Enlightenment

Early mornings are my favorite part of the day despite the fact that I usually do not experience restful sleep at nights.  I don’t sleep in the bed in our quiet and dark master bedroom which is located at the far end of our home.  Because of the constant pain associated with age-related degenerative disc disease in my lower back, I am unable to sleep in a prone position and instead sleep in my recliner in the family room, located at the noisier end of our house just feet away from where the neighborhood road lies.  But I’m not alone!  I fall asleep every night accompanied by my faithful and usually snoring dog lying nearby on the floor.  Ahh, the soothing sounds of canine sinusitis!

Over the years I have bought and tried many pillows, cushions, body props, and other devices that are ‘Guaranteed to promote restful sleep!’ as their advertisers claim.  They don’t work.  I usually ended up nearly falling off the bed, sliding down to the end of the bed and fighting for space with the dog, or waking after only a couple hours of sleep in painful muscle spasms and cramping.  I have come to accept and to love my Lazy Boy recliner as the amazing sleeping device it really is!  I am thankful for the angle of recline it achieves which results in negative pressure on my aching lower back and allows for some degree of  sleep.  I awake very early every morning, at the noisy end of our home, and am instantly aware of neighborhood goings-on as fathers and mothers start and warm up their cars, trucks, and motorcycles in preparation for their commutes to work, transport of children to schools, etc. 

Before the caffeine in my one morning cup of coffee kicks in along with my daily meds, I watch the early morning news on the local TV channel.  All the crises of the world seem far away and completely disassociated to my own life.  The false cheeriness of the newscasters as they rattle off the latest and most devastating news of the day is almost palatable.  As the weather person predicts the days’ and the weeks’ weather, I can almost trust that their fancy Doppler radar is indeed correct.  As the traffic person warns of accidents, road construction delays, and upcoming daily commuting issues, I wonder why we really need to hear all that blathering every morning.    

Within the first hour of waking, the neighborhood quiets down again.  I switch off the now-annoying newscast on the TV.  My cup of caffeine is circulating up to my now functioning brain and it pops into its normal routine – a million questions, a million concerns, and an overriding feeling that all is not well in the world.  But that’s just me.  I am a responsible adult; heck, I was a responsible adult before the age of 6 because I come from a dysfunctional family and parents who demanded that their children take on very adult roles immediately after weaning.   

You see, my parents were alcoholics.  Of course, in the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s . . . oh heck, most of the history of our American country, consuming mass amounts of alcohol in the name of relaxation, socializing, just having fun, or whatever one calls it, was just fine.  In fact, a rite of passage into adulthood was drinking, and today it still is.  Just as we humans pass through the difficult teen years and begin to develop the concept of responsible adulthood, what do we do?  Many take a giant leap back to toddlerhood by arresting their social and emotional development with the chronic use of alcohol.  This is what my parents did.  They both began drinking in earnest before their teens and continued right up to their early deaths.

Active alcoholism by one or both parents results in, shall we say, a very interesting childhood for their children.  In truth, it results in their children developing patterns of coping to parental alcohol addiction that disable those children from going on to lead ‘normal’ adult lives and realizing their full potential.  The term ‘alcoholism’ encompasses so many negative behaviors that it is overwhelming to list them here but most folks are already aware of them from years of media advertisements, national education and awareness, and personal experiences that have made the term ‘alcoholism’ a daily verb in our lives.

We are acutely aware of the life of the alcoholic.  But are we so acutely aware of the resulting lives of those in their close relationships?  I am a non-drinker but I lived through a childhood ravaged by the effects of alcohol on the two adults who were ‘responsible’ for me.  Even as a child I was aware of when my parents were loaded or were bordering on sober.  I knew that when they invited their friends to our home for an evening of pinnacle, this also meant an evening of drinking and drama followed by several days of family upset.  As a child I knew that alcohol was a problem in my family home and that it affected my parents in very negative ways.  But not until my middle age did I begin to develop a true understanding of alcohol’s effects on me, their tee-tootling offspring.

