Seth continues to play favorites
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Homeless... at Home
Table of contents
Chapter 15 - Chapter Eleven
Chapter 17 - Numb
I had spoken with Shani on the phone, but I hadn't met her until Seth and I went for our fact finding meeting before bringing the children in for family counseling.
Shani reminds me so much of my sister! Her warm welcoming smile is Jeanie's. So refreshing after Dr. A. A woman's warm smile lets you know, before a word has been spoken, that she accepts you and isn’t a threat. Men often prefer to leave you guessing. No wonder our faces wind up full of wrinkles. Well, I'll take a life full of smiles, over dying with a smooth face.
Even Shani's kitchen reminds me of Jeanie's. As we sat around her big round table, I wondered why all therapists don't let you lean comfortably on a table instead of making you sit stiffly facing each other, all exposed.
"You'll have tea?" Shani asked as she put three mugs of water into the microwave and got down a basket of tea bags.
The cozy atmosphere had its effect on Seth, it seems. He hitched his chair conspiratorially toward mine while Shani’s back was turned. He put his hand on my arm, which was resting on the table. I looked up at him and he smiled at me. Not the skull-and-crossbones grimace he has been aiming at us for the past few months. But a real warm loving smile that I haven't seen on his face since ... at least since before we were married. Maybe not even then. A smile you could melt into. I smiled back. Surprised, but very happy.
Seth looks so much younger when he has a pleasant look on his face. He needs a haircut. It's brushing the collar of his jacket in back. I felt like reaching up to brush back the hair that had flopped over his forehead.
As he smiled at me, Seth moved his hand from my arm down to my hand, and folded his fingers between my knuckles. Spoons. With fingers. Spaghetti servers, I guess. I could feel his knee against mine under the table.
Shani sat down at her side of the table where she was all set up with her notebook and the ubiquitous box of tissues that says, 'It's OK to cry here'. She smiled at us.
Shani didn't even get a chance to do that first-session dance. To look back and forth between us and ask, "Well, who's going to start?" Seth just took a deep breath and plunged in.
"Shani ... we're here because ... " he tisked. After all the threatening tisks he has tisked at me over the years, that stop my breathing and stiffen my muscles, this tisk was different. It was a tisk of regret rather than a tisk of annoyance. Instead of making me pull back, it drew me toward him somehow.
"I ... I have a problem with mood swings,” Seth said in a rush, eyes closed. "Since Shlomit and I have been married ..." he squeezed my hand, "there have been several times when I was really out of it. I was mean and controlling, and … even violent. And instead of doing anything constructive about it, I ... I was angry at myself and embarrassed, and I took it out on Shlomit and the children." He looked down at the table and shook his head. That self deprecating tisk again. I turned my hand palm-up, re-intertwined, and squeezed his.
"I plan to get serious treatment for the depressions,” he continued, “Batia has found someone. Shlomit," he looked me in the eye. Wow. Eye contact with Seth! "I want to make things good between us. However you think we need to do it. Whatever you need. But ..." he looked over at Shani, "mainly ... the children. I ..." another tisk, "well, I would have no relationship with Eli and Leora and Rafi at all by now if Shlomit hadn't been my advocate with them.
"Shlomit, you have been … way better than I deserve. Staying with me in spite of everything. Taking such good care of the children. Protecting them from me and yet not isolating them from me.
"Here's where I need your help, Shani. I want to mend my relationship with those great children of mine, and I don't know how to go about it. I want to do, now, whatever I can to make up for everything I have put them through. I want them to grow up feeling good about themselves. I realize that that can't happen unless they know that their father accepts them and approves of them."
I just grinned and grinned.
Wow. I think Seth has broken all the rules in his book, just in the five minutes we've been sitting here. Apologizing, expressing appreciation, making eye contact, asking for help.
I would suspect that Shani had put something into his tea, but we haven't even drunk it yet. I could definitely spend the rest of my life with this man.
So everything is going to be OK! We can all stay together! Everything is going to be OK!
The microwave beeped, with our hot water, and Shani said, "I'll be the Mum," and we all laughed because all she was going to do was to take the mugs from the beeping microwave. Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
Why didn't it stop beeping? I rolled over. But it wasn't Shani's microwave beeping, it was the alarm on my watch. I reached out and pushed the button, smiling. Everything is going to be OK. We can stay together. We can be happy.
But ... what am I thinking? It's only morning. Like the ending to every story every third grader ever wrote. 'And she woke up and it was all just a dream.'
But it was such a persistent dream. Its flavor has lingered. All the while I made my coffee, I had that feeling you get in your chest when you know you have something good waiting for you. When you see the little you've-got-mail envelope at the corner of the screen. When you see the lady bringing the coffee-break donuts to the kitchenette at work. When they get another book by your favorite author at book club. When you pull into the driveway at your parents' house.
Maybe that dream is an omen. Maybe our meeting with Shani tonight will be different from all the other first sessions over the years. Maybe everything is going to be OK. Maybe we can stay together and be happy.
Well, Seth and I had our first meeting with Shani last night.
With counselors we have seen until now, I have given the first-session briefing. This time - maybe because of that dream - I wanted to hear what Seth has to say. To hear where his starting point is now.
