The Child's Burden

I grew up in a small tract house in St. Louis County. Saying it was small is much like calling the ocean 'wet'. When it was first built, it would officially be a two bedroom ranch. In all, it probably consisted of nine-hundred square feet of space on the main floor, with an unfinished basement.

For the first years of my life, I had a room of my own. The bed was a simple bunk built into the wall that was just long enough to fit a 2-4 year old child. When my sister came along, her crib was added to the room, while my older brother maintained his own bedroom at the opposite end of the house. His room was actually a walled-in dining room, which then relegated the dinner table to the middle of the kitchen.

One of my earliest memories was of attending my uncle Ricky's funeral. He had been a 30-year-old man of reasonable health who suddenly died of a massive heart attack. Certain details of the service I remember quite well, even at the age of three. I also remember it as a turning point when our quaint little house began to decline.

My mom had stayed at home to raise us kids, but returned to work when I was five. By that time, dishes began to pile in the sink regularly, and sit unattended for days. The kitchen table which had been such a regular meeting place became more of a catch-all for mail, news papers, keys, and anything else that wasn't going to be put away expeditiously. Eventually, the entire house became a tangled mess of publications, unopened mail, receipts, food containers, unwashed clothes and outright garbage.

Cleaning of any appreciable amount was reserved for when family was coming to visit. It was about the most stressful thing I can remember, not because of the sheer volume of work to be done, but the agonizing pace at which it had to be done. Every item that was left to wither in neglect suddenly became precious in the eyes of mother.

It had to be proved beyond all suspicion that the item we were about to discard was in fact useless. Very little ever made it to the trash. For years crap accumulated. Lead weights that were used to balance aircraft collected dust in our basement from time immemorial. Who in the mid-west, aside from an aircraft mechanic, has any need of aircraft balancing ingots? Every workout fad and device you can remember collected, only to go unused and serve as a place to hang discarded clothes.

Watchtower and Awake magazines (yes, my parents are Witnesses) that would never be presented to householders collected on the floor, between couch cushions, and on top of the refrigerator. Piles of Publishers Clearinghouse entries collected long after their expiration dates. Weird fashion magazines like Mirabella came to the house for no apparent reason, but then never went away.

Tools, building materials (and debris), and scads of  'useful' items made their way into the house whether we needed them or not. What we couldn't fit in the house just went in the back yard, or onto the porch for our neighbors to look upon with unending disdain.

And all of this was a secret.

We didn't tell people about it. We didn't invite people over. When they did come over with little or no warning, everything that could be hidden was shoved into a bedroom and kept out of view. My Grandpa Shug once chastised my sister for the condition of her room, blatantly telling her that God was disgusted. What he did not know is that my mom shoveled all of that shit in there mere minutes before he arrived. She never corrected him either.

Among other things, this was a cohesive element of our dysfunctional family. No one could know. I could not have friends over. I met them on the porch only. I lied to keep people from walking through our front door. I did as much as I could to hide this horrible and embarrassing reality from as many people as I could.

I hated it.

As a grown up I've never been fastidious, but I'm certainly no slob. Thanks to a vigilant wife, I've learned to be a functional adult who keeps a house livable. I have also come to realize that the 'normal' I grew up with was not all that normal.

My mother exhibited, and still does exhibit, all the signs of a hoarder. The loss of my uncle, her youngest brother, coincided conveniently with the beginnings of this behavior. The constant collection, particularly of things that would help her manage things like body image and self-esteem, and the refusal to let go of anything that had even tangential meaning are common elements to people with this illness.

I began to recognize the full scope of her issue after watching some episodes of Buried Alive. The show deals with hoarding, the families who cope with it, and the treatment of the disease. I also realized the exceptional strain that it put on me as a child.

While my mom is a hoarder, she is also an emotional manipulator. Though my brother, sister, and I never were responsible for bringing things into the house, we were told incessantly that we were the ones who responsible for leaving the house a mess. I don't deny that we didn't clean up after ourselves, but we also learned the habits from her actions, and the complicity offered by my dad.

Congregation elders would sometimes come by for what they called "Shepherding Visits". These were times when they would counsel us on proper behavior expected of Christian children, often focusing on helping parents keep a clean house. As good children of dysfunction, we took our roles in the illusion and accepted our counsel. One thing you never do with an emotional manipulator is talk back, so it was necessary, in the presence of others, to accept responsibility for something that isn't your doing.

A short time ago, a cousin posted a picture of my parents' home on Facebook. At first it was unremarkable to me, but then I took a moment to study it. The front porch was littered with belongings. I could clearly see a camp cooler, more building supplies, boxes, crates, and any number of things I couldn't identify. The side door was clearly visible, next to which a step ladder was propped instead of being stored in the garage or tool shed. The grass was unkempt and the house simply looked shabby. This is exactly what my childhood home looked like from the time I was three years old.

The reality is that my parents live in the same conditions they did before, but long after their children have gone. For those keeping score, the logical conclusion is that the blame placed on us back then was just horribly misplaced. We weren't causative.

As a child, however, these are things you don't know. You shoulder the load because you don't know what it is not to have the load. Nothing seems amiss. You don't even really question the shame of living in a house that has no floor. The full depth of this issue is impossible to address in one post, but it is important to understand that it is a behavior that encompasses a wide array of secrets and illusions from which children rarely recover in full.

These days, I carry a lot of anger. The relationship with my parents is strained. My 12-year-old daughter has not seen them in a long time, and has seldom stayed the night at their home. For more reasons than those detailed above, my wife and I don't let that happen. Even when they've invited her to stay at their home for a few weeks of the summer, I can't bring myself to make the arrangements.

The truth is that I don't consider them healthy influences. The bad habits and thinking patterns that were instilled in me are ones that I will not let my child learn. The exceptionally long reach of being the dumping ground of an emotionally injured authority figure is a burden that no child should bear. Neither is it a reasonable burden to keep family from being family. But while I can't adequately explain to my daughter now why her grandparents are not a part of her life, I would never be able to adequately explain allowing their habits to color her life or her understanding of herself. I find this to be the lesser evil.

That is the unfortunate burden I bear. To be the insulation between people I relied upon and the one who relies upon me.