Chapter Seventeen Escape from Accountability
Chapter Seventeen
Escape from Accountability
“ … they understood
our men as we did not!” and
“Today most of our
men are better husbands and fathers than ever before.”
--- bill wilson on
pages 105 and 108 in chapter eight’s “to
wives” of the big book regarding an alcoholic’s other women, mr.
wilson presenting that chapter as if
his wife, Ms. Lois Wilson, had actually scripted it – all the while himself,
during and after ending alcohol consumption, having countless sexual
liaisons
Monday nights and Friday nights,
not unlike every other night of the week most weeks it seemed, Dr. Herod
Edinsmaier had, for the past year, reserved for himself. Alone.
Those two nights and Sunday mornings at 10 am as well Herry liked to
procrastinate and bullshit his way through a couple to three more hours on each
of those days by attending the local Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and talking,
talking, talking afterward. Plenty of
vulnerable women at these with whom to attempt to 13th – Step and
folks like Jim Cornball, the realtor, and many other so – called ‘respectable’ town drunks all patting
themselves and each other on the back over their … let’s say it all together
now … “… just not taking another drink today.”
All for the love of bill w, the glorious and so hyped and ballyhooed “12
Steps,” some manly written blue – covered book other than Herry’s own
Certainly not for the love of nor
the strokes and hugs of their families this excuse
of insecure and lazy men for attending AA meetings is – it turns out. For this new Ames year of 1986 to 1987, for
our household and without his drinking even one sip of booze since 1977 when
Zane was about a year old and both Jesse and Mirzah not even yet conceived, Herry
was, by his concerted and deliberate choice, actually missing to our entire family at least
eight to ten hours more out of any
168 – hour week. About ¼ - time, that is, of prime husbanding and fathering
periods. Herry was gone off simply
schmoozing at all these AA meetings and at their social situations after –
which actually for most of the folks there, instead of promoting individual
health, community sustenance, family healing and the responsibilities thereof, turned out to be all about congratulating
each other and celebrating his and the others’ freedom and escape from their accountability of the work that it is to being a spouse and
to raising up a family.
Laziness and procrastination was
more the character of not only those nights and the first – of – the – week
morning time but of all of the hours in between each meeting, too, – for Herry
was either on the telephone or at a coffee shop at the various hospitals or
around Ames and the other small, rural towns … hustling. ‘Sponsoring’ he much preferred to term it as
though.
As much as Herry liked the ladies,
insecure Herry also loved the elitist spotlight of How I Can Teach You, Too,
Because I Know So Much More Than You Do.
This kind of a weekly agenda for a man who not only was a supposedly heavily
scheduled medical doctor but also the father of three schoolboys who allegedly
needed his time and attention. Then,
too, there was me, the man’s spouse – to whom, of course so far to date, my
first name – Legion – just hadn’t by Herod Edinsmaier’s use of it, … yet …
managed to come up whatsoever at all.
Let alone, his being present in attendance and … ah, therefore, …
attentive to me. No wonder that, besides
the washouts that were its members’ mothers, Herry just hadn’t any time to
actually perform the work of coaching
his soccer team of six – and seven – year – olds and couldn’t be bothered with
remembering to even be awake, not to mention, expertly mindful of any given
weekday morning's surgery schedule and, then, physically tableside to unconscious
and anesthetized women with their possibly cancerous, and therefore quite
unimportant, breasts bared.
I can make this analysis and – O
jyeah, criticism – of the functioning
– er, of the dysfunctioning that it
truly is! and which underlies Alcoholics Anonymous because i) I believe all of
what it is that I say about it and ii) I myself went to Al – Anon meetings
where we almost all, there, did the very same damn thing. Not for very long did I go. After all … I had three kids to take care of
and to raise up.
I saw going on at this particular
12 – Step Bullshitting and Let’s – All – Get – Out – Of – Truly – Working
Society the very same thing as at open Alcoholics Anonymous meetings – and at
full speed. Most there squandering away
incredible quantities of time and, in like measure, a monumental amount of
money on AA’s and Al – Anon’s gargantuan industry of trifling and trivial
trinketry, inanimate objects all of them:
palm – sized prompts of daily feel – goodisms, pictures, other
motivational books, mugs, medallions, bumper stickers, posters, yada, yada, as well as bookoo bucks on local
restaurant menu items whilst socializing after, not to mention, the major
dollars lost to families because folks there were … not at work working! Aaaah,
JYeah! – They were soooo not at work
… working! Including – most of all – so
not at that which is the work of … the home!
All of us were, instead, busy
blaming an inanimate liquid – Step #1, ya’ know – that is inside an inanimate glass bottle or
metal can in order for all of us to get clean, slick away with all of this (non
– alcoholic, of course) toasting and boasting and procrastinating and wasting
and good times talking and hugging – and whatever else. The perfect excuse for escaping the accountability of really going ahead and
doing the actual, reasoned work necessary
that is that of being an adult member
of a family. Herod Edinsmaier believed
his to be the perfectly planned excuse
each week, one that would permit him to knowingly and purposefully shun the
undertaking it was to face me, quite animate instead, square on, to be my
husband and to be of the coupledness that was our union the other, most animate
parent to Mirzah, Jesse and Zane with me!
Alcoholics Anonymous is perfect both in its doctrine preached
and in its physical format of meetings and sponsorship for covering up and for
escaping the real work and the real time that is required to be a true husband
to one wife and equally with her, their mother, to co – parent their children. It is waaaaay too un – fun and unattractive
and requires sacrificing almost all of that
I’m – such – a – great – guy – for – not – takin’ – a – drink attention
for an alcoholic to make the genuine decision to confront and relinquish his real addiction: that of sex and behaviors and things sexual –
– and, instead, to be intimate and animate
with one’s spouse or partner only.
There are many, many persons who
formerly attended meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous but are instead inside
several other groups today including inside 12 – Step ones where they struggle
to stop their sexual addictive behaviors – and who now make no bones whatsoever
about their previous excusing and escaping.
And there were even quite a few groups of such wholly and long – time
dry drunks back some ten to 12 years ago already. “We admitted we were powerless over our real
addiction, that is, powerless over our sexual behaviors which destroyed us and
harmed our families” or something similar are the words of such a group’s First
Step. Instead. Over our … animate … behaviors.
The group that is Al – Anon? Her
support group, not her husband, is advising the wife, the girlfriend, the
mother, the daughter to do this and to think that – – so, so surely it – the
collective, altogether – mostly – female (of course) – brain knows what is best
for her and the alcoholic's kids and grandchildren. Even if Herry is an all – out fuck of a
drunk, why, … my support group wouldn’t be steering me in the wrong direction
now, would it?!
Sexual addicts’ enablers all. That I have seen. Maybe not all Al – Anons everywhere – but
definitely all of them that I have ever seen.