If he really does say anything remotely like what he told the Jeanie/Shani of my dream, there will be no need for me to bring up the things that have happened up until now. As Maria said, back at Jewish Family Services in the US, you can really tell all you need to know from the first session.
"OK, then, Seth," the real Shani smiled at Seth, "Can you briefly orient me? Describe your relationship with Shlomit and the children."
Seth went into swagger mode. Not an encouraging sign. The opposite of the humble, honest, approachable dream-Seth. Reality-Seth talked as though my worries were a big joke to him.
"Well, Shani, there's not much to tell, really," he said chummily, conspiratorially. As though poor little Shlomit - and Tova, too, I guess - who was so concerned over the results of Rafi's evaluation, was making a big fuss about nothing.
"The first few years of the marriage were uneventful. An average marriage, I guess. Then, when we had kids. Well, I'll admit, Shani, that I don't always keep my temper one hundred percent with them. You know how annoying young children can be. There are times when I have needed to reprimand them. I'm not saying this is good, but ..." he flashed her a chagrined little smile, "you know how it is. And there might even have been cases where I had to, you know, give them a little spank on the tush.
"So that was it, basically, nothing special," his smile faded and then clouded over into a puzzled frown as he shook his head. "Then four years ago - we were on sabbatical in the US for a year - Shlomit decided she didn't want to live in Israel anymore. She suddenly decided she wanted to stay in the US. I managed to convince her to come back to Israel. It's important to me that my children grow up in their own homeland. But she still jumps up every once in awhile, saying she wants to go back to America."
"Seth!" I interrupted, "What are you ... you thought I was saying I wanted to stay in the US? You thought that's what it was all about? You still think it is?"
"Well, yes. What else could it be, Shlomit? It was pretty clear that you just don't want to live here."
"OK, Seth," prompted Shani, interrupting my sputtering, "go on."
"Or, it could possibly have something to do with sex. We had had sex a few days before she said she wanted to stay there. I always wondered if there was ... I don't know ... some sexual fear or something."
"Did Shlomit mention sex as the reason she wanted to ... stay in America?" Shani asked, casting a puzzled glance at me. Wondering what kind of woman would decide what continent to live on, based on sexual trepidation.
"No, she never has explained why she suddenly brought up the subject of divorce," he shrugged helplessly. “It's a miracle that we even wound up coming to you."
"In what way?" Shani asked, puzzled, probably because I'm the one who had called her to arrange the meeting. I was also curious.
"It just is. It's a miracle. I wouldn't have believed it possible."
"So ... you wanted to come, Seth?" Shani asked.
"Of course, Shani! When I heard the results of the test Rafi took, that showed how he's suffering from the treatment he gets from his brother and sister, I knew we needed family counseling immediately! Whatever we can do to make the two of them lay off of him ..."
“Seth!” I interjected.
But Shani ignored me. "Fine, Seth. Well, I think we should be able to get the family onto a firm footing. You have already taken the most important step - both of you acknowledging that your family needs help, and seeking it out.
"So, Shlomit? Does Seth's description of your marriage coincide pretty much with yours?"
I sighed. "Not at all, Shani. He left out some very significant ... details."
"Go on, Shlomit ..."
I gave a very abbreviated run-down of our dysfunctional family history. "And Seth left out Rafi's seizures. And what caused the first one …” I looked over at Seth, but he tisked and looked away. “And the favoritism Seth has shown toward Rafi since then, that is warping everything in the family. And which is the reason Tova said the family needs help. We did not come to save Rafi from his siblings, but to save all three children, and me, from Seth's ... whatever. Policies or problems or tantrums or whatever we're allowed to call them. Talk to Tova if you haven't already. Or better yet, talk to the children."
Shani took another half a minute to write in her notebook and turned to Seth. "Do you think it would work, Seth? To meet in a family setting with the children and see what they feel needs to happen in the family? Children can be amazingly perceptive and analytic."
So it was agreed that we'll have one more meeting with just the three of us to plan what we'll do with the children, and then next time we'll bring them along.
When I told Leora this morning that we're all going to go to family therapy, she asked, "All of us? All together?"
"Well, yes, if it's family therapy, the whole family goes."
"Well, I'm not going to tell her anything if Abba is listening. What - just so he can hold it against me later?"
Seven years ago when Seth and I went to Sandy, the children were so trusting that she could help. This time none of us seem very hopeful. I hope Shani is in the mood for a challenge.
That dream about how the meeting with Shani would have gone 'in my dreams' made the actual first meeting even more of a letdown. But the dream did show me - I did show myself - what would indicate that Seth is on the right road. It would be his whole orientation toward me and the children and toward his problems. It's not enough for him to apply the Dale Carnegie techniques he's learning from Batia. Hey – even the Dale Carnegie philosophy is built on the premise that you must actually care about people before you try to influence them.
My favorite line in E.T. is when Eliot’s friend asks why E.T.'s folks don't just beam him up. Elliot looks at Greg with exasperation, and says, patiently, "This is reality, Greg!"
Well, this is reality, Diary.
"So," Shani said, last night, as we got settled for our second meeting. "To summarize what we spoke about last week, you, Seth, are convinced that you have changed significantly, and that Shlomit and the children have nothing to worry about. And you, Shlomit, don't feel that you have enough evidence of those changes, or enough understanding, to allow you to relax and feel confident that the 'bad times' won't return."
