2/52 - Birthmarks
Here's a news flash. I have a birthmark on the left side of my face. Well, right side as you face me.
It is funny to directly declare this on the cusp of my 69th birthday after a lifetime of hemming and hawing about it.
I often completely forget about it until some child boldly asks, "Hey, what's that?" It used to bother me a great deal. But I've come to realize that there is also a plus side.
One of my many weaknesses is a failure to remember names. Faces, yes. Names could be better. In my job, I tended to meet a LOT of people because of the organization I represented. My excuse for my poor name recall was that this relationship was asymmetrical. There was only one President of AIIM, but there were LOTS of people connected TO AIIM. It's heady to be known more for what you do and the organization you represent than for who you are.
But during COVID, I realized that the pesky birthmark may have also had something to do with being recognized. Be honest. What's your first mental picture when I mention "Mikhail Gorbachev?" Yup, you get it. That's not all bad. If something as inconsequential as a birthmark can make you memorable, my conclusion is to be grateful for it.
One of the things I thought a lot about during the writing of Immigrant Secrets (https://www.amazon.com/Immigrant-Secrets-Search-My-Grandparents/dp/B0B45GTTPP) was that the “birthmarks” we all have are not just physical. Life’s traumas leave a much longer tail than I ever realized.
My parents paid a price for keeping the secrets of their parents, and I doubt whether their childhood traumas ever entirely left them. While my siblings and I all benefited from the very normal childhood they gifted us, the long tail persisted. In my father's case, I doubt whether the mental illness that sank his parents' lives and that of his brother was ever very far from his thoughts. My mother's tough shell was undoubtedly due in part to being fatherless for most of her life and having her father commit suicide when she was 14.
The oft-used Chris Farley punchline "That's going to leave a mark" is flippant in my parents' context but nonetheless true. Putting my mother's childhood traumas aside, having three direct relatives on my father's side (his parents and his brother) with a mental illness that likely was schizophrenia (we'll never know for sure given the idiotic policies of New York and New Jersey with regards to allowing access to the health records of long-gone direct relatives) has me asking questions about the intersection of genes and environment.
Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family is a fascinating exploration of this intersection:
“Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?”
Jamie Ford's excellent book The Many Daughters of Afong Moy (https://www.amazon.com/Many-Daughters-Afong-Moy-Novel/dp/1982158212) is also about the intergenerational transmission of trauma and pushes the concept further.
“…transgenerational epigenetic inheritance…is the study of how behavior and environment can alter the function of our genetic code. It’s also the study of how those phenotype changes in our DNA are heritable, affecting subsequent generations.”
This concept of epigenesis has me thinking differently about how trauma occurs at a societal level and how these traumas -- even if they initially occurred long ago -- are very real to current generations. The collective memories of centuries of persecution and oppression leave a long tail that persists long after those who were initially directly oppressed are gone.
It has taken me a long time to realize that it does no good whatsoever for those whose ancestors escaped a trauma (or worse, had ancestors who were a part of it) to righteously proclaim, "Hey, get over it. I didn't do anything to you. I don't think you should blame me for this. That was a long time ago."
As mentioned earlier, I am thoroughly enjoying Ann Patchett's These Precious Days. She has a beautiful essay in it called The Worthless Servant. I would like to violate copyright laws and send it to every congregation in the country to be read from pulpits of all denominations. A short snippet…
“The trouble with good fortune is that we tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and less well for others, it’s assumed they must have done something to have brought that misfortune on themselves while we must have worked harder to avoid it. We speak of ourselves as blessed, but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more?
…..
Throughout the course of life there is a long line of fathers and sons, parents and children, servants and masters, forgiven and forgivers, and at different moments we are called on to take up one role and then the other. When we do it right, we are bearing Christ’s example in mind.”
At different points in life we are all both victims and empathizers. We all have stories. We all have traumas, either personal ones or inherited ones. We all have birthmarks. Let's just admit it. A good resolution for me for this year would be to commit to listening -- carefully -- to the stories, traumas, and birthmarks of others rather than hopping to judgment or confidently proposing easy-bake “you should just…” corrective actions.
So I guess that's a third resolution. Or maybe not a resolution in the traditional sense, but something to work on. Perhaps of a higher order than baking cake rolls.
Resolution #1 - Learn how to bake a variety of cake rolls.
Resolution #2 - Just freaking write SOMETHING
Resolution #3 - Shut up and listen
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