Since early on in the formal organizing of Alcoholics Anonymous chapters
and meetings when most identified alcoholics were male at the time misogynist
bill w and his patriarchal compadre, dr bob, were setting down ‘rules’, ‘rules’
all bootlegged and plagiarized from all of the ages – old, man – made
religions’ commandments! into that similarly blue book of theirs, why, keeping
the little woman pacified and assuaged in another male – mandated and male –
identified organization, that is in Al – Anon, just made very, very good
opportunistic sense for them. They could
continue their real and much – desired addiction right under the truly proximal
noses of their wives who were being unbendingly and quite blindingly advised to
forgive while continuing to love and to remain servile, soft and, of course,
utterly deferent to them, their dryly drunk yet nonetheless veritably addicted
husbands.
Witness the androcentric and
sickening “chapter eight” of ‘the
big book’. In the 20th
and
21st Centuries. Pornography.
Smut this chapter is for which men everywhere – from or by
their wives’ counseling them of
its contents changed instead into advice “to
husbands” and whether they be actively alcoholic or stone cold and free
from hooch for decades (not, of
course, equaling … sober) – would not
themselves – ever – stand a second
still! Flip / Reverse.
Then, too, Step #4 it is that
insists that no one else be taking stock of any drunk or of any addict. O o o o, and just how convenient
is that canon to have workin’ for
your side of matters?! No one else,
Alcoholics Anonymous’ and Al – Anon’s ‘rules’ declare, no one else can police
you and your other endeavors or own an opinion, much less, voice it about what
behaviors you’re up to. Just you
yourself.
So. Just staying away from swallowing beguiling,
fermented, inanimate liquids gives you carte blanche and laissez – faire
license to get clean, slick away from and out of doing the mundane, daily
routine of home chores and duties including the ones as minor as spousal
respect, loyalty and fidelity –
emotional or physical. And you get to
waste a whale of a lot of time and money
and then two to three hours later that night you swaggeringly sashay
back out into The Real World where someone else has, because, well, because …
these actually had to get done, … where someone else has already performed your share of the day – to – day labors
of life and living — that you should have
done for that day. Like give the
kids their evening baths or sanitize the toilet bowl since you shit in it just
as much … and more … than anyone else
in the household does. Or grocery –
shop. Completely. Or, O say … cook something up other than the
extraordinarily rare supper of spaghetti!
You get to do whatever the hell ya’ habitually wanna – including all of
your sexually addictive activities.
You’re, overall, scott free and off the hook from having to do the work of life and living and, O god,
of relating to only one, very animate spouse!
Much less, of raising up three
boys to their … accountable adulthoods.
Except for the not drinking of alcoholic liquids, Step #4 sets an AAer
up with complete freedom, free rein and – very, very androcentrically, … with full authority – to continue everything
– – including being granted organizationally and patriarchally backed approval
and entire, yet so discretely and perfectly concealed, permission to act out
all of those sexually addicting behaviors of his or hers … unabated.
Former AAers in genuine sexual
addiction treatment are the first ones to admit this Truth about Alcoholics
Anonymous and its equally and deferringly collusive group, Al – Anon. They will tell you straight up: that while all
manner of machinations are recited long and loudly in AA and in Al – Anon to
the effect that accountability in matters of life, living and relating is what
“Working The Program” is all about, in
fact and in Truth, accountability is not at all the objective – nor the
result! Instead, just the opposite is.
Now. Instead of Herry ever gathering any
Willingness to Listen to anyone describe and confirm for him what he deep or,
as a matter of fact, … not – so – deep … down has always known, that is, how he
perfectly fits this moldy picture, much less, his ever reading and studying up
on the cessation of sexually addicting behaviors on his own, Herod Edinsmaier
executed that which he dazzlingly perpetuates:
he denied and denied and denied.
And quite does so I’m sure, that is, dwells in that brain of his along
the banks of that soooo, so smooth – flowing River D’Nial, today. Dr. Edinsmaier continues those so –
sanctioned, freely unaccountable hours of heaping aggrandizing attention upon
himself as he 13th – Steppingly ‘teaches’ others, especially those
weak and vulnerable women who are themselves newcomers to AA, just how much it
is he really, really knows!
* *
* *
Herry loved to say, probably still
does, “Anything serious needs to be laughed at.” That was the base essence of Dr. Edinsmaier’s
‘great humor’ of which more than one judge, as I have stated before, was privy
to hear him give testimony, er I mean, provide ‘evidence’. That is, of the type of raillery and jokes
that Dr. Edinsmaier and another one of The Stash, his next wife, Fannie
Issicran McLive, liked to teach to my Sons.
Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, for nearly the entire time I was his wife, amused
himself by fixing up old and used bicycles so that they could be ridden
again. He owned many old frames, a
repair stand with a grip for securing them, a truing machine for wheels and
spokes and various American – and European – sized tools and wrenches specific
for the repair of whole bikes or bike parts.
This was not at all an ignoble avocation I should think; and, with three
boys riding in the household, more or less handy it was to have someone around
who knew how to keep their wheels trued and rolling accurately. When
… he was actually there to do so.
One of Herry’s favorite pieces of
pornographic prose, the one we’ve read through in its entirety earlier and
entitled “Why Bicycles Are Better Than Women,” he taught to others repetitively
and most especially to Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, two of whom in their adulthoods
themselves I have since overheard repeat snippets from to their friends. Right in lock step this is with Herry’s and
Juggern’s map for making men into husbands and fathers, especially fathers of
more men as well as and apparently much less importantly, o’ course, fathers of
or fathers – in – law of or grandfathers of … women. Exalted Juggern Edinsmaier provided the
similarly exalted Edinsmaier spermatozoa for five live daughters and one dead
one born at term, and no one I know knows what gender the two were that were
the conceptus products of Mrs. Edinsmaier’s abortions early on in her
gestations of them.
AmTaham sired three daughters,
half the Edinsmaier number. And none of
us, … I know Endys, Ardys and I never heard the likes of this fuckful
prose out of AmTaham’s lips nor from his son Sterling’s nor his brother
Wilbert’s nor his brother – in – law Rowland’s nor from those of his nephews
Arthur and Wyman. Some of these True men
did indeed, I know for a fact, think
like this but to my ear I never once heard anything at all, not ever, the ilk of the smutty “Why
Bicycles Are Better Than Women” – type mockery, diminution, ridicule, beration
– the quite literal DEhumanization
into inanimate objects – of girls and women.
I remember
also that none of the rarities of any
humorous comparison or contrast of boys and
men is of the same level of nor anywhere nearly equal to the vitriol and
filthy vituperation and objectification as is that of girls and women in this
jocular essay. None in this piece, for god’s sake, is actually … honoring … to
us. For just eons females have been ‘the
Other’, ‘the Lesser Than,’ ‘the (AB)normal.’
Even in joking and deprecating humor, females have been taken to a
standard and to a degree to which boys and men have themselves never been
lowered. And the True men, all of them
fathers, husbands, boyfriends or brothers that I ever heard, did not
participate in perpetuating, much less, promoting – our lessening – by enthusiastically teaching it … any further. Flip / Reverse.
