A Fateful Trip to the Loo

A FATEFUL TRIP TO THE LOO

     As a very young child I used to love playing at the bottom of the garden. My imagination would bring to life the mundane shapes in the ground and give creative form to the regular garden features. Mounds in the earth were sleeping tigers, my father's shed an exciting den, the flora around me a place of wonder where I could explore and have my adventures. Shrub roots, exposed by digging in banks of soft earth, were buried treasures – my furtive child mind had no bounds, it seemed.

      On one particular such day, alone in the garden, my imagination creating an engaging scenario as I played, I needed the loo. I came inside to use the bathroom. My mother was sitting in the dining area of our home and on my way back out she stopped me and asked me to give my life to Jesus – to be 'saved'. I can recall that moment quite clearly and remember that what I wanted to do was to get back outside to my childhood arena but my mum persisted and so, in order to return to my world as quickly as I could, I conceded to her demands. Quietly, (but sincerely, no doubt) I repeated her prayer asking Jesus to forgive me for my sins and to come into my heart and be my saviour, after which I was free to return to my play.

      I was four years old when this happened. I knew about Jesus and his death because from an even earlier age my mother had ensured that I did know. I can't bring to mind any of the usual nursery tales being told when snuggling up with her in bed in the early mornings long before starting school, but I do recollect that she told me stories of Jesus' death and of 'those cruel Roman soldiers' who crucified him.

       For many years after, I took this moment in time, on my way out to play, to be the decisive turning point in my life when I had really become a Christian. Also, despite loving many aspects of History throughout my school life (and beyond), I never warmed to the thought of studying Ancient Rome!

      My purpose in relating these events is not to berate my mother, though I do not deny that her actions have had lasting consequences, but, rather, to tease out a couple of salient themes which were going on in my early life and which persisted into adulthood. The first of these is the serious environment in which I was being brought up. For a parent to be so focused on ensuring her child's awareness of the Gospel, of sin and redemption and of the need to be 'saved' at such a delicate age seems to me to be very excessive. The religious framework by which my parents organised their personal lives and that of their children foisted a solemn take on life which determined our regular outlook, serving subtly to turn the innocent and playful imagination of a little boy into the serious child and teenager that I became. My willing-to-please pre-occupation with my parents beliefs has proved to be at the expense of my own creativity – a consequence that I am now endeavouring to reverse.

      The second theme concerns the nature of my relationship with my mother. In her own way, my mother certainly loved me very much and believed she was doing her very best for me in how she instructed me to live my life. Yet, the relationship was intrinsically flawed. It was not enough for my mum to simply love me for who I was – she had to introduce conditions and so, instead of her comment being “I love you” (unconditionally) it was “I want you to get 'saved'”. Of course, on a conscious level my child mind had no idea of the implication here but the subliminal inference was there, nonetheless – I had to be something more than I was to feel that I was what my mother wanted me to be. I had to believe what she believed. I had to be 'born again'. This was one of a number of 'conditions' which I felt obliged to accept during my childhood and teenage years if I were to feel truly safe and secure in my mother's love and approval. Consequently, any chance in those crucial early years of an authentic, genuine intimacy with my mum which should have provided for my own needs and supplied an healthy environment in which to learn about real, unconditional affection was lost. What intimacy I thought existed was a pretence. Understanding this critical flaw in my early relationship with my mother has helped me appreciate more clearly my own inadequacies in later life when considering the difficulties I have faced in romantic relationships, particularly with reference to the 'perfectionism' issues to which I refer in my initial blog post.

      The ramifications of not being provided with the right kind of closeness to my mother in which to cultivate my own sense of intimacy as I grew up, I believe, have been far reaching. I feel that a vital building block in my emotional development has been denied. Whether or not I have become afraid of intimacy per se remains to be seen. I certainly seek the closeness of others but am all too aware of a definite 'shutting down' of my feelings in certain situations when that closeness becomes too real. The perfectionist issue, alluded to earlier, is undoubtedly a similar defence. My lack of experience of a well rounded intimacy as I was growing up may have developed into some kind of fear of the unknown – that is, of the unknown me and/or of the unknown other. Perhaps I bring to romantic relations a mistaken fear of being once more dominated by an all powerful mater figure. Whatever the reason, I could spend years locked in the past exploring every facet of this conundrum in an attempt to attain the clearest picture but without any certainty that any such clarity would actually emerge. 

 

      Of course, in recognising a significant flaw in my up-bringing I can tap into a telling seam which may afford greater illumination but to become bound up with the past searching for an exact causal link between then and the way that I am now; to be pre-occupied with layer upon layer of causation without an anchor in the present seems futile. The past can be a tangled ball of knotted strings - which I don't need to carry around with me. Rather I need to accept that the past is the past and that the present, however awkward, is a different place. I cannot affect what has happened but I can influence what happens in the 'now' – that is, I can move to determine the way in which I respond to the conditioning I have been saddled with. Understanding the traits of the past helps to make sense of the present. What I do with that knowledge makes the difference as I move in the ever present Now - and, strangely, I very much suspect that as the emphasis shifts towards a more present–focused perspective the darker riddles of the past will sort out themselves.