Broken Branches
The Wednesday before Christmas, the weatherman promised sixteen to eighteen inches of snow. I was working at the local cheesehouse in the mail order department when the first few inches started to fall. Shortly after one o'clock, I put on my coat, gave a few instructions to Ashley and Ursula, and made my way down the spiral staircase that separated my little office in the tower from the rest of the building.
I was off to a hauling job.
About two months ago, I started taking appointments to haul Amish. To the doctor, to the grocery store, to their sister's house to make cookies. Wherever. I charge per mile with a small fee if I have to wait while they shop. Usually, I just shop, too. On that particular Wednesday, the young Amish mother that I would be hauling was taking her baby girl to the doctor.
It wasn't long after I had dropped Rachel off in front of the doctor's office that the snow really started to fall heavily. I hadn't seen a snow like this in many years, and it was as exciting as it was scary. A white Christmas! I thought. As long as we could get home in one piece, I might even look forward to being snowed in with my family for a few days. When the young Amish girl finished her doctor's appointment, we both headed to the local grocery store to stock up.
Before we had even driven the few miles from the grocery store to my passenger's house, the snow had completely covered the roads so that they were barely visible. People were creeping along in their vehicles and there were already several cars on the roadsides, stuck. Even my attempt to get home was thwarted. I had to park in a nearby driveway because I just couldn't get my van up the hill of a local back road. Thank God for a co-worker, who just happened to be going my way and stopped to give me a ride in his 4-wheel drive truck. I told him not to try to make it up my steep drive. He dropped me at the end of the long lane to my house, and I walked the rest of the way, the snow turning to sleet and pelting me hard in the face.
When I awoke the next morning, there was truly a winter wonderland glistening outside my bedroom window. It was a dangerously beautiful scene, and, before long, it became apparent that not only would we be staying home for the day--maybe even the weekend--but that we would be fighting to stay warm. Sometime in the night, the power had gone out. After listening to the local radio station, we found that the continuing ice storm had left most of our county without power, and that the problems were only increasing.
I made my way to the couch, snuggled under my grandmother-in-law's thick comforter, and I looked through our windows over the gorgeous glimmering countryside. Every branch was covered with a thick layer of ice, and the heavy sleet continued falling. When all was quiet, you could hear the limbs and branches cracking, breaking, falling all around the house, all through the woods. As I sat, I watched my oldest daughter Bard's favorite tree sag under the weight of it's burden. One by one, I wagered with myself over which branch would crack and fall next. Before it was all over, dozens of once-strong limbs lay on the ground around the roots of what had been a full and sturdy tree just two months ago.
I recalled these moments today, two and a half weeks after the power had gone out, a week and a half after it had returned. What brought the scene to mind was a single comment that my father made, something he undoubtedly thought was very funny.
Being the butt of the joke, I didn't find it funny at all.
My father's kind of amusement--this brand of comment--isn't knew to me. When I was a child, I heard my father shower his icy comments onto my mother's branches for many years, many times, and I watched as her strength gave way and her limbs broke under the weight of his words. It was all a game to him.
"Are you eating again? Neice! You'd better hide the fridge!" The branch bends.
"Where'd you get that outfit--Akron Tent and Awning?" The branch cracks.
"Don't make your mother mad. She might sit on ya." The branch falls to the ground.
The comments weren't always directed at my mom, either. My father would make remarks about other women, and he just couldn't seem to keep his mouth shut or supress a smart-alek comment if an overweight woman was in view.
"Woohoo! Did you see that big lady? Wouldn't wanna make her mad!"
"Wow! Look at that one! Hea-ea-ea-vy!"
"Get a load of Big Mama!"
I grew up listening to, embarrassed by, these demeaning comments almost daily. I never saw my father give my mother affection. I never heard my father speak about women with respect. Instead, every woman was either "kinda pretty" or "really heavy." Every woman, no matter her occupation, personality or lifestyle, was very verbally judged based on her appearance. She could be the first female president, the inventor of a life-saving vaccine, or the first female astronaut in space, and his only comment would be either, "Kinda pretty," or "Big Mama!" And while his comments were never directed at me--only because I was always grossly underweight, bordering on anorexic--it was very clear to me that being overweight was a condition for which to be demeaned and ridiculed by men.
Now I'm grown, my parents have long been divorced, and my mother is no longer living.
And I am no longer grossly underweight.
I've struggled with being overweight since the birth of my first child. Looking back on my postpartum body of 15 years ago, I realize that I was perfectly healthy. But being anything over 100 pounds, to me, was unacceptable. Instead of getting involved in a healthy lifestyle, I began to fast and binge. Now, after five children and fifteen years, my body is showing the consequences of my choices. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't worry about my health, my energy, but, most of all, my appearance. I can't help but think that my unhealthy body image comes greatly from my father's careless comments. Now that he lives with me, I hear them on a daily basis. He has never directed them towards me.
Until today.
This morning, an Amish neighbor called on the phone for me to discuss the details of the ride she needed for this evening. My dad answered the phone. There was a brief exchange that went something like this:
"Hello? Oh, hi Laura! Yeah! You want Denice? Boy, is she ever! Ha ha! Don't tell her I said that! Boy, would she give me heck!" My dad handed me the phone, laughing. I knew he had ridiculed me. He often makes fun of me for my child-rearing, my decision-making, my housekeeping...whatever he can find to jab at me. I took the phone and spoke to my neighbor, but I was instead distracted by my dad's voice as he bragged to my husband, Bohemian, about his juvenile comment:
"Ha! Laura asked if Denice was 'round! Ha! I told her, 'Boy, is she ever!' Laura said, 'Don't you tell her you said that!' Ha! Ha ha!"
I was crushed. I could feel my limbs sag under the weight of his icy words.
The amazing thing about ice storms is that it really doesn't matter how strong are the roots of the tree. It doesn't matter how much nourishment and rain it received through the spring, or how much sun and warmth it received through the summer, or how much mulch and protection it received through the fall. When the weight of an ice storm comes, the tree simply can't stand the stress. One by one, the branches bend, crack and fall. I even saw several that were completely uprooted, literally torn from the ground as if by a tornado.
My husband compliments me on a daily basis. He tells me that I'm beautiful. No, I'm not, I retort. He tells me that he loves me. Why? I challenge. He tells me that he finds me desirable, sexy, attractive. Yeah, right, I scoff. He showers his nourishment, his sunshine, his protection on me. And yet, it's the ice storm that my father brings that keeps coming to my mind every time I look at myself in the mirror. It's the chill and the sleet and the burden of that ice that weighs down my branches. I can't accept compliments. I can't believe that a man would love me. I reject my husband's compliments and his unconditional love, because I'm so certain that I'm not worthy of it. Intimacy, for me, is a constant struggle.
Fathers, don't kid yourselves. Don't underestimate the role you play in your daughter's growth. Every word you speak, whether to your daughters, your wives, or even about the people around you, soak directly into your growing child's roots. You have so much power in your words! You have the power to grow a strong, sturdy oak with a firm foundation and a beautiful crown, flourishing under a canopy of love and encouragement. Or you can produce or a deeply burdened, sagging, broken form whose roots simply can't bear the weight of winter, no matter how much others nourish and protect it.
I beg you, fathers. I beg you to reject the temptation to tear down your family with mockery and hurtful jesting and to instead choose wisdom and encouragement. Your children will flourish with your love. Your actions will matter for eternity.
And your family tree will thank you.