“Bicycles don’t get
pregnant.” So. Herry’s wife did. And grew and gave out of her body the
three most perfect Aryan – blond, blue – eyed, white boy children when she
did. When Herod Edinsmaier chose to come
at me in ‘court’… by going after them, I guess it didn’t matter much to him nor
to his papist and hyperdulical family that Herry mocks the fact that he’d had
to put up with an animate object, Dr. Legion True, who’d gone and gotten
herself preggers on him. Not just once
even – but three times I had been parturient, for christ’s sake!
This first one of the entire
composition contrasting and comparing a two – wheeled, inanimate object to two
– legged, female animate ones, however, is probably the most telling, that is, that females, and definitely not males,
stock and subsequently can supply the
capacity to carry on the human race.
Males want to control every aspect of this supreme ultimate power of
ours and everything about our reproductive systems beginning with the thinking
done by us women ourselves. Speaks
again to Gerry Spence's Chapter 9 of From Freedom to Slavery: The Rebirth of Tyranny in America … this
does.
If I were a mean – spirited, hard
– hearted, hating person it would be so easy for me to rewrite
the litany as, instead, a list of
“Why Books Are Better Than Men” or “Why Cats” or “Why Texaco – sponsored Radio
Opera on Saturday Afternoons,” or “Why Blue Long Smooth Wine Bottle Necks Are
Better Than Men,” but I have never seen nor heard ones such as these. Nor written one myself. Nor will I.
The verbal mêlée from those three adult sons of mine and from other
males that this would kick up were I to do so?
Why, I grew to birthing them boy
babies, I adore AmTaham, my most esteemed Ancestor, and almost all other males
and have from my age of at least
three years! I simply would not do
this. Let alone, pass it on. Because … because I do not think this way, this hardly – humor – at
– all way. This hateful, loathing
way. Nor do any of the feminists I know – almost all of them themselves mothers
of men. We simply … love … men and do not think
this way. At all.
* *
* *
So. This 6th of June being a Monday
night, ordinarily Herry would’ve most likely been headed on over to the
McKenzie Avenue building only about six, seven minutes down 13th
Street where several meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous were held weekly. There he would’ve been able to hook up with
the only guy in attendance at AA or anywhere else, for that matter, to whom I
ever figured Herry to give an ear once in awhile. And that was only because Mr. Varry Wussamai
told him – to Herry’s ears and doctor brain – only whatever it was Herry wanted
to hear and, only then, whenever Herry wanted to hear it. Kinda like of what I, according to Dr. Herod
Edinsmaier, had not been doing nearly
enough with Herry myself lately!
Now this was rather easy for Varry
to do, too, that is, to have a sort – of fledgling like Herry under his
wing. A starter cuz although Dr. Herod
Edinsmaier didn’t drink alcohol, he also had not attended Alcoholics Anonymous
meetings but two times in the past decade – so a fledgling AAer was he. In
Truth. (As, o’ course, opposed to
what a judge’d be reading just a short bit later than this – in sworn … ‘court’ … documents!)
If one were to equivalently match
up Varry W to the bicycles’ analogies, there would be no contrast, only
comparison: Varry W had no wife, Varry W
had no kids and never has had, Varry
W was even littler than Herry is and Varry W had a lot of things that Herry
wanted to have … such as unlimited freedom of his physical movements at any
time. Varry W could blithely glide
through any day without so much as a phone call returned if he didn’t want to. Varry W also took other people’s inventory,
at least that is, Herry’s wife’s, yeah, mine – Legion’s. At the same time, however, he never spoke of
Herry’s since, of course, that would go against Alcoholics Anonymous members’
own written rule of Step #4 – that is, of keeping quiet about each others’ sans
– drinking activities!
This taking of my stock, of
course, pleased Herry to no end and, most especially, when Varry W showed up in
‘court’ a little bit later on as Herry’s witness and, actually under oath no less, pulled off that same
little coup d’état right there in front of da’ judge! A man who was a total stranger to me
personally and has only ever known me through whatever it was that Dr.
Edinsmaier, Community Pillar, moaned to him about, gets up in open ‘court’ and
reels off a laundry list of everything he, Wussamai, swears to be dirty about
me. So help him, god. Step #4 be damned as far as I was
concerned! And no matter that Wussamai
himself claimed, O, about 20 years total of … ‘workin’ the Alcoholics Anonymous
Program’ … Yeah, riiiiight … Besides
hearsay and an abomination of Step #4,
Wussamai’s testimony was pure heresy.
Varry Wussamai was Herry’s
Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor and had himself already been performing this
procrastinating, wasting, squandering and spending routine of slackers for at
least five, and maybe as long as, ten years before Herry showed up on its
central Iowa scene of at least three AA meetings per week. Herry, too, had been to AA before his
beginning the Ames area meetings. Only
thing is, though, Herry managed to not
let any of those 25 or so judges in on one certain little itty bitty “finding of fact” about this past AA
attendance of his: Herry had gone to an
Alcoholics Anonymous meeting twice in 1977 – and, then ah well, oopsy, … never once again … … until … Herry’s showing up at one fairly
soon after he, alone, moved to Ames those four July and August 1987 weeks in
which Zane and Jesse had finished up their Junior Zookeeper positions at the
Manhattan Sunset Zoo, and they and Mirzah and I didn't arrive in Ames until
their birthdays. By the time Dr. Herod
Edinsmaier as Herry – Daddee appeared before district ‘court’ judges in 1989,
and 1990, and 1992, and not including the times before appellate judges in
1991, and 1994, … to hear him tell it –
all, of course, in sworn testimonial ‘evidence’, why, Dr. Edinsmaier had racked up a grand total of 12!,
then 13!, and finally then 15 years! of sobriety and clean, familial living
through alleged and apparently ‘bona fide’ Alcoholics Anonymous meetings’
attendance!
JYeah, riiiiight … Accountability
for what was reality? And Truth? Something altogether different. Attending meetings regularly? Truth was two, three and five years and all
but one of those years conveniently and ostentatiously during the concurrent
ones of Herry’s custody litigation and court appearances. As far as genuinely sober and living clean,
let alone, living clean within our family!? Herry had not drunk alcohol for 11, then 13,
then 15 years. But that was all.
When I learned what a sponsor is
meant to be, I learned, too, what a sponsor is not. The position is supposed to provide
leadership and counsel – and both … within reality. Ha. As
far as Varry Wussamai being a well of reality for Herry, hhmmm, suffice it to
say, there could not have been a more opposite function for Varry W within
Herry’s true life. Herry E loved BSing
with Varry W because when he did, Herry E too, could escape accountability and
act as if he hadn’t a care in the World.
Just like Varry W.
* *
* *
I have no idea if Herry E caught
up that particular Monday night with the McKenzie Avenue Alcoholics Anonymous
meeting and Mr. Varry Wussamai or not.