Seth and I both shrugged noncommittally. Shani was doing alot of reading between the lines.
"I wonder, Seth," Shani continued, "if you have apologized to Shlomit and the children."
He gave her his what-are-you-trying-to-coerce-me-into look. “Shani, I would hope that Shlomit is mature enough not to need a bunch of meaningless blah-blah!”
After a two-second pause, Shani continued, gently. "Seth, if you haven't apologized to them, then it's no wonder that Shlomit and the children are still uneasy. An apology is exactly what is used in this type of situation. You did something unkind to someone else without meaning to, and in order to keep your relationship from being harmed by your mistake, you apologize."
"Well, Shani, I have to say that I never really knew exactly what Shlomit is trying to claim ..."
"OK, Seth, but surely you do know that you have behaved in ways that were not conducive to nurturing a trusting relationship with your family.
"Shlomit?" she turned to me, "Would it help you to hear an apology from Seth?"
"Yeah ..." I got a waft of the feeling I had felt in my dream session with Shani. Of course, the apology in the dream was spontaneous and heart-felt. Not something he was instructed to do. But, hey! Any apology from Seth would be one for Guinness!
"OK," Shani laughed to show that this was a kind of game we were playing, because Seth definitely looked ready to jump up and bolt out of the room. "Seth! You're on!"
"OK. An apology. OK. Um ..." Seth rolled his eyes, looking anything but apologetic. He went into cowboy mode. Super casual. Big man going along with some foolishness the womenfolk have cooked up. "Why not ..." This is all a joke to him.
"Apology. OK." A pause to frown and formulate the exact wording. As though asked to do an exercise for a drama class. 'Pretend that you want to propose marriage to a tadpole. Pretend that you want to suggest to Buddha that he go to weight watchers. Pretend that you want to sell someone a used left-handed smoke shifter. Pretend that you want to apologize, in twenty five words or less, to a wife you have spent two decades being mean to.'
"I guess ..." he said in a very deep, theatrical voice, as though quoting someone else, "if there was ever anything that ... that Shlomit thinks I ... might have done ... that, you know, upset her, in her opinion, well, then, I guess I would say that, yes, that I'm 'sorry' about it." With a wiggle of the head to apply scare quotes to that dirty word, 'sorry'.
Eli and Leora are learning to diagram sentences. I wonder how you would diagram that one. It's all subordinate clauses - no real meat to it at all. When you take away the modifiers and parenthetical phrases, you're left with the simple sentence, "I guess." Certainly not with "I am sorry."
"Um ..." Shani asked for clarification. "Sorry about what you did, or sorry that Shlomit was upset?"
"Well, sorry she was upset."
"You're not sorry that you did things to make Shlomit feel she that couldn't stay with you?" Shani asked.
"Well, that depends on what exactly she's taking offense at. I'm not really at all clear on what she's accusing me of."
Ah, well. Guinness will have to wait.
Shani nodded and made a note in the margin of her notebook. She scanned the page as though searching for a Plan B for this session. To her, an apology probably seemed a simple five minute exercise to get out of the way, before starting with the real work.
Shani put her finger on the next note in her list. "Seth, you must have felt very badly when you found out that your son had … reported you," she said, gently.
Oops! I guess Shani read that in Tova's report. Seth hadn't known that it was Eli who had blabbed. I watched him. A knot in my stomach.
"Well, no, Shani, because you see, I could never understand what that whole business was all about. I never had a clear idea of what had happened at the meeting that Shlomit and ... and Eli … supposedly had with the school psychologist - what exactly was said. Anyway, I might have believed it of Leora. She would pull something like that. It's hard for me to believe Eli would."
Ah. So Seth had assumed Leora had spilled the beans. If it’s out of character for Eli to reveal family problems to strangers, isn't that all the more reason to give it credibility? I'm sure Seth doesn't do that in the lab - "Oh, gee - that warning light doesn't usually come on. I'll just ignore it."
"But you had a meeting, Seth, at social services. Surely they explained ..." she gave him a verbal prod.
"That so-called meeting was just to try to make me look bad. Nobody explained anything."
Guinness must have other categories Seth could try for. I could nominate him for a few.
"OK, we can get back to this later," Shani penned in an arrow next to the note. "What we really must accomplish at this session is to lay the groundwork for next week's meeting with the children. The first thing we have to do, when we talk with them, is to get everything out in the open. Your children have been through unpleasant times, made all the more disturbing by the fact that it was never discussed."
"Shani," Seth contended, "anything 'disturbing' that might have happened was so long ago that I'm sure they don't even remember. I say we just leave it forgotten. That's what Dr. A said, too."
"Well, Dr. A didn't have the results of Rafi's evaluation, Seth." Shani reminded him gently, resting her hand on an envelope sticking out of her notebook.
"Seth, you remember during the war in 1991? Scary things, or potentially scary things were happening, and what did we all do? We talked about it non-stop. We joked about it. Shared our thoughts and experiences. If you watched the children's TV station, the topic of every story and song and skit and joke was the war and sealed rooms and gas masks and skuds. Teams of psychologists were brought in to help plan programming. Schools held seminars for teachers on how to deal with the psychological effects of ‘the situation'. Children were given reality checks. They were encouraged to express themselves. The essays the children wrote, the drawings they drew, the projects that lined the corridors of the schools – were all about the war. And as a result, there has been virtually no residual fear among children who lived through that war.
