Patterns: A story

By John T. Harding

The journey to peace begins with an open mind.

It had been seventeen years since he last visited his hometown, and the events surrounding his leaving were still painful to think about. But this time, he was determined to lance the boil of anger that had sent him away, and that had festered in the back of his mind ever since. The emotional wound had to be reopened, drained and cauterized, he knew, if he was ever going to find the mental and emotional peace he was looking for.

"Are you ready?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," he replied. "You know how my family is. Holding a grudge rises to the level of an Olympic competition."

"I've never met your family," she said.

"Yes, I know, but you have heard that old joke about Irish Alzheimer's disease -- you forget everything but your grudges," he said. "Your grudges against those who don't fit your pattern."

"We all live in patterns," she pointed out, "and sometimes those patterns can be destructive. But there is comfort in patterns, so we tend to stay in them even when we know they are harmful for us."

"Yeah, you know the devil you've got. You don't know the devil you'll get, as my grandmother would say."

"You told me you never met your grandmother -- either one of them."

"That's true, but it's an old saying, and my grandmother probably would have said it. Anyway, I like to blame those old cliches on somebody, and a dead grandmother who I never met is as good a candidate as any."

"Are you still looking to fix blame? I thought you wanted to fix the problem."

"I do. It's just that those old sayings sound better when I attribute them to a grandmother."

The rain had let up, so he switched the wipers to the intermittent cycle.

"How much longer until we get there?"

"About another twenty minutes. Maybe more if the rain comes again."

They had been driving for three hours or so already, from the small town in the middle of Pennsylvania where he had gone in his attempt to get away from his family and their constant bickering. Not that there was anything bitter about it; most of the time it was what he called "competitive talking." He told himself that what he really wanted was a little courtesy in conversation. The word was rooted in the concept of "taking turns," after all. When someone was talking, he felt it was only right for others to be quiet and listen. And when it came his turn to talk, he felt that others should give him the same courtesy. To listen, even if they disagreed. It was a pattern that he was comfortable with.

But he had encountered too many people who insisted they were able to listen to him and to talk to someone else at the same time. It was possible, he supposed. Musicians could play the piano and talk to customers in bars at the same time. But that was different, and not all musicians could do it. Especially and most obviously wind instrument players.

The wet road glistened under the dead autumn leaves that scattered under the car.

That's a strong image, he thought. I should remember it for my next book. Who am I kidding? I don't even have a last book.

"What did you say?"

"I'm sorry. I must have been mumbling a thought that had just come to me."

"Oh. What was it?"

"Nothing, really. Just something about dead leaves."

"Anything spiritual or symbolic about it?

"Dead leaves? At this time of year? It would be spiritually symbolic if we did not have dead leaves in November."

"But we always do. And that's part of the pattern. Do you want to break the pattern?"

"Not this one, no. I see dead leaves, and it tells me that part of the world as we know it is dying. But I also know that in a few months it will be born again. I like that pattern."

"Then what was special about these leaves?"

Pause.

"They scattered as I came through."

"Like your family paying attention to you?"

"Now you're talking like a shrink."

"I am a shrink, remember?"

"But I'm not your patient. If I were, we would not have the relationship we do. So don't analyze me."

"You're right. I'm sorry. Sometimes I can't help myself. But I also want to help. I hate it when you're unhappy."

"I think I've been unhappy most of my life."

"You hide it well."

"It's called dancing. Fake it until you make it. Or self-deception. No, that's not it. I'm good at fooling others, but not myself."

"Are you sure?"

"About what?"

"Fooling yourself. And others. You don't fool me, you know."

"I know. You're closer to me than I have ever allowed anyone to get. As for fooling others, that's not really important."

"Why not?"

"You've heard me say this before. You can snow me, and that doesn't matter. But don't snow yourself. Shakespeare said something similar: To thine own self be true."

"So, are you being true to yourself?"

"I'm trying to. And I like to think I succeed, most of the time."

The rain started again, and they lapsed into silence. He switched the wipers to slow.

Zhung, zhung, zhung, zhung.

The hypnotic rhythm of the wipers lulled her into a doze. But he was driving, and could not afford that luxury. He forced himself to focus on the road, but the other side of his brain wandered off into speculation about what would happen at the family gathering. They had been apart for long enough so that separate patterns would surely have developed for each of them, and there were bound to be clashes.

But in this family, clashes were a way of life, he thought. They had always been there, even in the early years. He had grown up with them, and they were inevitable, even when they all were supposedly part of the same pattern.

Now they were all in separate, different patterns, and with few connecting links.

Culture and genetics. Heritage? How many people paid attention to that? Maybe all three were still operating together regardless of what people thought about them or whether they denied the relationships.

What's bred in the bone will out, the old saying went. Maybe DNA does dictate behavior. Identical twins, identical DNA. Even those separated at birth grow up to do almost identical things and have very similar behavior patterns. Why not an entire family, or an entire nation, or ethnic group? Be careful. Go too far down that road and you'll be called a racist.

That's the problem with the mind. It keeps working and thinking even when you want it to stop.