What Dr. Edinsmaier had, indeed however, caught up with by late the very
next afternoon was an apartment with a garage even, an address, a telephone and
… demands. I heard later that certain
folks had put the Good and Pillared Doctor in touch with certain other folks
who knew certain realtors with certain rental complexes and whatever else Herry
needed to immediately get started living on his own – and all the while at the very same time, not
skip beat one down at the pathology laboratory.
Wasn’t like he had Child One to look after the care and placement of
either. Let alone … three of them to
whom to administer … himself. Alone. Everyone in the Good Doctor’s circle knew
that Herry drove an ol’ white Toyota wagon clunker; but they knew, too, that he
did that by choice. Because he liked old
jalopies. Not because he wasn’t a
parvenu or didn’t possess the panacean pesos for one better.
So. When Dr. Herod Edinsmaier, Community Pillar
and who loved to think of and actually verbally referred to himself as the
Doctors’ Doctor, wanted to have things hop – and hop now, like chop – chop ––,
why, he just pulled out the big bucks or the appearance of same through the
credit card, said a few words to a couple of utility agencies or some such –
mostly over the telephone or by way of ordering one of those numerous
subordinate women who worked for him to do the calling around for him instead,
authorized the dollars to begin flying and flowing and, voila, he had pretty
much all of what it was he needed to have.
Right then.
No little kids to get up, dress,
feed, find quality daycare for … so that he could apartment – hunt and utility
– shop. None. None in the way of all of that … that
accountability, that is. Much as if on the order of a business tycoon
or soap opera mogul and the likes of which, before this hindering hiatal
marriage of his, had most impressed Mehitable.
Mighty ‘soft’ – spoken along with the charade of the slightest timidity
and helplessness to it all, this sham of Herry’s was his usual flashy
choreography that I had seen him brandish around as often as he could find
reason to flaunt it. Witness, after all, how it’d been with
Realtor Cornball just a short 11 months earlier when Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had
strolled into the Othello Drive woodland manse in the first place and been sold
on buying it because of its massive living room picture window. Signing a purchase agreement right then and
there. Not a word in consultation or
ponderance with the little woman on this life – altering, that is, this house –
buying – for – the – entire – family matter whatsoever. Just Do It.
Just Did It.
That, in less than 24 hours, is
what happened for Herry this time, too.
Marital separation did not appear to me to be any big deal at all for
Herry. He immediately took up where he’d
left off in December 1976. Being
single. Not uncoupled, mind you. Just definitely unmarried.
His demands were another story and
a very big deal for me. I was deluded
completely. Operating under my so, so
stupid assumption that Herry was living up on 24th Street now as a
way to heal, to mend, to step back, to inventory himself and, most of all, to change that which was mightily in
need of it so that he could hurry back to us all still there in that feral
manor of his as soon as possible, I believed in marital separation as most of
the answer to accomplishing this repair and restoration. Some time physically apart would allow Dr.
Herod Edinsmaier the space needed to think through where changes needed to be
effected, not? Huh. I myself tried learning, too, from these
fiascoes that were Al – Anon and open AA meetings – when Herry physically had
the Boys. We women were all just
throwing spit to the wind for all the talking done at these that meant anything
real – – we women who were so subserviently and so dangerously entrenched, sunk
deeeep in to the swampy swill that is bill w’s chapter eight.
Herry demanded
up at his one – bedroom rental there on 24th Street that he have
custody of Zane, Jesse and Mirzah, every
single weekend. I made my second
incredibly grave mistake. Not only
had I, long,
long ago it now seemed to me, shared to Herry about my two five – day
sleeplessness episodes when shit had happened to hit my relationship fan with
John, but I also now assented to Herry’s having the Boys go stay with him
overnight at his apartment, indeed, every single Friday night and Saturday
night. Summertime was just
starting. Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, now
8½, 9½ and 11½, needed their daddy, didn’t they? What could it hurt? Magnanimous, too, wasn’t I?
Not! What I was was an imbecile.
* *
* *
I do not now recall what words
came to me to tell Zane, Jesse and Mirzah that Herry was not expected for
supper that next night to celebrate school being out or that he wouldn’t, very
soon, be joining us all at any other
meal either. Something as supposedly
‘earth – shattering’ some certain folks’d purport as having to tell one’s
children that their dad needed to leave in order to change himself so that he
could come back to them healed – and I don’t remember giving the Boys this information nor any of their
immediate responses to it. Partly from
the haze then of my sleeplessness still I am sure; but also I think I don’t
remember because, in reality, a
mating man’s and a biological father’s leaving, his more – or – less permanent
absence, is not such an astoundingly horrendous event. Over many millennia’s worth of the existence
– of the evolution … of us all on the Planet Earth … it’s a truly, truly common one!
School did recess, of course, and
the Boys’ and my respite that was Little League began right away in
earnest. Practices and games and
chauffeuring and gathering around for soda while going over the plays after and
the whole team out sometimes for pizza afterwards and hauling the equipment and
keeping score. And then, doing it all over
again times three Boys and two teams the next week!
I loved being asked to keep the
teammates’ scorings. It compelled me to
learn a lot more that I wouldn’t
have known about the game of baseball – which I totally adore. Even now.
Even when it is so controlled and often so sadly and utterly spoiled by
a few angry, nearly always warring, superrich men who are notorious for hating
and hurting women and sometimes their children. I do love the game nevertheless. I loathed trying to explain to Mirzah,
however, that although he at age eight was hit square on in the face by a
thrown ball during fly – catching relays at the Little Minors’ very first
practice and had a parent / team manager who was an outright, known alcoholic
and domestic abuser and whose elder of two sons went on some five years later
to hang himself as an 18 – year – old and who actually yelled practice in and
practice out at all of the team’s eight – and nine – year – old players, this
was not going to be the end of the World as he knew it. Besides, Jesse and Mirzah and I did become
fast friends with the Little Minors coach, Kincaid, an unattached and free – spirited 20 –
something on – and off – again college student, and his very slight – framed
gray – haired and vocal mama who showed up to cheer every game, both of whom
just loved baseball, too. And little
kids.
I kept back just behind the third
– to – home fence line in my webbed lawn chair and in ideal view of the action
proudly positioning on my lap the score pad for Kincaid and the players as I
crafted the proper markings on the little icons of each inning on the sheet
that signified what each batter and runner had accomplished. Mine was the perfect place at which to keep
from bumping face to face into Herry anyhow.
Dr. Herry Edinsmaier would come to the actual game, never to just the practice sessions though and could nearly always,
all of his time there, be found reading the
Des Moines Register, a paperback novel or a newsweekly or in rapt
conversation with another little player’s brunette or blond mama on, usually,
the top bleacher or on one closer to the ground level and always, always he
would sit near the very end of the bench so as to be easily off it and gone in
a rush if he wanted to be.