"A child in an ambiguous situation must always be on guard, and that watchfulness will come at a price. Your three children's non-achievement in school is classic. They can't afford to concentrate in school if they must always process what is happening at home.
"Seth, nobody has sounded an all-clear for your children. They're still waiting for the next alert."
"Look, Shani, they should be able to tell by the fact ..."
"Seth, I don't doubt that you consider that you have issued that all-clear, just by being in a generally better mood for awhile. But they haven't heard it. There are families that have had more serious problems than yours, but the children are impacted less because the problems were aired and discussed. Children - anyone - will search for reasons for the things that happen around them, and very often the real explanation is actually the least destructive."
"OK. Enough Psych 101," Shani chuckled, "Seth, let's hear you practice making a clear statement to the children, telling them that you take responsibility for bad things you have done to them. That starting now things in the family will be different. That if anyone feels that something is unfair or harmful, they can express that feeling and be heard."
"I still don't see ..." Seth started, but stopped when he saw that Shani meant business in spite of her gentle ways. "But, OK. I have no problem with that. OK. Umm... I guess I would say, 'If there was anything ...'"
"Without the 'if', Seth," Shani instructed. "We're trying to clear things up, not add more layers of ambiguity."
"OK. 'Anything I might have ...'"
"Without the 'might'. Just start with how you feel. 'I feel badly that ...'"
"'I feel, you know, like ...'"
"Without the ke-ilu, Seth," Shani giggled again. Seth tisked.
"'I'm sorry if ...' - I mean - 'I'm sorry that ... I ... was ... not always ... patient with you, but ...'"
"Good, Seth, but let's hear it without the 'but'."
Where is the TABOO! champion Seth turns into whenever we play? He is always able to nimbly step around any word he doesn't want to utter. What's his problem, suddenly? In all these sessions, any words that might have incriminated him have never left his lips. Why is it so hard for him to avoid, now, the words Shani has established as taboo? He is looking at a virtual TABOO! card that has the phrase 'I'm sorry' at the top, and the only words he's not allowed to say in conveying that message are, 'if', ‘might', ‘possibly’, ‘sort of’ and 'but'.
"OK, that will have to do, Seth, because we have run over our time. Maybe you could practice that for next week." Shani smiled.
I just changed the title of this entry from ‘Apology’ to ‘Apogee’. It was as far from an apology as you can get.
I have to share the dream I had last night!
I dreamed I was with Seth and the children outdoors.
The children and I were trying to get across a deep gully. The gully was inside a tunnel, and I knew nobody could see us and help us. There were only very narrow walkways on either side of the chasm, along the sides of the tunnel. Eli and I had been trying to put a board across so we could walk across it to the other side. But even as we were doing this, I knew it was pointless because the path on the other side was just as narrow and dangerous as the side we were on. Before we could manage to get to the other side of the chasm or to the other end of the tunnel, Seth came and took us to a very tall diving board.
The weather was beautiful, but we knew that all around us, just over the horizon, it was gray and cold and stormy with rain and fog and sleet and hail and blizzards and zero visibility - absolutely horrible, dangerous weather. But here we were, miraculously, in beautiful sunshine. Like the eye of a cyclone.
The platform was thirty stories tall, and very narrow. I was watching for the horrible storms that I knew surrounded us, wondering how dangerous they would be for us.
From up there, we could see the tunnel where we had been before. I pointed it out to Eli, from up there on that scary windy height - and he said he had already spotted it. We could see the roof of the tunnel, and the board, at the entrance, that we had been trying to put across - all very tiny down below.
Then Seth told us we were going to jump off. It would be like jumping out of a plane but we didn't have parachutes. We were lined up on this narrow board - just barely wide enough to walk along. It was windy. The children were in front of me, right at the end. Seth was behind me. I couldn't see past the children to see what was down there - if it was water we would be landing in, or what. Even if it was, I knew that falling from that height would be dangerous for someone with no experience. Seth kept telling us to jump. I didn't want to, but I knew there wasn't any other way to get down. As well as fearing the impact at the bottom, I dreaded the terror that the children would feel on the way down, and there would be no way I could be with them to comfort them.
I was in this hopeless situation, not being able to protect my children from what Seth was making us do, when I woke up. The scary feeling has been with me all day.
Thanks for your ear, as always!
Love, Shlomit
The last time we all sat together for family counseling was when social services tried to get Seth's problems ironed out so the children could concentrate on their studies instead of on the family battlefield. Six years ago. Half of Leora’s life.
Shani was smiley and facilitating. I tried to be, too. Seth looked bored. Eli and Leora were quiet and suspicious. Rafi looked from one to the other of them and then just watched and waited. Shani introduced herself and told them that Abba wanted to start the session off by asking them a favor.
Seth apologized to them in the same vague way he had apologized to me - that if he might ever have done anything that they got upset over, he certainly hadn’t expected them to be so touchy.
They just shrugged.
"I would like to hear from you children," Shani explained, "if there's anything within the framework of the family that is bothering you. That's what these sessions are for. To bring things out into the open. Is there anything ... about how the family runs ... anything that tends to happen often at home ... any patterns ... that you would like to see go differently? Eli? Anything?"
