Coping with my family, or, lessons in making the daily choice to love. A friend asked if some of my family story might have some useful insights relevant to her circumstances. I don't know that it does, but I'm posting it here in the hope it might. My mother knew something was odd about my father when she met him, thought maybe it was brain damage, thought she would just figure him out - this is what she once told me. "He never really learned how to hold a conversation with people." What she didn't say, what I suspect, is that she thought she would be able to manage him, that he would not do to her the harm her father did (yes, she was molested as a child). Whatever her reasons, she chose him. We think now that he's an undiagnosed case of Asperger's. Dad's parents, my grandparents, were both teachers, Granddad was also a high school principal. Both died before I was born, but from the stories I heard, they worked hard at finding ways of making him self-sufficient. He repeated his senior year of high school in a different town, they tried him in different occupations, they looked for areas of strength. Eventually he found work as a nursing assistant for the VA Hospital, a job he held for most of his career. Dad's interpersonal skills were not so great, but he has always been thorough, he has always been loyal, and he has always placed a premium on keeping his word... perhaps rigidly and inconveniently so at times, but generally to his credit. For example, when bad weather prevented a visit to his sister, a cancellation he agreed was wise, he was still angry about not going "because I said we were going to go."  On the other hand, he gave his word that he would be faithful to my Mother, and he has been so since 1953. My Mother chose him, chose his oddity, chose to learn how he functioned, chose to learn how to function with him. They had only two children, my older sister and myself. Janie, the pseudonym I always use when I write about her, was born with an organic personality disorder. I don't know what diagnosis she has been given, if it is more specific than that. It soon became clear that Janie was not developing normally. Mom accessed every avenue of information she could find, including her sister the nurse, to find out how to help her child. Over time medication was found that eased Janie's terror of everyday objects, controlled her occasional seizures. Janie's disability was severe enough that on several occasions Mom was encouraged to consider institutional options. Mom would have none of it. She chose to raise Janie, to give her a family life, to train her herself. She chose her daughter, maybe in the same way she chose to be married to my father and to live with him. I also believe my Mother chose to raise Janie because her mother's heart was such a tender thing she could not bear to do otherwise... even in the face of Janie's very difficult behavior, the lag in the development of her communication skills, the varying status of Janie's mental health. If you were to ask my Mother, she would tell you that she prayed all the time, that God helped her find answers to help Janie. If you ask me, the atheist son, I would tell you that the truth of the matter is not so much that God helped Mom... I don't believe there is a God to answer intercessory prayer. From my point of view, the only intercessory prayers that get answered are those voiced by someone who is willing and prepared to be the answer to the prayer. Given that perspective, it is my opinion that my Mother's entire life was/is one unending prayer for her husband and her daughter (and me). It was a choice she made every morning when she got up, to be tenacious in her efforts to find effective ways to make them both more functional. Tenacious. Also a good word to describe Mom. She was born with congenitally deformed hips... so tenacity is also what gets her physically through the day. Tenacity is a habit of mind for her, a bodily necessity, so I think it only natural for her to apply it to these two difficult people. It has not been easy. Given the nature of their disability, Mom lived/lives with people who find it difficult to give her the emotional support she needs, to allow her the latitude she might require... people who do not often see beyond their own needs to offer her empathy. This was the family into which I was born. Unlike my Mother, I had no choice in the matter. My coping skills, such as they are/aren't were shaped by those people. Being Janie's sibling meant being reared in what feels to memory like an endless scream. It sounds grim, and at times it was.  However, my Mother prayed, both in the sense she believes in and in the sense that I described. ********* more to be posted later this week... the stuff with the hope in it.