It is trite to say that children learn what they live.  Children are conditioned to what they live.  Conditioned to some behaviors and beliefs, and conditioned away from others.  How many of us, during the course of our working lives, have experienced the effects of a supervisor practicing power over our careers by pronouncing us to be excellent, or inferior performers?  These pronouncements can and do affect us emotionally as well as professionally, whether we admit this or not.  Any adult knows that positive strokes equal a sense of being appreciated, needed, important, and valuable.  The future seems bright.  Negative strokes equal stress, sleepless nights, worry, and sometimes the development of health problems.  The future seems bleak.  If the very real effects of any workplace definition of ourselves can be instrumental in the success of our professional careers, imagine how much more influential the definitions of ourselves from the lips of our parents is?  As adults we are not wedded to any particular job, boss, workplace, or even city or country.  As children we are welded to whatever parents we are born to and their ability or inability to parent effectively, to their substance problems, and in many cases to their abusive treatment.  Adults frequently cope with negative situations by leaving those situations.  Children cannot do that and are forced instead mold themselves to survive physically, emotionally, spiritually, and in every other way to the circumstances their parents create.

Science has revealed that children’s brains continue to develop well into their 20’s.  The actual physical brain mass and the critical functions of learning and memory, decision making, stress control and coping, and more are actively forming from conception through early adulthood.  Science also reveals to us that the effects of smoking, drug, and alcohol consumption on the developing fetus are very negative.  Warnings are now required on cigarettes and alcohol, and societal expectations include that prescription medications, over-the-counter medications, and even coffee be restricted for expectant and lactating mothers.  This is excellent but have we gone far enough?  Living in a home with parents who use substances creates an environment that is equally unhealthy for the newly born baby, toddler, and child, pre-teen, teen, and young adult.  Science is very clear on the negative physical effects to offspring of parental smoking, drug use, and drinking.  And science is equally clear on the damage that alcohol and drug-addled adults cause to children by way of emotional, verbal, and physical abuse and neglect.

Post-natal expectations of responsible care for children should be as clearly defined and enforced as are pre-natal expectations.  Children of any age need and have the right to exist in healthy home environments that are populated by responsible, caring, available adults.  How prudish, you may be thinking!  How intolerant of the needs of the adults!  Don’t parents have the right to live the way they want?  Well, yes, they do.  Any adult has the right to live their life as they choose.  Their life.  Not the lives of their offspring.  Adults who choose to consume alcohol and/or drugs on a frequent basis, smoke cigarettes within the confines of their homes, or practice other unhealthy behaviors, are effectively making the choice against practicing mature behavior which promotes good parenting.  What they are doing in making these choices, as well as in making the choice to become parents, is attempting to fulfill very real biological, emotional, and other needs.  And they have the perfect right to do this.  However, just as the liberated women of the Age of Feminism are finding in their exhausted middle age, trying to be, do, and fulfill their every need causes conflicts from which great distress arises.

I sit in judgment on no one, including myself.  A quick review of my life by any reasonable man could result in sudden insanity to the poor soul.  People do, and should, live their lives according to their wishes, and mature accordingly.  And if those people choose to live recklessly, practicing habits and behaviors that are unhealthy or risky, more power to them!  May they experience the dramatic, short, and whirlwind lives they seek!  Here is one wish of mine:  just as any responsible expectant parent, practicing parent, and grandparent would never consider risking their or the lives of their dependents by, let’s say, placing a radioactive device in their home (or unsecured bottles of alcohol, drugs, etc.), or leading their brood into the den of a mother bear (or a bar, crack house, etc.), or inviting said bear into the family home to wreck destruction (or party animals, drug users, etc.), I wish that adults of child-bearing age would make a conscious choice to either conform themselves to needs of their future children OR to not become parents.  In this decision, we are all winners.

For those of us who experienced a childhood of chaos brought about by alcoholic parents, life is always muddled for us.  Many go on to repeat the experiences of their childhoods upon their own children by become alcoholics as well.  In fairness, both of my parents were products of dysfunctional, alcoholic homes.  They repeated the only life they knew upon their children.  Whether by genetics or intelligence or pure luck or strong will, I broke that pattern.  Perhaps because of my childhood experiences, I firmly believe that parents who are considering opportunities to emotionally escape their lives through the use of substances are parents who should also consider the effects that their choices will have on their completely dependent and helpless children of any age.  If they truly love their children, they can and they will choose what is best for those children over any other urge.  Period.