The mind has a mind of its own.

"What are you thinking?" she said.

"Nothing relevant," he said. "Not to what we're doing today, anyway."

But they both knew that wasn't true.

"We live in patterns," he said. "Sometimes the pattern is foisted on us by our parents or our ethnic and cultural heritage, and we either learn to live within it or we try to break out of it. The lucky ones are those who are content to stay in their patterns, or who succeed in breaking out. The not-so-lucky are those who try to break out but fail. They wind up unhappy, depressed or in jail. The really lucky ones are those who design their own patterns and coordinate them with the patterns they were born with. Either that, or they make a clean and total break and deny any ties to their heritage. But that seldom works. They're only trying to suppress what's bred in the bone. They can ignore it, but it never goes away."

"You're making it sound like a psychiatric disorder," she said. "Maybe we should submit it as a new entry for the next edition of DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Being Irish as a mental condition or syndrome bordering on the psychotic. We already have the borderline personality disorder, so we just take it one step further."

"Don't laugh," he said. "You're not far wrong. People talk about the Luck of the Irish as if it were a good thing. But the Irish themselves know better. If it weren't for bad luck, they'd have no luck at all. Or as Grandma would say, If it was raining soup, they'd be out there with forks."

"Americans are schizophrenic about their heritages," he continued. "They manage to keep the cultural parts while ignoring the political, and that's good. Trouble starts when the politics of the old country gets caught up with U.S. politics. And that's true for every group. Sometimes it's hard to break the pattern that we're born with, and identifies us as part of a group."

They both lapsed into silence.

Patterns can be linear or global, scattered, regular, or intermittent, geographic or statistical, personal or intuitive. They can be momentary and flat, like a chart, or continuous overtime, like a movie or real life.

We walk the same streets, we greet the same people, we see the same buildings, trees and flowers, and we are content. When the pattern is disrupted, however, we become confused. Our reality is altered. Our life is different, and we don't like it. Not at first, anyway. Eventually, we get used to it. Maybe.

Meanwhile, there is the shock of sudden change. Yeats had it right. When life is changed utterly, a terrible beauty is born. There is a perverse beauty in tragedy. Maybe it's because people are perverse; they are fascinated by destruction. Do they think that by destroying something they release the beauty locked inside? We see a beautiful flower growing in a field, and we pluck it out of the ground in an effort to take the beauty home with us, to possess it, to make it part of us. But soon the flower withers and dies, and its beauty is no more. We kill what we claim to love.

"Why are people so fascinated by violence and destruction?" he said aloud.

"What prompts that thought?" she said.

"I don't know; I was just rambling through my mind looking for a pattern," he said.

After he replayed his thoughts about comfort, change and the perverse beauty of tragedy, they both paused to mull over those thoughts as he drove on through the rain.

"Are you suggesting that the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima was a thing of beauty?" she said.

"The cloud itself, yes, because of its symmetry," he said. "But not what it represented -- the deaths of many thousands of people. There are pictures of mushroom clouds taken at test sites under controlled conditions where no one was hurt. Not at the time, anyway. We look at the rows of grave markers at Arlington National Cemetery and we see beauty in the symmetry even as we mourn the loss of the lives they represent. We are entranced by television coverage of hurricanes, and we see beauty in lightning during a storm, as well as in the rainbow that follows.

"Photographers have won prizes for their pictures of Normandy on June 6, 1944. There was Robert Capa's photo of a partisan taking a bullet during the Spanish Civil War. Consider the emotional power of the U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, or the three firemen raising the flag amid the rubble of the World Trade Center. Or the lone student confronting a tank in Tienanmen Square.

"These are all scenes of terrible beauty, as Yeats put it. And they're all part of a pattern of violence -- unspeakable violence, that gave birth to that terrible beauty. And after every one of those incidents shown in the photographs, our lives were changed utterly -- again Yeats' phrase."

"But those are all morbid examples," she said. "They all refer to death. Can't we focus on the images that deal with the beauty of life? Or the beauty of love?"

"We can, and probably should," he said. "But maybe they're all of a piece, part of the same pattern. Life and death, love and loss. Life equals love, and death equals loss, and they all balance each other, like yin and yang in the Chinese pattern."

"But here's a thought," she said. "Love begins with life, but it does not end with death. Love creates life, and life needs love in order to prosper."

"A life without love is death?" he said.

"In a way, yes," she replied.

"I didn't think you were that much of a romantic," he said.

"I didn't either," she said. "Maybe it's the rain. It always makes me yearn for a comfortable chair by a fireplace with a warm blanket, something nice to drink and someone pleasant to talk with."

"You've covered all four basic elements, then," he said. "Water, fire, air and earth. You've woven all four elements into your pattern of preference."

"How do you figure four?" she said. "I only count two, fire and water."

"Easy," he said, "Talk is air, and earth is represented by the chair, the blanket and the person."

"Are you depressed?" she said suddenly.

"Now there's a segue for you," he said. "No preamble, no link, no pattern, just throw the question out and see what happens."

"Don't dodge the question. Are you?"

