The Loom and the Shuttle

About once every 3 or 4 months I call my aunt Lieve in Oostende. She is the youngest sister of my deceased father and at 75 as nimble minded as a 20 year old youngster. She is a woman with a razor sharp intellect, a big warm heart and a wicked sense of humour. Fiercely independent and resourceful with a keen insight in human nature, she has helped put the pieces of the broken puzzle of my family and its tragedies and mysteries together if not in a clear picture, in a pattern that is starting to at least draw a consistent shadow of that picture. My family history, of my parents and sisters and brother is plagued with intrigue, lies, addiction, neglect and abuse. To try to put the pieces together is very difficult, emotionally and actually. My aunt Lieve helped take care of my father the last 7 years of his life in Belgium , and over the last 10 years has helped me through our hours long phone calls, try to bring into focus a picture that has been blurred most of my life. My father was slavishly devoted to my mother, who drank his devotion like an intoxicating drug until she had destroyed our entire family. My father was weak when it came to her, and no amount of cheating, lying or drinking on her part ever convinced him otherwise. Even when she kicked him out of his house at age 70, he still believed he could patch things up with her. As children we grew up believing our father was no good, no matter how hard he worked, no matter how much he spoiled our mother, no matter he paid for four years of education at private American universities for all four his children. A web of lies was woven so tightly around our family that it hung my sister Ludwina and killed my other sister also at a young age, destroyed my brother's marriage and almost mine, and left scars emotionally on my son and my sister's and brother's children, some more hidden than others. My aunt Lieve is a very methodical person, and listening to her over the phone share her experiences with my father and mother is very revealing on a most intriguing level. Over the years she and I have each told our questions, doubts, anger, shock, disgust, sadness at what happened. I have come to realize it is like watching the same play over and over, with revealing slight differences to each interpretation. Those slight changes in the recollections remind me of watching a loom put a fabric together with the agile speed and technique of threads fed through the loom's shuttle . At first, all you see is the shuttle zip through bare patterns, but over time, the fabric tightens and a steady pattern and colour emerge, eventually making a complete solid piece of fabric, that you can touch and appreciate in its thickness, style and size. As time passes, a pattern is showing itself that speaks of a mother who was very selfish and manipulative, and a father who was devoted to his children but ill equipped to handle his narcissistic wife and his own lack of will ultimately, to protect us and himself from her. The same way he had proven himself incapable to stand up for his mother and youngest sister as a young man who had promised to ensure his sister Lieve's chance to finish her education after high school, instead choosing to marry my mother earlier than planned, foregoing his promise to his own family in a World War II era where widows like his mother were left without any financial assistance. It continues to be a  most sobering experience for me to have had to come off this high of adoration I had for both my parents as a child and teenager. Once I became aware of my mother's manipulations and lies at age 26, it still took 17 years to begin to comprehend the extent of the damage to my sisters, my brother, my father, and myself and how it also impacted to varying degrees my brother's children, his ex -wife, and my sister's children and to a lesser degree, my son and my husband. I called my aunt today, and after 3 hours and 24 minutes of a very energetic and satisfying dialogue, the image of the thread and the shuttle as they race across the loom ran through my mind once more. My aunt and I both have pieces missing in the story, each at times holding a piece of the vast puzzle that the other needs to get one step nearer to a chance at closure. It is amazing we have been able to achieve this by long distance calls between Olympia and Oostende. I last saw my aunt in Georgia in 1996, when I was 39 and my son was 4 years old. My aunt was 56. I am now 58, my son is 23, and my aunt turned 75 in March. We have always gotten along really well. I have always admired her independence and determination, her smarts and style, and her devotion to dedicate her life to being fair and kind as a woman using her talents in the social welfare sector of  Oostende. To me she was strong no matter her petite frame and beautiful in her elegant dress and style. Talking to her on the phone is always mental gymnastics, staying in step with her stories and revelations, her insights and perspectives, and my chance to share my own experiences and understandings. She is giving me back a part of my childhood and life I had not understood or seen before. These pieces of information are priceless, because they are helping me become fully three dimensional, and that in turn is setting me free, slowly and deliberately, to have a chance at finally be truly me. It is allowing me to cross that bridge of hurt and come to terms with the anger and a lot of the bitterness at being betrayed and left behind by the person I should have been able to trust implicitly, my mother. I worshipped her, always feeling inferior to her, only to discover I just annoyed her. When she realized she could no longer manipulate me, she was furious and then became indifferent. The indifference turned to sudden panic after both my younger sisters died tragic deaths, but even then she could not stop deceiving herself and me. By then I had walked away to save the shred of dignity and hope I had left. The threads in the shuttle  will keep going for many more a phone call and the fabric and colours on the loom that continue to emerge will keep changing and growing. I am happy the loom is busy. There was a time it was sitting idly, mute and empty, locked away in a sad room I never got to see a glimpse of save in a restless dream. Now my aunt and I are working on it together, side by side, in a close bond of loom and threaded shuttle,  in a friendship that has stood both the test of time and blood.