Eli shrugged. "Don't know."
"Leora?" Leora, watching Eli, shrugged.
"Rafi?" Rafi grinned shyly and leaned back against Eli, embarrassed, on the sofa.
"Well," Shani went on, "what brought your parents here, looking for help from me, is that the family has broken up into factions. Rafi and your Abba tend to do things together, and you two, Eli and Leora, tend to stick together and do things more with your Ima."
"Only because Abba pulls Rafi away any time we're all together," Leora burst out.
"So, Leora, you feel that this split in the family isn't a deeply rooted irreversible division. But rather, that it's being caused by certain bad habits that have gotten established. Things that could be reversed, and then the family could function more smoothly."
Leora shrugged. Regretting that she hadn't been able to stick to her vow of silence.
"Does anyone have any suggestions for what would help get you all back together again? Try to imagine something that happens often at home. Then imagine the scene again, how you would like to see it happening. Can any of you explain the difference?"
"Maybe ..." Eli started. Shani smiled and nodded at him. "Maybe if Ab ... Never mind. Nothing."
Shani prompted some more, but Eli just said angrily, "Nothing! Forget it! Can't we just let it go?"
I spoke up, to distract attention from Eli, who seemed to be near tears. "I have a suggestion, Shani."
"All right, Shlomit ..."
"Three years ago, our dog Sheba gave birth to ten puppies under our kitchen table.” That image earned smiles from five of us. “Well, as soon as those little creatures had their eyes open, they were pouncing all over each other, wrestling around. As they got bigger, the scrapping got more sophisticated. They growled and snarled and knocked each other over. Got their jaws around each other's legs just to show they could crunch down if they wanted to. But they never did. We said, "They're only playing," but they were learning, too. They were practicing, with their litter mates, how to behave with other dogs. Learning how far you can go in asserting yourself before the other guy will really nip you. They all seemed to agree on what was legal in their play.
"Well, obviously ..." I indicated the three children grinning at me from the sofa, "siblings - litter mates - these juvenile mammals - can use each other for practicing their social interactions. In a safe setting, they can practice asserting themselves. Learn what works and what doesn't. What you can do to wind up being the leader, and have the others accepting your suggestions, and when your bossiness is just going to make the others want to stop playing with you. How to be good with people. Win friends and influence people. Establish intimacy while retaining your self sufficiency. How to deal with the inevitable differences between individuals - but in small doses, since siblings do have so much in common to start with. And without any lasting consequences, as there might be with neighbors or classmates. Your siblings will forgive your errors in judgment as long as you don't repeat the same error too often. I'm doing my best to prepare my children for life 'on the outside', but in many ways, they can prepare each other for interacting with their peers, much better than any guidance I can provide."
"Yeah, right, Shlomit," Seth muttered, "maybe you and your siblings were allowed to be hooligans at home, but my mother never would have allowed us to ..."
"Yes, Seth, I know that your mother never let you boys resolve your squabbles on your own.” Seth has to pay Batia for lessons that he could have had for free from Jerry and Roger. He now looks to any counselor to be a referee and judge instead of a facilitator and resource provider. And, sadly, he has no relationship with his brothers, whereas, now that the dust has settled from all our hooliganism, Kay and Paul and Jeanie and I have deep abiding friendships.
"So I think,” I said, “that if Seth would just ignore any altercations between the children," not to mention quit starting them where there aren't any, "that things would go more smoothly. Little spats would blow over or resolve themselves, and wouldn't turn into major issues and ruin an evening or a weekend."
"Right!" Seth burst out. "Just let them all kill each other off. Self limiting problem. Shlomit, there are reasons children have parents. One reason is to keep them safe. Even if it means protecting them from bullies in their own family!" Touche. That's one parental function I don't perform well at all when Seth is the bully.
"So, Seth, you think that Shlomit's hands-off policy might not work. What do you kids think?"
"It's true what Ima says," Leora pointed out. "When we used to go to her, she just said, 'I'm sure you guys can work it out on your own.'
This last quote was in English. These sessions are the first we’ve been to in Hebrew. It’s actually better - you have to think more when you talk in a second language. Some of the cliches we've been batting back and forth for years have to be rephrased, and in doing so, we actually have to think about what we're trying to express.
"I guess, if we go to Ima, now," Leora continued, "it's for her ideas, to help us decide. Not for her to decide who's right."
"And ..." Shani asked her, glancing at Seth, "do you think you squabble more when Abba isn't there to stop you?"
Leora looked surprised, "No!” She looked over at Eli and Rafi and considered, “No, we hardly fight at all when Abba isn’t home."
"Do you think that things are less fair for Rafi when Abba isn't around to be his advocate?"
Leora looked down at Rafi sitting between her and Eli. "For Rafi? I don't think so. Because I guess we like him better when Abba isn't there."
"So, how about if we try it out for a week. Would that be OK, Seth?" He shrugged. "Let's see if we can break this pattern. Abba will stop intervening in interactions between you children. And you children will have to realize that he's not going to interfere. That means that you, Rafi, have to be more careful not to anger Eli and Leora when Abba is home. And you two big ones, you have to realize that it's your responsibility to be fair to Rafi, now that Abba isn't watching out for him. This is a family project. OK? And next week we'll see how it has gone."