"No," he said. "I'm just tired. Besides, depression doesn't happen to men, only to women. Real men don't get depressed."

"You're joking, right? That's baloney and you know it."

"No, really," he insisted. "Look at the numbers. Far more women suffer from depression than men."

"Look at it another way," she countered. "Far more women are treated for depression than men. That says nothing about the number of men who suffer from depression but do not seek treatment. Men just don't want to admit they need help."

He paused. "It's part of the culture, part of the pattern. We're brought up to believe that we can do anything. That we are the providers, the protectors, the Mr. Fix-It of the family. But let's face it; this tower of strength business is a crock. Or as that great American philosopher Dirty Harry Callahan, AKA Clint Eastwood, put it: A man's got to know his limitations. And as the Kenny Rogers song goes:

You've got to know when to hold 'em

Know when to fold 'em

Know when to walk away

Know when to run.

"So what's this weekend going to be like," she said, again without preamble. "Are you looking forward to it: Are you anxious about it?"

"Another masterful segue," he said. "I don't know, actually. Quiet and smooth, I hope, but that's not likely, given the history. Am I looking forward to it, and am I anxious about it? Yes, both of the above. I want to get it over with, but that feeling is mostly concern over the unknown. Once the gathering gets under way, I'll probably be comfortable. It's a little like stage fright. A lot of actors, even experienced professionals, have stage fright just before show time. But once the curtain opens, they relax and do their thing."

"Are you afraid of your family?"

"I don't think so. Angry, or at least I was for a long time. But not afraid."

"Sometimes anger is a covering substitute for fear," she said.

"Nicely put, doctor, but I thought you promised not to analyze me?"

"I'm not," she protested. "That was just a comment, an observation."

"And an accurate one," he agreed. "I'm sorry. I was being defensive. And in a way that reinforces the point. Anger is a coverup for fear -- it helps us cope."

"So the reason you get angry with your family is because you're afraid of them," she said.

"I never thought of it that way, but yes, that may be true. Sometimes, anyway. But it follows that the next questions would have to be why the fear, what do I have to be afraid of," he said.

"Very good. Now who's doing the analyzing?" she said. "Are you going to answer your own question?"

"You mean why am I afraid of them? I don't know. I'll have to think about that," he said.

"Sometimes it's useful not to think but to just keep talking -- to think aloud."

He paused again. "When I was a kid, it seemed like no one was ever listening to me. And when I did say something I thought was original or clever, whatever it was I said was put down as silly, or stupid, or dumb. And by extension, that meant that I was stupid."

"But you know otherwise," she said.

"Right, but I was so young I wasn't really sure. So I learned to be quiet and not give my opinions. Children learn quickly -- why speak up when whatever you say is going to be put down."

"Is that why you left home?"

"In a way, yes. I needed to be me, and the way things were, I wasn't allowed to be me. At least, that's the way it felt. I wasn't aware of it at the time, not on a conscious level. I just knew I had to get away. It was a matter of survival -- emotional survival, not physical. I'm sure no one in the family felt they were being abusive, and even today they would deny that they were putting me down. And I'm sure they believe that. But that's not the way it came out. Besides, I was brought up to follow my own path, regardless of what other people say or think. And as long as I wasn't breaking any laws or hurting others in any way, then I should do what I felt was right for me. So there was a conflict, I guess. I was encouraged to go my own way. But when I did, I was criticized. So I left."

"And now you're going back. Why?"

"I guess I'm hoping that by this time, the family will accept that I had to go my own way. After all, that was what I was brought up to believe -- that I could and should go my own way regardless of what anyone else says. That was OK with the family as long as the way I chose was compatible with what they felt I could or should do. But when the day came that they became part of the anybody else group, it was too much for them to deal with. So they tried to pressure me into their way, to mold me into what they felt I should be. So it was either leave or conform, and be stifled, stuffed into a mold where I knew I didn't belong and wouldn't fit. I broke their pattern I'm hoping that by this time they have opened their minds and are ready to accept me as I am. But I'm afraid they won't be able to do that."

"So you wanted me to come along as moral backup," she said.

"Yes, but you're more to me than that," he said. "You're part of my pattern, and I wouldn't have it any other way."

"Thank you," she said.

It was late afternoon and the rain had yielded to a setting sun when they arrived at the brother's home, the neutral ground agreed on for the gathering. The brother was the youngest, and the least affected by the tensions and turmoil of the early years. Or so the family thought. No one really knew what the youngest sibling felt or thought about the conflict that led to the schism.

The car settled and creaked as the engine shut down, and the driver and passenger sat silently listening to the cooling-off noises every car makes after a long trip.

"Are you ready?" she said.

"No, but I'm open. Whatever happens over the next couple of hours, I'm still going to be me. If there's no acceptance, I'll be free to leave. The way I figure it, at the end of the day, I'm all I've got."

"What about me? Is there room for me?" she said.

"Of course," he said. "But there are parts of me you may never see."

"Understood. But that just means there's a lot I haven't yet discovered," she said.

"Welcome to my life," he said.