Katie Burke
The Trip of Guilt
When you think about
it, thereís probably one in every family ñ the parent who runs the house,
whose word is the law, and thereís nothing you or your siblings can do
about it. In my family, my mom was the end-all. My dad was
a great father. But he worked during the day, having started his
own business dealing with outdoor magazines and membership clubs, and was
gone for the main portion of the day. Gone by seven in the morning,
back around six oíclock, as the dinner was being pulled out of the oven
ñ that was dadís schedule. Afternoons are prime for getting into
problems that deserve repercussions; and since dad wasnít home, mom usually
dealt the punishments. And the more rules you have, the more opportunities
you have to get in trouble. My family had lots of rules. It
makes sense ñ in a family with five kids and a large house, you almost
have to have rules everywhere to prevent disasters. We made every
situation from playing a board game to playing with finger paint a possible
war-zone, and the fact that we were primarily set apart with our two acres
worth of yard didnít help. If we got in trouble, we had no other
neighborhood kids to blame it on. It was always, and will forever
be, our fault.
We kids always felt dad didnít like momís
rules any more than we did. One of the harshest rules, in my childís
mindset, was the rule of no television, except for the occasional PBS show
ñ although even that had to be approved ñ as well as The Cosby Show Thursday
nights. However, this rule was only applicable when mom was home.
The minute her car pulled out of the garage, dad had the TV on, the drink
in the family room (another no-no), and we kids plopped down next to him
and watched what at the time seemed fascinating: NOVA. To this day,
I have no idea what that show is about, but to a media-starved child, itís
absolutely delectable. So after watching dad tease the boundaries
of the rules, it came to be understood that the rules were momís rules,
and dad followed because, well, mom was in charge.
* * *
The first memory
I have of knowing mom was in charge was back when I was preschool.
I had this habit ñ okay, addiction ñ of sucking my thumb. It was
my security, my distraction, my occupation. I would stroke my nose
with my index finger while sucking on the thumb, and I consider myself
lucky that my nose is as shapely as it is. God understood.
My mom didnít. If I was caught sucking my thumb, when I returned
from wherever she witnessed the crime, the top right corner of my bedspread
would be pulled down, indicating I had to take a nap with thumbs covered
in masking tape.
My preschool was actually housed within
a local technical college, with large glass windows lining one wall that
allowed us a riveting view of an empty, brown hallway. I canít recall
what activity we were doing, all I know is I was sucking my thumb
as usual,
for the teachers didnít know I was supposed to be kicking the habit.
Well, just my luck: I glanced at the window and caught a glimpse of my
momís blue winter coat rounding the corner. Whipping my thumb out
and drying it on the sides of my corduroys, I felt confident I had missed
being caught. After arriving home, I went upstairs to change and
noticed the carefully pulled down right corner of the bedspread.
Moms have eyes everywhere.
Still, this sort of punishment
worked because I understood sucking my thumb led to taking naps.
I didnít realize that sucking my thumb was a bad thing, just that it bugged
my mom. After I slept in the same room as my older sister who wouldnít
tolerate the noise a thumb-sucker makes, I dropped the habit for good.
I didnít want her to be mad at me. In fact, I didnít want my mom
to be mad at me either, and it seemed that every time I had to take a nap,
she was also mad. The connection made, the guilt trip waltzed into
my life.
* * *
If you donít think
youíve experienced the guilt trip for yourself, youíre wrong. Itís
all a matter of defining the principle: anytime someone has reacted to
you with disapproval or disappointment, leaving you with a disgusting feeling
in the pit of your stomach youíd do anything to get rid of, knowing full
well thereís no way to get rid of it, and knowing that feeling of revulsion
is the product of a poor decision you made, and also knowing youíve let
that person down, and in doing so, youíve let yourself down, and you just
wish you hadnít followed your selfish needs that tempted you down the path
more traveled, then you have experienced the guilt trip. And Iíll
stand up to anyone who says it doesnít work.
* * *
Trust takes
years to build, and seconds to burn. I lost that trust before I realized I had
it. That, my friends, is the guilt trip working overtime.