Eli told us a few weeks ago that there's kosher KFC in Israel, now. He wanted to go for his birthday dinner, and take his friend Louie along. Seth couldn't make it, last night, so I just went with the four teenagers.
Eli is so different when Seth isn't around. He is just turning fifteen, and he's so mature. He knew where the restaurant is, and suggested where to park, led us though town and got us there. Went right up to the counter and asked about the various buckets and dinners. The term, 'blooming' kept going through my mind. When Seth is there, we're all so hesitant. (I had written 'When Seth is with us...' but I changed it. He never is, really, is he?)
All evening I was doing the "I Dream of Jeanie" thing – imagining how the scene would change if Seth were suddenly to appear with a 'b-r-r-ing!'. When Seth is in command, we don't bob along the sidewalk chattering and commenting and smiling and laughing and interacting and goofing off. Seth goose-steps grimly in front, calling out admonitions to us, trailing behind. "Hurry up. We came to eat, not to window shop. You'll make us miss the light. Stop jabbering. Pay attention. Leave him alone. Leave her alone. You’re making a scene." As though there's some point to the outing - or to life - other than to have it be enjoyable.
The children and I got seated, with our order, and the babble continued. Sharing our reactions to the food, the mall, the people around us in the food court. I did a 'b-r-r-ing' to insert Seth into the picture, and, mentally, I saw the children perform the 'sit-back' maneuver they do when Seth, or thoughts of Seth, intrude on the scene when we're relaxing, being ourselves.
I first noticed it years ago, at the coffee shop at JFK. Seth's parents and Aunt Esther (z"l) bought us yogurt while we waited for our flight back to Israel to be announced, and Aunt Esther asked the happy, chattering children if they were looking forward to being reunited with their Daddy after two weeks. The talking died mid-sentence. The smiles were replaced by anxious glances darted at me and at each other for reassurance. But the most telling signal came from their bodies. As one, the three children, who had been leaning forward with elbows on the table, reaching out toward the rest of us with their bodies as well as with their voices and thoughts, slowly sank back against their chair backs. Sank back and down until they seemed half their bulk. Almost as though they were trying to disappear.
Since then, I've noticed that that happens if someone mentions Seth. Or if the phone rings and we think it might be him. Or if we suddenly hear his key in the door when we hadn't been keeping track of the time.
Sinking back. Closing their mouths. Darting looks at each other. Pinging.
When your computer is on a TCP/IP communication network, and you want to know if another computer is connected to the network, you can 'ping' them. To see if the computer named HAL is on-line, I could type PING HAL, and I'll get a message telling me if HAL was found, somewhere out there in cyberspace.
People ping each other all the time. "Anybody home?" "Are you awake?" "You OK?" "Just called to say hi ..."
Animals ping. Luna's 'b-r-r-r-t?'. Sheba's tail thump. Slinky's front paws on your ankle. Just letting you know they're there. Just checking on that moral support.
The children’s darting glances at me and at each other, when Seth enters our physical or psychological space, are pings. “You’re there, right? Are we OK?”
Seth doesn't even know us, does he. He has no idea who we really are, because he only sees us when he's in our midst.
"So!" Shani smiled, "You all survived! Were you able to 'do your homework'?"
After shrugs and 'guess-so's from Seth and the children, I told Shani that I thought the week had gone well. It seemed calmer than a typical wrangling week around our house, where Seth gets involved and each squabble escalates.
"If it was better, Shani," Seth commented, "I suspect that it was just the placebo effect, rather than any real difference. Just the psychological effect of everybody knowing we were trying a new way of interacting. I think we were all just imagining you looking over our shoulders."
I wondered if he could be right. Then I looked up and saw Shani's broad, slightly sheepish, grin. Which Seth couldn't see, because he was lecturing to the floor. Of course! In medicine you can have a placebo effect, because there's a huge psychological component to health and recovery. A placebo effect is real. It's an effect. If I lose five kilos when I start taking a sugar pill every morning, thinking it's helping me control my appetite, the weight is really gone. If my back stops hurting even though the ointment is only hand lotion, because I relax ‘knowing’ my twinges are being treated, the muscles really are less tense.
But … a placebo effect in behavior modification? Psychology is ONLY the psychological component! If you use the placebo effect, you've done your job. Shani doesn't have to decide whether there's something 'real' in a technique she is applying, as opposed to a psychological byproduct that might be doing all the work.
"Exactly, Seth," Shani laughed. "You've uncovered one of the secret weapons in our arsenal. Most of the time we psychologists aren't recommending anything you couldn't have done yourselves. It's just the force of making an official new start, or of having everyone realize we're trying to break patterns in a dance the whole family has been dancing."
"So, your homework for next week is just to continue with the experiment. And now, in the time that's left, I would like to speak with each of you children for a few minutes away from the rest of the family. Would that be OK?"
Unenthusiastic shrugs. The rest of us went out to the living room and Shani sat back down to talk with Eli. Leora swapped off with him a few minutes later, and then Rafi went in. Shani called me and Seth to come in at the end.
"Well," Shani added her own shrug to the many that had been shrugged that evening, "I didn't get much from the children."
"And that's probably because they have nothing to say. In spite of Shlomit's dire predictions." Seth declared.