Why Herry used this alleged
quality time with the Truemaier Boys to read in front of them and their
endeavors I just could not fathom. He
had always done this. That behavior had not simply just begun that summer. I saw other parents once in a very great
while do the same thing, especially fathers or a few mothers, too, who brought
their crocheting project or both genders visiting with each other while
watching the game. But, … Herry? Herry was not watching the game. Then it’d conclude after six, super – high
scoring innings, and he was out to the parking lot, pronto, and gone. How he justified this behavior besides his
being gone so much of the time for work or for AA or for god knows what other
activities of his, too, is merely mystifying to me; but this blatant absenteeism
of the Lord of the Manor, even while physically present in corporal form, was
nothing new.
After all, Favorite Babysitter
Rosemarie from the early 1980s? She knew
of it, too. When I had been away to my
evening shift at the Palm Animal Hospital and all of the other pathology residents including especially the ones
with little kids were home with their families at night, Herry went back ‘to
work’. Dr. Shark, the performance –
evaluating boss of his then, also knew him to be that insecure procrastinator. What else was Dr. Edinsmaier up to as well
these five evenings per week? It
certainly had had nothing to do with fathering.
And being present. That is, with
Herry – Daddee’s being truly ‘there’.
Treats for after the games? Forget about it. If more was expected than ready – bought,
cold
soda in cans that one could
quickly and easily snatch up at the corner Amoco convenience store when he
gassed up, why, it didn’t come from Herry.
And clean – up duty? No. You didn’t see
Dr. Herod Edinsmaier on clean – up
duty either. Treats or an effort of some
other kind such as baking something up for the school carnival sales booth –
even if just a dozen brownies – or chaperoning an afternoon for anything back
at Kate Mitchell or Manhattan or Columbia?
Such parents’ help is standard.
And most definitely needed for activities on the ecology bus field
trips, ECO they were called, a very, very big deal several times each year at
Kate Mitchell, or for the Races’ Field Day at the end of the school year or the
Writing Books’ Workshop or the theatrical productions put on in conjunction
with the Ames community’s ACTORS studio or the band’s fundraiser events. Just as is true in any public school
system. That parent for the Truemaier
Boys at any of these events in any of their three public school
systems, the parent helping, accountable and
… present … was me, Legion.
Herry? Dr. Herod Edinsmaier? Never
– not
ever – was the primary caregiving
parent … the Truemaier Boys’ father.
If a big cash outlay was in any
way possible instead, say, such as in springing for the entire team’s pizzas
after the game or for purchasing all of
the raffle tickets Mirzah, Zane and Jesse were assigned to sell for the annual
March Ridgeway School Carnival back in Columbia or for buying up all of the
unsold, partial boxes of chocolate bars for Mirzah’s Montessori bread – cutting
or playground equipment or Zane’s Ames Middle School band uniforms, then, of
course, Herry produced The Wallet and from out of it freely and grandiosely
wielded wealth in stunning amounts. Even
when we were still both college students and actually had no plethora of pecuniary paper, Herry spent. But contribute his time or his labor? His fully attentive presence? Go door to door with the Boys selling bars
and tickets and taking orders for freshly prepared frozen pizzas? Then actually fulfill those requests for pre
– cooked pies by helping to shop for their ingredients and putting them
together with fresh seals in someone’s kitchen?
No. Dr. Edinsmaier did not. Herry – Daddee was never … ‘there’.
In addition to the works that are
those of John Stoltenberg and Gerry Spence, Grace teaches the poetry of Philip
Larkin and the maxims of Publilus Syrus in Listening College, “With your
integrity and honor gone, you have nothing left to leave your children but
money.” Bard Larkin may have been
supposing that these words of his wisdom applied to angry old men, gray and
dying. Grace and I both well know that
this aphorism pertained to Herry … to Herry languishing perhaps in his 30s and
40s, just a wee bit graying but not at all yet considering lying down and
dying. And the Iraqi slave of 42 BCE
Italians’ Maxim #265, “What is left when honor is lost?” In the cases of Dr. Herod Edinsmaier,
current American ‘courts’ of family law judges and, O JYeah, bill w, apparently and
hypocritically what is left “ … are better husbands and fathers than ever
before.”
I respect the science of
psychology and the profession that is that of psychologists and psychiatrists
and do not at all presume to be one myself.
Furthermore, I certainly do not accede that persons escape
accountability for their destructive behaviors just because a psychological
explanation may exist for someone’s bad actions performed, of course, after
their own already – known – to – be – wrong choices to do these. I think that Herry may have willed or
anointed or considered himself, even though he knew it a falsehood, entitled to not have to do any work
because he’d just spent an entire childhood in a family situation where
Breathing itself was work, there having been such a horde of Edinsmaier
siblings continuously horning in on a youngster’s personal space. Without lifting a finger to labor at
something, he would most certainly make the impression that he had and that it was he who had, indeed, been responsible for the work of the project
and, ultimately, usurp the praise others gave it, the honoring that should’ve
gone to the ones who had actually done the work. Behold his coaching the little girls’ and
little boys’ soccer team of Mirzah’s as just one of so, so many examples.
* *
* *
Mrs. Edinsmaier herself described
for me one sunny afternoon in late 1976, the mightily absolute and lengthy
nightmare that had been the two decades of Detanimod’s and her older daughters’
work of changing the four youngest toddlers or infants – and sometimes more –
who were, on any given day of that near quarter – century’s worth, still in
diapers and then … laundering them.
I remember the year exactly, probably Thanksgiving time or maybe even
December’s end, because Mrs. Edinsmaier passed by the door of her fine
farmhouse bathroom done up in burgundy.
Burgundy and pink print shower curtain, burgundy pile throw rug, plush
burgundy, pink and white terry towels in their places on the racks neatly
folded and the faux furry burgundy cover atop the toilet seat. She spied me dunking, bare hands of course, a
long, white rag in the toilet bowl water up and down, up and down. The three of us, Zane three to four months
old, Herry and I, had come to join the kindred throng swarming about the
paternal grandparents’ country home for a holiday visit. “Ever lose one of those down the toilet?” she
asked leaning on the door frame somewhat nervously watching me (‘f course never, ever Herry – Daddee) carry out
this nasty chore.
“Actually, no.” I looked up in reply. “I just about did, though. It was the very first soiled diaper that
Zane’d had after he came home from the hospital.” We three were residents of Pammel Court’s o –
so cold, metal WWII – constructed Quonset huts and, for married students
while I commenced my third year
of veterinary medical classes when Zane was just a 2½ – week – old newborn,
unequivocally the cheapest housing available at $49.00 a month rent. Why, I had a half dozen friends in that
junior class, without spouses or kids of their own of course, who, just so they
could have their pet equines close by their sides while they attended vet
school, paid nearly twice as much a month to board their horses in stables just
outside of town!
At Zane’s 22nd hour of
life outside of me, he and I were released from the itty bitty Storm County
General Hospital maternity ward in that same town where the district ‘court’
convened every weekday morning just up the street three blocks and about a
dozen miles east of Othello Drive.