As I got older, I made what I considered to be an essential realization: even if
you mess up, if you hide the evidence, you canít get in trouble. It wasnít
that I went out seeking trouble ñ just the opposite, in fact. I was, at
heart, a good kid. We all were. But things happen, and thereís
nothing you can do about it. Except hide the evidence.
My sister Elizabeth and
I were masters at building forts. My entire childhood, Iíve had access
to trees, lots of running space, and bodies of water. This makes
for excellent fort-building conditions. After I moved in third grade,
the opportunities were everywhere. We had fields of hay-like grass
where, if you stomped just right, you could make mazes with rooms at the
ends. We had forests to make rope swings, and water. One day,
Elizabeth and I decided that the swamp to the left of the house would be
ideal for a fort. For us, the swamp contained everything a fort would
need, including a mailbox located in the middle of the swamp on a dead,
but still standing, tree. Retrieving the mail was essential to our
home, but how we got it was always a creative gesture on our part.
It usually meant one of us would end up climbing up one dry tree, grabbing
onto the branches of another, lowering ourselves onto a fallen tree that
led right up to our mailbox, and then climbing the mailbox to get to the
mail on top.
* * *
Once it was decided
that the mail was indeed to be located inside the tree in the middle of
the muddy, God-knows-how-deep-water, I went to get it. I never got
there. I ended up completely engulfed by this wet, slimy, blinding,
I-hope-nothing-eats-me-mass of swamp water. Laughing, my sister said
it was the funniest thing sheíd ever seen. Still, the mail had yet
to be retrieved, and like idiots, we felt Elizabeth had better go get it.
She tried. She missed. So there we stood, looking at the house,
complete with mom inside, trying to figure out how on earth we were going
to get out of this mess. Mom would flip if she saw our clothes, but
there was no way for us to get new clothes without dripping and leaving
prints all over the carpet. So we did the only thing we felt possible.
We stripped off our clothing in the garage, tip-toed with the silence only
the wolves can relate to through the house naked, and up to the safety
of our rooms, where we successfully replaced our abandoned clothes with
fresh, dry ones.
* * *
A week or so later,
my mom came inside, and asked whose clothes were in the garage. We
had hidden the evidence, and then forgotten all about it. Now, the
first stage of understanding the guilt trip is accepting the fact that
it can happen, and then doing anything you can to avoid it. So, of
course, no one claimed the clothes, and my mom, annoyed, said something
to the point of, ìwell, theyíd better be gone. Someone left them
there, and Iím not about to pick them up. They look filthy.î After
she had left the scene, we slunk out, grabbed the stuff, put them in the
laundry room, and continued to insist to the woman who washed them and
returned them to their rightful owners, that the clothes in the garage
werenít ours.
Thereís something about
knowing youíll have to face the consequences of your actions that repels
people. When I was younger, my actions that merited the weight of
the guilt trip mainly resulted from innocent tasks, such as determining
that there was important mail to be had on the top of a dead tree in the
middle of a moat of murky, mysterious water. Times like that, the
guilt trip only lasted about three minutes ñ the time it took for mom to
scold you, and for you to say you were sorry. At that age, you donít
feel youíve let down someone, because you really havenít let yourself down
at the same time. There is a taste of guilt, but since you havenít
thought about what youíve done in terms of how your parents have tried
to raise you, that guilt lasts about as long as a commercial on TV.
Husband turns to wife, ìthat was a nice commercial, donít you think, dear?î
* * *
Itís only after you have
had the chance to develop and sculpt your comprehension of your conscience,
right and wrong, and refine your understanding of the rules around you
that the guilt trip takes on its true majestic magic. It works.
You feel wretched. Unloved. A failure. For most kids,
this occurs when youíre in your most devious state: when you hate your
parents, and everything they stand for. Your teenage years.
No one said being a teenager
was easy, and it was wise of them to stay quiet. Being a teenager
is horrible, but you realize this once youíve passed it. Your body
looks awkward as it struggles to catch up to your mental age ñ you have
hormones, hair problems, pent up anger that comes for no apparent reason,
and acne. Oh, and donít forget: rules that no one elseís family has.
Itís difficult to impress people who are busy impressing other people;
having unnecessary and completely irrational rules ñ and they all were
ñ makes your life twice as complicated as it needs to be.