"No, I don't think so. It was hard to tell with Rafi, but Leora literally didn't say a word. Just kept her mouth clamped shut and her arms crossed over her chest. And Eli ... Eli just kept saying he wants to let it go. They've both got alot pent up inside. It's not healthy to leave it there.
"I would like to meet with the two of you just to better understand the family dynamics that are operating. Then get back to a family setting."
Seth and I both agreed. Each with our own reservations.
"What are you doing, Ima?" Eli asked. I had inverted the chairs up onto the dining table so I could wash the floor, and was standing there lost in thought. Seeing the rows of newish screws on the bottoms of the old chairs had served as a Rosetta Stone for the body language being spoken at our meetings with Shani.
"I was just remembering when we broke the seats off all the chairs!" I laughed.
"Oh! Right! Playing Tetris! How old was I?" Eli asked.
"First grade. The year of the war."
"How did you break all the chairs?" Rafi asked, looking from one of us to the other.
Eli laughed. "We were all addicted to Tetris. Abba and Ima and I. And Leora a little bit. You were too little. Oh, you were a little bit addicted, too," he added when Rafi looked left out. That expression that youngest siblings get on their faces when they receive yet another confirmation that all the best family memories are from before they could remember.
"There was always someone playing, every minute anyone was home. Trying to push each other out of the hall of fame. One day Ima was playing and suddenly the seat of her chair flipped forward and Ima almost fell on the floor. Abba got mad and, you know, tisked and, you know, growled. But then later that evening, Abba was playing Tetris sitting on a different chair and POP! that chair flipped, too. After a couple more weeks, four of them were broken. Because ... look," Eli demonstrated. “When you're excited about something, you lean forward on the edge of your chair. It's called body language. You're trying so hard to go faster in your game that you lean forward. There's even an expression in real language. A bitui. You say, 'I was on the edge of my seat!' when you want to say you were excited about something. Totally into it."
The boys went off to find Tetris on the computer.
What I had been musing on, leaning on an upturned chair, was that in all of these sessions, I'm leaning forward and Seth is leaning back. As though I'm trying to push ahead, and Seth is trying to dig in his heels to slow us down.
Seth's posture at the session this week - his 'laid-back' body language - reminded me of a seminar I attended recently at work.
Our group was about to get the new version of the computer's operating system, so we had a representative come to tell the six of us how to use the new system. We sat in a tight circle. Not letting the guy rest. Not letting him gloss over anything. Asking, asking, asking. Hanging on every word. "How do you ...", "What if I need to ...", "Is there a better way to ...", "Can I now ...", "Which is more efficient ...", "Does it let me ...", "Is there an option to ... ", "Have they improved the way it ...". Taking only sketchy notes, because there was no way we were going to forget any of it. Frequently getting off into discussions among ourselves. He could help us, but ultimately, our group would have to work with it, on our own, after this guru had gone home. We directed the meeting. If he started touting the advantages of something we weren't going to need, we hurried him on to the topics that were critical for us. We desperately needed to improve the way we had been working, and we wanted to milk the expert of every drop of assistance, while we had him.
And the whole time, we were sitting, literally, on the edges of our seats.
That's the difference that a fly on the wall, at our sessions with Shani, would see with his multifaceted bug eyes, between how Seth sits and how I do.
Seth lounges there, implying that he's only there to humor me. If he could lounge back and listen to nature sounds for fifty minutes a week, he would be just as happy. He's doing time, as we do time at work when we are required attend a lecture on a topic that doesn't really relate to our work. Something we never expect to use.
But the fly would see the array of Shlomit blobs sloping forward, toward the Seth blobs. I need these sessions to be worth something!
The hundreds of bug-eye images could represent the hundreds of counseling sessions we have attended over the years.
Then, the bug on the wall would notice, a few times each session, that I say something that angers Seth and he surges toward me and I lean back out of the way. Like those old weather vanes with the wood choppers who take turns chopping at a log. Or the hand car on a train track. If I'm up, you're down. If I'm forward, you're back.
Nothing at all like the dream session.
I don't know if I should be happy or sad about what Eli said to me, today:
"You know, Ima, if you hadn’t told me over and over that I'm smart in lots of ways, and that my grades in school don't mean that I'm not smart ... I would have given up by now. I would be one of those kids who don't even try anymore."
Poor Eli. It's so unfair. He needs Seth as an advocate, too. He needs a huge, heart-felt, without-reservations vote of confidence from Seth. Not to have Seth be one more force in the world telling him he's no good.
I try to be patient, but AAAAAHHHHHHRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!
Most of our sessions with Shani are just with the three of us lately. Shani will bring the children in again, but not just yet.
Tonight, after nearly an hour of going round and round where we've been before, I just felt I couldn't sit through another minute of it. Seth pulls out the same claims and accusations with each counselor - we never get to the bottom of any of them, they just swirl around. We'll seem to finally be discussing something and getting somewhere and he changes tack suddenly and capsizes the whole thing. Brings up some claim or accusation from nowhere and the conversation gets diverted, trying to deal with that. Shani will try to start a session at the point where we ended the last one, but Seth disputes her rephrasal of what we agreed on the time before. He dodges each of the bullets she has listed in her notebook.