Enlightenment comes to us all, at its own pace.  It cannot be taught, forced, or willed to appear.  And if we are not open to it, we won’t hear it when it does make its quiet entrance.  Enlightenment comes to me most often during my favorite time of the day, early morning.  Before that first and only cup of coffee, and the meds, and the TV news, and the worries it brings, Enlightenment comes as dreams go and as my eyes open to the new day.

As my eyes opened this morning, as I lay in the same recliner in which I have been sleeping for several years, located at the same spot in the same family room the contents of which have not changed for years, Enlightenment came.  Located near my recliner in the family room are a glass-fronted hutch and a wine cabinet which contain various wine and alcohol bottles that my husband pours from for himself and for our infrequent guests.  Setting atop the wine cabinet are two very familiar alcohol decanters.  They are an inheritance from my parents and I brought them into my own home after my parents both passed away.  I brought them into my own home.  Two alcohol decanters.  The same two alcohol decanters from which my parents poured countless drinks over their lifetimes.  Drinks that took them into alcoholism and that caused incredible chaos and destruction to them and in the lives of everyone around them.  As I awoke this morning I saw, for the first time, those two decanters as the true family inheritance that they represent.  They are not two lovely gold-etched decanters meant to decorate a home.  They are two vessels from which my parents chose to deliver pain upon themselves and their family.  And I brought them into my own home.  As a remembrance, a family treasure, of my childhood home. 

This is exactly what the children of alcoholic parents do.  Because they never knew ‘normal’ patterns in their relationships during their growing-up years, they bring forward what they do know, believing that it is their valued possession from childhood.  Their resulting adult lives are usually chaotic and crises-riddled as they practice the only conditioning they know well into their adult lives.  You have heard of these childhood patterns:  the rebel, the perfect child, etc.  If they are fortunate, some circumstance of their lives will bring about the awareness that all is not as it should be.  They will seek out help, education, information, etc., and they will learn.  They will learn ‘normal’ and they will do their best to live it every day.  But just as alcoholics find it extremely difficult not to repeat their bad patterns, the children of alcoholics struggle to maintain ‘normal’ and to find peace in their lives.  They try, fail, get up, and try again.  Moments of Enlightenment come and another step forward is taken.

The destructive chaos and lifestyle patterns that alcoholic parents create in their homes condition their children to that lifestyle.  That chaos is all those children know as their growing bodies and developing brains, emotions, spirits, etc., emerge into adulthood.  Just as a houseplant will live or die from its level of care, a growing child will thrive or barely survive.  The developing brain, neurology, chemistry, etc., of the child will mold itself to survive in the environment within which it grows.  Children who grow in a chaotic environment will physically develop brains that are conditioned to that environment.  Is it any wonder that those children go on in adulthood to seek out the only environments – and people - for which their brains have been conditioned?  Other, even healthier, environments feel strange, unfamiliar, and stressful.  Those children will bring the destructive patterns of their parents into their own futures even as they strive to make better lives for themselves.  If those children are fortunate, some spark will light a fire that will grow into a fury that will demand change that will result in learning and Enlightenment that will carry on for their entire lifetime. 

What about those two gold-etched alcohol decanters which are my family heirlooms?  Yes, they represent a painful chapter of my life.  But they also represent some powerful concepts:  people I care for and depend upon can and do make life choices that I do not agree with and that cause chaos in their lives.  Their lives.  Not mine.  Not any longer.  The old pattern of childhood from my parent’s home does not sway me to accept the belief that the chaotic and destructive choices of others, even of those whom I love, entitles them to practice those choices upon me or to bring the consequences of those choices down upon me.  Perhaps those two lovely decanters are valuable family heirlooms after all.  Yes, I did bring unhealthy things forward from my chaotic childhood.  But similar to those decanters that set  in my home ready to be recognized and used, those unhealthy things can remain in place and unused.  They can just remain where they are, with a new and positive use of being available for providing that next moment of Enlightenment.