We were discharged home to Pammel Court on Wednesday around 2:15 in the
afternoon; and although Zane had had the first after – birth meconium stools,
about two of them very soon after delivery, he politely declined as a
breastfeeding baby to have another bowel movement whatsoever until I got so
concerned that I telephoned Dr. Starbenz at his home on Saturday
afternoon. “Noooot to worry, Legion!”
the doctor was smiling I could tell – on the other end of the line.
I truly liked this man. He and his incredibly skinny wife who’d
altogether gained a grand total of only 8 pounds with her second pregnancy, a
set of twin boys, and who managed his front office, had taken me on as a Title
XIX patient no questions asked. In doing
so, he had also agreed, because I had not a penny of supplemental maternity
insurance coverage, to discharge me just as soon as he deemed both Zane and me
fit enough to go – and that was apparently at around Zane’s 22nd
hour. Why, the uproar and outrage from
the nursing staff was near deafening:
never before in the history of Storm County General had a new mama gone
home with her new babe so bloody damn early.
And they were all most vociferous in letting the conscientious and
rather new – to – the – community Dr. Starbenz know of their disgust and
distrust of his early – out plan for Zane and me. But I was so grateful.
“You're breastfeeding, Legion; and
as you already know from all of your reading on this, Zane may have up to
around 15 little stools a day or he may have only one big one all week
long! I tell ya’ what: if he hasn’t moved his bowels by tomorrow
evening at 9 pm, try stimulating his rectum with a thermometer a couple times
and waiting 15 to 20 minutes, then doing it again. If he hasn’t had a diaperful by news time,
then give me another call.”
I, indeed, planned to do as
instructed. Dr. Starbenz, a family
practice physician, was so correct, of
course. It was just that I was a brand –
new mama and, well, even with all of my studying up and knowing from my former
nursing career and from my being a life – long learner of things biological
about this possible phenomenon in breastfed infants, I just never figured that
I’d be soooo blessed, that is, one bowel movement a week so only one dirty
diaper a week. Yet, that was exactly
true. For the ensuing first six weeks of
Zane’s entire life on this Planet, there was only one such diaper change per
week for me to manage. What an
incredible piece of good fortune this was actually.
As I stated, I intended to do the
probing thermometer technique, but I did not have to. Zane let loose the very next day, just about
8 pm, with the likes of which I had never in my whole life seen a Guernsey on
the richest ration mix of clover leaves and blooms and ground corn let loose
with! Dr. Starbenz had been so right on
the money and damn near right on the exact hour! Week after week I joked with Zane’s first
babysitter, Ms. Lime in her Old Garden Trailer Court home adjacent to the
veterinary college, that she should offer me discounted childcare fees since
she, with Zane who started there on his 16th day of age, never once
had to change a sullied nappy of his that first month and a half! Only on Sundays when I did after finding him
pushing and grunting to beat all and always just right around 8 in the
evening. It was nigh unto uncanny!
I finished the account to Mrs.
Edinsmaier's inquiry, “The very first dirty diaper Zane had was so mammoth that
I left it to soak in the toilet bowl at Pammel, of course, after first flushing
down the big stuff. It was Sunday night
and I must’ve forgotten it in there ‘cause Zane and I and Herry all fell off to
sleep. About midnight or so Herry got up
to go to the bathroom and I’m still asleep, of course, with Zane between us
when I suddenly sit straight up in bed.
I’d heard Herry fumbling in the dark for the flusher handle and I came
wide awake and bolt upright faster than all get out remembering that I hadn’t
finished with the diaper in the bowl and put it in the pail. I yelled, ‘Don’t flush it! Don’t flush it!’ And was lucky enough to stop him. ‘Course Zane waked up with that ruckus and
wanted to nurse. So right there in the
middle of the night after Zane was back to sleep, I took care of that first
dirty diaper. It scared me so much I
resolved to not ever come that close to screwing up the toilet again. So … so far I’ve been really lucky. I guess we’ve both just gotten into the habit
now of looking down into the bowl before starting to even use it.”
Mrs. Edinsmaier nodded,
“Uummm. I just could never trust that
that wouldn’t happen.”
“So you’re saying you didn’t do
the dirty ones in the toilet?”
“No, I didn’t. Not ever.
We didn’t get an indoor bathroom until 1954, the year Murielle was
born.” Murielle was that last, 14th
gestation of Detanimod’s, her sixth Edinsmaier daughter whom she had been
pushed out midwinter. Mrs. Edinsmaier
continued, “So when we got all this fine plumbing and new pipes, why, I was so
afraid of clogging it up with one lost down the drain that, well, I just never
did.” Finally after a rather ho – hum
pause during which I suppose I was staring at her with a look of some level of
disbelief, she spoke of what was really at the basis for her not using this
‘convenience’ for diapers with bowel movement soiling them, “I was really
afraid that if I left one unattended in
the stool to soak just like you’d done, why, someone else’d come along before I
had gotten back to take care of it and not be nearly as concerned for our new
waterworks as I was.”
Well, I certainly could understand
and empathize with her feeling about those wonderful new pipes of hers. But to have gone through 12 live birthings
and raised up and out of cloth diapers until they were all finally toilet –
trained 11 kids in that rural, back – roads countryside without the use of the
toilet bowl and sewage system to rinse out the feculent diaper initially and
flush down the gross, organic stuff?
What had she done?!
What Detanimod told me next was the nightmare of our fecund
Ancestors. For centuries and
millennia. One that I had never, ever
heard of before that day, “You see,” Mrs. Edinsmaier calmly began, “in my day
of having babies, there was a practice with diapers among housewives that was
quite common. In families of good
reputation, I’m talking about. Not just
in the families that were, well, thought of as, well, less than clean, you
know. And that was to take the diapers
that only had had just urine in them and hang ‘em out on the clothesline to dry
– and sort of sanitize – in the sunshine like that – without, ah, … without
washing them first … mind you. You know,
to use the sunlight and the air to freshen them up a little. Then they’d take them down off the line and
put them back on the babies’ bottoms just that way. Like from March to November. Then after that second use on the baby’s
bottom is when they’d all get washed with hot water and detergent and hung out
to dry again actually clean this time.
This was the practice, you know, because laundry was so hard to do. The wash machines weren’t at all like they
are today, what with the scrub tubs and wringers and all.”
“And, … ‘n’ – the dirty
diapers?” I was sure I was just going to
dread the disgust she was going to regale me with next. I was right.
“Yeah, the dirty ones were really
hard. They, of course, had to be
laundered in the machine with detergent and hot water. But when they first came off the baby,
though, they went out to the back stoop and were rinsed out – out there in the
back in a five – gallon slop bucket if you had the time right then. If you didn’t have the time right then, well,
you just threw ‘em in the bucket water and came back later to do it. The flies and the stench in the summertime,
though, O, that was just awful. Just
awful. But now if it was wintertime, by
the time you got time enough free to launder a load in the machine, those
diapers and the messes in ‘em ‘course, inside that slop bucket out on the back
porch were probably frozen solid. So you
had to boil water on the stove. Enough
so that you could thaw out the ice in the bucket back there in that cold and
free up the diapers and get ‘em rinsed, throw out the slop and finally get ‘em
all down to the wash machine in the basement and actually do the load
properly. Yeah, it was pretty hard, I
guess.”