Finally, tonight, I said, "Look, Shani, this is all going nowhere. I just want out of this marriage. We've spent four years trying to turn it into something it will never be, and I just don't see any point."
"Shlomit," Shani tried to calm me, "You must realize that Seth is undergoing a 'process'. It will take time for him to dismantle the patterns he has established over decades. This is going to require a great deal of patience on your part."
Easy for her to say. She has only had to listen to this Jabberwocky for a few weeks, now. I've been gyring and gimbling in the wabe of his slithy toves for two decades. For her it's still brillig, but for me, the borogroves are getting pretty mimsy by now. And the mome raths outgrabe very frighteningly after all this time. After every frumious counseling session, I take my vorpal computer in hand and try to snicker-snack through all the manxome blah-blah to see if there's really anything underneath. Every session, just when I think we've reached some Tumtum tree or other, and I dare to rest awhile in thought, he sends that Jabberwock burbling out again, and we spend the next few minutes or weeks whiffling through the tulgey wood of Seth's illogic and forgetfulness and rewriting of history, ancient and modern. So many times I think we have finally slain the Jabberwock, and I go around for days in beamish joy, but it always turns out that my calloohs and callays were unwarranted, and that Jabberwock comes galumphing right back the next time I try to talk to Seth.
I really don't think that frabjous day will ever arrive where I can climb through the looking-glass and be married to the Seth I dreamed about in January.
"Shani, these wild accusations of hers ..." Seth tried to divert Shani from the next bullet on her list.
"Seth, no!" I interrupted, "we're not going to start back at the point where you claim none of it ever happened. There are plenty of people outside this room who know that it did happen, and for you to try to convince Shani that it didn't, is counterproductive. That's exactly why Dr. A couldn't help us.
"The children have suffered with your problems. Our friends have been involved, and Uncle Henry, and your brothers. All along, your mother has tried to help me deal with what we’re going through with you."
"My mother!" - totally skeptical look - "It's not at all like my mother to talk about anything like that."
"Exactly, Seth. That's exactly why it’s significant."
So he said, not for the first time, "But, Shlomit, there have been times when I've improved."
And she said, not for the first time, "But it has always been temporary, Seth. I need to know that the improvement will be lasting."
As we talked, I was fingering some metal bars that were lying there on the kitchen table. The metal shelves that had fallen off the refrigerator door again. As Seth and I talk, we fiddle with whatever happens to be on the table when we sit down – a book, a spoon, a potholder, a box of sandwich bags.
"Seth!" I picked up one of the bars so suddenly that he jumped. "Remember how frustrated we were with the repair man from Frigidaire! I had stayed home from work all morning waiting for him. And when I explained that these rails fall off the shelves and the bottles crash to the floor, he said, 'No problem!' Then he clicked the rails back into place – as we do every time they fall off - and acted as though he had just performed brain surgery. 'That's all you have to do!' he announced.
"And you were angry, when I told you he hadn’t done anything. You said, ‘He needed to actually fix it so that the rails don't fall off every few weeks! So that we don't have to be careful each time we open the door! So that we don't have to make sure to put only plastic bottles on the door of the refrigerator! We need to be able to relax and use our refrigerator normally, as other people do!’ You said that it's totally unacceptable just to expect us to apply temporary fixes again and again!"
Seth made a dismissive motion with his hand. I know he hates my analogies. I always hope they'll help him see things more clearly. "Well, I don't have time to sit here and talk about the refrigerator, Shlomit. I suggest you send e-mail to Frigidaire and complain again." He got up and went upstairs.
Friday morning, Seth said, “I’ve been better lately, but you just refuse to notice!”
“Yes, Seth, I do. I refuse to ‘notice’. I refuse to wonder what’s going on with you. I refuse to guess and speculate. To interpolate or extrapolate. I refuse to … correlate, to … surmise. To hope and pray.
“I thought I had made that clear, and now you’re acting as though you just figured it out.
“You still want me to play guessing games about what’s going on with you. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing all along. If you have something to say, Seth, say it. If there’s something you have figured out or learned with Batia that indicates that you’re healthier now, just tell me about it. Out in the open. I need to be able to be sure of my future. Not just play the same old guessing games.
“And I’m not a free agent, Seth. I represent the children. I can’t take the chances that I could take when we were first married. I can’t just take you on as an interesting project. As an adventure that might work out and might not. I need security for the children.”
Rafi is reading A Series of Unfortunate Events.
There was a quote in one of the books that explains something that has happened, at some point, with each of the professionals we've talked to.
Seth will say, pitifully, "But she never said she was upset with me! How was I supposed to know????"
And the third person in the room says, "Shlomit, did you tell Seth he was too controlling / too rough with the children / in an unpleasant mood much of the time?"
And I sit there and stutter, "Uh, no, not in so many words ..."
Well, here's the quote from Rafi's book:
"When somebody is a little bit wrong - say when a waiter puts nonfat milk in your espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk - it is often quite easy to explain to them how and why they are wrong. But if somebody is surpassingly wrong - say, when a waiter bites your nose instead of taking your order - you can often be unable to say anything at all. Paralyzed by how wrong the waiter is, your mouth would hang slightly open and your eyes would blink over and over, but you would be unable to say a word."
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Copyright 2020 by Shlomit Weber
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