
I do not recount these stories to draw sympathy for either of them or, indeed, myself. Instead, it reveals the contextual background of each of them and, in understanding them, you may begin to understand me.
For, we are all products of those who have come before. A concept that is as beautiful as it is suffocating. I am my father’s mother’s mother’s daughter and I may never escape my blood. it will seep through endlessly.
Sometimes I look to my flesh to tell me of my great-great-grandmother. Did she argue with her dad when he refused to let her stay out past her curfew with her friends? Did she learn to curl her hair from her mother? was she anxious for the future?
If nothing else, we are mosaics. we are broken and shattered memories of those who are no longer alive to tell their stories and yet we relive them with each breath.
The apple may be rotten right to the core but it is all we have, so cling on.
-Jess
ur writing is impeccable jesus
YAY