Bridges
We traverse many bridges as we walk through this lifetime. The beginning of school bridges family to the larger community. The bridge spanning the Piscataqua River as our family relocated to Maine to enter the grand wilderness of adolescence. College was my bridge from dependency to independence. Being on my own.Then, the march down the isle to matrimony and starting a new family. The crossover from raising children, to the resulting empty nest. These are the types of passages that many of us take throughout a lifetime, bridging from one stage of life to the next.
We raise our children and watch them proceed on their own path, giving us the vicarious thrill of growing up all over again. Generation after generation we cross the bridges put before us; the path is so well worn that we can usually foresee the approaching transition, and take advantage of experience provided by our predecessors.
If all goes according to plan, we can step back and see the continuity of our lives, and make some sense of how we have come to be the person we are.
But what if the path becomes broken, and we lose sight of critical information in the giant potholes we may encounter along the way? A broken marriage.
I have 4 children who have bridged into independence. But where on my side of the bridge I had four boys, as I look to the other side, I find that one of them is not with their brothers. They stand alone in another place, no longer the one we thought we knew.
What does that mean?
Our happy memories of their childhood are marred by bewilderment, anger, resentment, betrayal, and guilt. The person we all thought we knew so well, is not who we thought they were at all.
The assumptions made as my children evolved, became the potholes. We had not a clue of the extreme discontent they was experiencing as they excelled in all of their endeavors- art, music, writing, sports.
I did marvel at their openness, the numerous deep heart to hearts that were so lacking in my relationships with the other boys– imagined even that this was the type of relationship I might have had with a daughter.
A transition is a bridge to the next phase of life. In this case it has been the transformation of one of our own into someone quite different from the perception we have had of them all these years. And there they stand on the other side of this abyss. Who is this person? How do we reconcile our experience of the past with their reality.
As they have crossed this bridge into self authenticity, the rest of us wonder what the hell happened. How did we miss this? And what does it mean for our family. Can the wounds that we each grapple with to identify, be healed?
RDW 5-9-18