“Hard?! You guess?!
Ya’ think?!!!” I am dazed. I am
left thinking … with all of my expletive adjectives only to myself, “It must’ve been pure mother – fucking Hell! All the goddam time. Four babies at any one time in diapers for
more than 20 years?! It was Hell! M’god, what had the babies’ bottoms looked
like most of the time. Ya’ know, even
with the airing out in the sunshine.
They must’ve just been red and raw almost all the damn time! Plus the smell of urine, of that horrid
ammonia, all around the house all the damn time, I would imagine, not?! Even with the outside clothesline airing and
the sunshine, wouldn’t there be that odor?
Yuuuk! Not to mention the slop
bucket thing. Eeeeew! What the mother – fucking Sam Hell must’ve
that been like for over 20 years of summers and winters?! O, m’god!!
Parents these days haven’t a damn thing to complain about with regard to
diapering babies and yet they do! We
have it soooo damn easy. Even those of
us who don’t use disposables! Even I
do. I do use cloth diapers; but for god’s sake, I have a diaper service
for Zane! We have it so easy today even
with so many mamas working outside the home.”
Questions about which Mrs.
Edinsmaier must have been fairly reading my mind because, just before she
passed back to her holiday dishes which were cooking in the kitchen, she
uncrossed her arms and to her hips
placed both her hands akimbo while most matter – of – factly stating, “But I never did that. Ya’ know?
I never did that. All of my
babies had completely freshly laundered diapers on their bottoms all the time. I never put them on the line to dry first
like it was okay to do. I, umm, I didn’t
do that. I always washed ‘em in hot
water and detergent properly every single time they came off of a baby.” She left the bathroom doorway. I gagged.
Then I finished that diaper of
Zane’s in her toilet bowl – still stunned at what I’d just heard. I didn’t, right off then, realize it
for the abuse and the violence this was to her and to her kids; but I certainly did a little itty bit later
on. What a Hell all right. And thousands and millions of women had gone
through this labor of so many, many pregnancies, birthings and launderings for
decades and for centuries before Detanimod or me. Only to receive not one word of thanks for
it, let alone, to receive from the men who made the women pregnant their
willingness and their offerings to do the work of it all themselves for any of
the total number of years of raising up the babies. Over and over and over. The men who then went on as if entitled simply because they were male …
to claim from these slave mothers, their own wives, these DEhumans all, to
claim her babies and her children as their own …
property. Through millennium after
millennium.
* *
* *
Then there’s the psychological
phenomenon known as the Scarcity Mode so sickly operating inside Herry, too, I
believe. When I was still an Edinsmaier
insider, I saw it as well in every last one of his sisters and brothers as the
adults they long are. None of the eleven
that I could see delayed personal gratification. For a thing.
When they wanted something, they acquired it. Simple as that. Whether it was a tangible object or a concept
fulfilled or an idea expressed or a dream desired or a mouth opened. Or a behavior … chosen. And the sooner the thing or the deal or the
behavior could be secured and obtained or expressed or chosen, the faster the
brother or sister or Herry could move on to acquiring the next wanted thing or
asseverating their next judgment on any matter.
Psychology with its Scarcity Mode holds that since during
these family members’ childhoods they had to share absolutely everything from
pillow space to the skillet of American fries at suppertime to lap space in the
family car on an outing to church, they developed the notion that they would
never, at any one time or event, have as much of something as they could
possibly want of it. I do remember that
when all or nearly all of the 11 adult Edinsmaier siblings were back at the
country home at any one time and all of us spouses married to one of them and
all of our children sat down to any birthday or holiday dinner and passed
around the bowl of creamed corn, there would actually be kernels left
over. After it had passed by everyone
and all of those people had taken some, there’d be more than a helping left in
the bottom of the bowl. When what was real should have been: if everyone, at the first pass, had taken as
much of a serving as they really had
wanted and as much of a portion as what would have really sated their hunger for maize that day, then there wouldn’t
have been any corn left at all past the eighth or ninth person!
This then in turn, psychology
study teaches, led each Edinsmaier child to arrogate that as adults with their
own jobs and their own positions and their own money they were simply in their
own spaces finally fully entitled to owning the crotchet that they could
comport all they liked as insatiate human beings. And they did – as we have seen with Herod’s
contribution proclivities. That is, big
money, sure. Even as poor college
students Herry was. And big ideas to
express. Always big opinions Herry
had. But. But.
Big time and big effort and big actual work commitment to a project or
an endeavor, why, uummm, no, … no, that Herry Edinsmaier didn’t have so much of
– well, any of – to donate.
Not even of a little effort to contribute either.
I have actually known Herry, all of the years I was married to him, to
not lift one finger in that rural kitchen of his parents’ to help prepare
something for a holiday or a special affair or just an ordinary time. Most literally, all of the Edinsmaier males congregated in the living room right
next door and in plain view of all of the Edinsmaier daughters and female
spouses laboring there in the kitchen.
But the guys, the men? The young
boys even? They were all either chatting
it up or with the screen on viewing some televised sports event or right
outside underneath the kitchen window having a tall drink of something cool
while hanging. Simply hanging. It wasn’t as though they couldn’t see the work to be done. It was right there under their hungry noses,
and the fruits of some woman’s labor certainly slid down their several scores
of gullets most easily enough at mealtime.
That was for sure.
Yet. None of the males at any time went to the kitchen as a matter of course and did a
thing there.
I actually saw Herry as well as his Stash’s next
inhabitant, Fannie Issicran McLive, conduct themselves in this very same lazy,
entitled, aprovechar – like and elitist you – serve – me – and – be – my –
slave way as recently as just ten months ago at the very end of the last
millennium when Jesse, yes, my Jesse, married!
Jesse’s wife’s Mexican parents, both her mother and her father, labored so long and so hard and so hosted to beat
the band to make their occasion the superbly special one that it, indeed, did
turn out to be. And throughout all of
the days and days and days that was this traditionally long celebration, Herry
and Fannie had to, quite literally, be begged to actually help out on doing any
of it. It was truly bizarre!
This was Mehitable – approved behavior as well, of
course. But coming only from Dr. Herod
Edinsmaier. Not coming from Dr. Legion
True, her kid. No. Because Herry, for the very, very few times
that he ever consented to grace his actual physicality over to AmTaham’s and
her home in Williamsburg, carried himself off while there with this exact same
comportment and countenance. And as you
can imagine, AmTaham, the First Farmer of Long Labor who was also the self –
appointed chief bottle – washer inside Mehitable’s and his kitchen, could
scarcely bring himself, in acquiescence to his wife’s desires, to tolerate this
slothful, slacker demeanor of Herry’s for even just one evening. And as I ashamedly have stated before, our
closest colleagues in parenting, Abby and Devin with their two little girls,
also witnessed as well as suffered at their various residences over our first
years of marriage from Herry’s entitled and aprovechar manner of usurpation and plain ol’ … taking.