As my parents claimed,
ìwe cut off contact with the outside world at 10pm.î That meant,
simply said, that we had to be off the phone at 10:00, no exceptions.
Well, the boys I liked didnít seem very understanding about my 10:00 phone
limit, and I wasnít about to lose a potential dating situation because
of a rule like that. Itís an easy one to work around, if you do it
right. Wait for your parents to go to bed, then pick up the phone
and talk ëtil 2am. So I did just that, and was doing marvelously,
until one night, I picked up the phone at 11:45, said, ìhey,î to David
Becker, and felt the presence of my mom fill my darkened bedroom.
Feeling all the blood drain out of my face, I said, ìIíll talk to you later,î
hung up, and then did the only thing I could think of: laid down in my
bed. My mom never said a word, just walked out of the room.
That was one of the longest nights I ever had. I had all night to
think about what Iíd done, and cry over it. I didnít care that I
had been caught ñ I did, but I cared more at knowing she was mad at me
ñ and how she had every right to be. I had deliberately gone out
of my way to go against her rules.
I lost my phone privileges
for a month. Not bad, you may say. Maybe not for a child
of ten years, but for a hormonally raging teenage girl with no mall or
friendís home within walking distance, itís as low as you get. But
even worse was walking around that house for weeks knowing that my mom
was disappointed in me. I lost my appetite. I cried a lot for
someone who hates crying, and after the situation had come and gone, I
felt monitored for months whenever I picked up the phone near the 10:00
hour. You learn the hard way that trust takes years to build, and
seconds to burn. I lost that trust before I realized I had it.
That, my friends, is the guilt trip working overtime.
* * *
Itís only once youíve
separated yourself from the incident that you come to understand that the
guilt trip isnít merely a form of punishment. Itís a source of education
as well ñ you see things on an entirely different level. Yes, you
were punished, and it felt bad, especially if youíre close to your parents,
as I was, and still am. Even more important, however, is your understanding
of what happened to you and your parents in that process. You become
someone your parents can be proud of ñ someone you can be proud of.
Theyíve instilled instincts in you that help you to steer clear of future
problems by realizing that not only will your parents be disappointed in
you, but you feel that disappointment within, as well. As you strive
to do things your parents would stand for, both morally and physically,
it hits you: you agree with them. You never thought youíd see the
day you and your parents would be on the same wavelength, but here it is,
right in front of you.
Later, you begin to separate
the actual guilt from the guidelines it had attached by strings.
Growing up isnít easy for anyone, and having guilt placed on you sporadically
doesnít make it any easier. In the aftermath, however, part of the
growth comes from the ability to validate and understand why the guilt
is effective. The guilt trip was, and remains an important part of
guidance in my actions, but as I separated myself from my guilt implications,
I came to still another realization: I had grown into more than just a
motherís daughter. I had turned into a woman with an individualized
set of values, separate even from the one who helped foster them.
I realized this separation intensely when I came home from college for
the first time.
* * *
If you go off to college,
youíll probably hear a lot of, ìdonít do anything I wouldnít be proud of,î
or ìdonít do anything I wouldnít do.î They can be hard to shake off.
As you go to the parties youíre not legally allowed to be participating
in, you have the ever-so-slight feeling of, ìif so-and-so could see me
nowÖî The truth is, as you age, these warnings lose a little of their
power. Youíre becoming your own person, and donít need to use othersí
definition of a good person as a mold for your own. As I watch my
parents deal with my brothers, in their prime years of teenage tempers
and temptations, I see that guilt trip take action from a distance.
I canít help but feel bad when they get nailed with a hard blow of, ìIím
really disappointed in you,î but I know itís for the best. I know
my momís doing what she can to help them realize on their own what actions
are honorable, and what actions donít deserve repeating. In my teenage
years, I deserved that ñ I needed that. Now, as an adult, I understand
that I donít need it anymore, because I donít have to do everything in
terms of what my parents approve of. We can be different. Still,
every once in a while, my momís voice comes to me, in her chiding tone
that has turned into phrases more applicable to someone you only see from
time to time, but still hope to influence: ìKatie, that doesnít sound like
something you should be doingÖî
Once a mom, always a mom.