Furthermore AmTaham, as well as I,
knew Herod Edinsmaier to be teaching all three Truemaier Boys this same mien of
torpor, acquisition and immediate gratification of one’s wants. From their earliest ages on. More than one time I recall a certain event
occurring which Herry never, not even one time, stopped executing. And probably has not to this day. It was, every time it happened, made snidely
and sarcastically clear to me and very much out loud in front of Zane, Mirzah
and Jesse, that I was all wrong and should just shut the complete fuck up.
Herry never denied the Boys soda
pop when they wanted some. Now I was not
in favor of denying them soda then either, that is, especially when they’d
already consumed for that day what a good diet of liquids dictates they should
have, that is, they’d already drunk up plenty enough water, milk or juices.
Rub was, though, Herry would not
have them wait even just five or ten minutes.
If they wanted it right then and
there, well then, right then and there they should have it as far as Herry was
concerned. He absolutely delighted,
smirking as he recounted it about four years later, in telling the account of
his behavior in this matter to Judge Harley Butcher.
As you can imagine the entire back
passenger bench seat of either his Toyota Crown or my Shitbox Dodge wagon was
for many a year filled with wall – to – wall youngsters belted into their
respective car seats. Because morning
schedules and commutes collectively together were fairly hectic, most of the
times that we stopped for gasoline we did so after work on the way home from
the daycare or from the Boys’ after – school activities. And at the gas station or outside the
convenience store there would be, of course, a vending machine or cooler with
12 – ounce cans or plastic bottles cold
and just waiting for young Boys’ thirsty throats.
It was about 5:15 or 5:20 in the
afternoon. Without exception. No matter that in just five to ten minutes’
worth of waiting we all would be at our home where there were 16 – ounce, full
bottles of soda waiting chilled in the refrigerator or in the pantry, bottles
I’d earlier purchased at the grocery store, and ice cubes in those provincially
blue plastic trays in the freezer compartment that took a little mining but not
too much to retrieve. If Zane or if
Mirzah or if Jesse stated to the thin air from those wagons’ back seats that
they wanted soda pop, why then Herry upbraided me over and over and over in
front of them that he was always going
to be able to reach right down into his little pants pocket and to, right then
and right now, haul out of it whatever quarters it took to slake his Boys’
wants. Right then and right now. No waiting whatsoever for our getting home to
where four ounces more soda pop than the cans held and at approximately half or
less than half the vending cost awaited them, too, in the closet. None of that.
No. Patience within reason?
No!
Herod Edinsmaier himself didn’t
wait either. Not at any time, and, of course, the Boys learned this behavior like,
right now, so it was very, very often, any
time any one of them wanted a can of soda, they knew Herry would never,
never tell them no, that he would never tell them … to wait … ‘til we all got home to the closet pantry’s supply
there. Judge Butcher smiled
ingratiatingly and compliantly while nodding ever so slightly. The Look.
The Look of one all – knowing and pillared man to … another.
This evil, of course, is well –
known to be the responsibility of exalted Juggern who, in full knowledge of
what he was doing when he recklessly demanded to fuck and to fecundate
Detanimod time and time and time and time and time and time and time and time
and time and time and time and time and time and time again to create this
gargantuan, messy mass of Edinsmaiers in the first place, only served by doing
so to perpetuate these sicknesses. Isn’t
it nearly uncanny and certainly most bizarre and damned crazy … that, today,
having come from a family that crowded … only
one out of the five female Edinsmaier daughters that are Herry’s living and
adult blood sisters, has children of her own?!
Only one. In the Year 2000, only
one!
Now some are barren, you say. JYeah, that could be true. That a couple of the Edinsmaier women would
be unable to have natural children of their own. But.
All four of them or their several mates over the years sterile? No. Not
all four and not all four eventually married couples either. The odds of that being biologically so are
just astronomical and too staggering to warrant any time wasted on giving
credence to that concept. Besides, two
of those four childless women delayed their marriages to men until long into
their 30s and one did not marry a man until after she was over 40 years of
age.
Not that marriage is needed to put children into your adult lives. It
isn’t.
And there’s the point of this:
You don’t need marriage or a union to the same gender as yourself to put
little kids into your life on a very regular basis, even daily. And you, as a
single adult female or a single adult male and uncoupled, haven’t had need of
another bonded or integrated person in your life to do this absolutely most
respectful honoring – the – future thing and Ancestoring deal for quite some
time now.
But while all six of the Edinsmaier male children, married
all of them early on in their 20s or 30s, and their wives have at least two and
often three children each between them with one of them having four! over all
of their adult years singly or coupled, four
out of the five Edinsmaier female children had zero children born to or … or … or … raised up by any one of them. One of those four, the sister that married
after she was 40, acquired in that alliance two nearly grown stepchildren who
do not live on a daily basis with her and her husband.
Clearly. The craziness is there … is visible
here. Why did these four adult women,
without receiving wages or a salary or being paid to do so in some other way, choose to specifically not put little children into their lives
at all by some possible means
available?! No adoptions, no mentoring,
no fostering, no coaching! Not even
cuddling nor rocking down at an AIDS hospice or a homeless shelter. Not even substituting on a regular basis as the aunts they were for the care and
nurturance of their own nieces and nephews, mind you! For their own brothers’ children! Including
never, not one time ever in 12½ years of Herry’s and my marriage, offers of
childcare for any one, two or all three of the Truemaier Boys! Why not?!
Not even for an hour’s worth so that their mama, Dr. Legion True, could
soak a decent spell inside the burgundy and pink bubbles of the Truemaier Boys’
grandparents’ bathtub!
Is the explanation for this
selfishness, greed and preposterousness as ‘simple’ as the Scarcity Mode? So much doing without and so much work heaped
on them when they themselves were little girls that they evidently just
couldn’t bear up under any more at all as adult women? Or, is it even more pernicious, virulent and
deadly than this?
Neither psychological theory that
may clarify why members of supersized American families possess the
characteristics and conduct that they oftentimes do excuses this chosen behavior, of course. The facts of Herry’s passive aggressive
laziness, his hoggish and narcissistic compulsion for so much attention, sexual
and otherwise, and his cumbersome material acquisition poisoned his own
Boys. As far as the accountability for
this toxin in them that is his, non – alcoholic though it has been for nearly
as many years as they all are old? To
this day, he simply, because he can
… denies it, avoids it, justifies it,
rationalizes it, seeks collusion in it especially from females or from Mirzah,
Jesse and Zane, or he goes out and buys or boinks something else with which to
numb it. And, so far successfully and
long into his sixth decade of life as so many, many similarly pillared men do,
escapes all accountability.
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