Blog | Subscribe | Free Trial | Contact Us | Cart | Donate | Planned Giving
Log In | Search
facebook
rss
twitter
  • CURRENT
    • Fall 2022 PDF
    • SUMMER 2022 ARTICLES
    • NEWSworthy: What’s Happening and What It Means to You
    • Blog
    • INSISTING ON LIFE
    • Pastoral Reflections
    • About Us
    • HLF In The News
    • LIBERTY TO DO WHAT? Hadley Arkes and Rusty Reno join George McKenna June 1, 2022 in New York
  • DINNER
    • GREAT DEFENDER OF LIFE DINNER 2022
    • HOST COMMITTEE Great Defender of Life Dinner 2022
    • Great Defender of Life 2022 Dinner Ticket
    • Great Defender of Life 2022 STUDENT or PREGNANCY CENTER STAFF Ticket
    • DINNER JOURNAL ADVERTISING 2022
  • ARCHIVE
    • Archive Spotlight
    • ISSUES IN HTML FORMAT
  • LEGACY
    • Planned Giving: Wills, Trusts, and Gifts of Stock
  • SHOP
    • Cart

BLOG

0 Comment

On What We Inherit—and What We Pass On

01 Jun 2021
C. L. Harris
despair, family, hope
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

My mother grew up in Rego Park, Queens, New York. She said the developer who named the town got “Rego” from a contraction of “Real Good.” The daughter of strict German immigrants, being raised in the shadow of World War II, she embodied the first-generation ethos of dreams deferred in place of heads-down work. She told me once that she remembered as a young girl watching others play jump rope in a schoolyard washed by late spring sunshine, and thinking, “God can take me now. I’m ready to die.” She’d already given up on a life that stretched before her over terrain that held no promise in her imagination. There’s something haunting about a sense of resignation that runs deeper than despair.

She married a man from Michigan for whom life seemed an easy chore. He was a jumper, not a watcher. He leapt under his own power, unconcerned, ignorant of the eyes of others who observed his play. My mother thought that maybe if she hitched herself to him, she could leave behind the snake that constricted her soul and learn to leap like him. But that’s the thing about snakes: They suffocate their prey and every time you exhale, they squeeze a little more. The more you give, the closer you are to death. And so her free and easy husband kept jumping—from drink to drink, from woman to woman—until one day she swallowed enough pills to stop her breath.

And then I, perhaps about the age she was when she watched those girls jumping, was born into pain. I became her rescuer, finding her on the floor, moaning incoherently. I remember a paramedic shouting into her vomit-smeared face, “Wake up, hon!” Hon, short for honey. A word of affection. But where she grew up, hun was a slur for Germans. My mother lived.

The snake around my own soul tightened that day. But I was the son of both a jumper and a watcher. I carried that snake. I jumped and leapt. I also watched. My mother became my rescuer, supporting me as I too battled thirst . . . and sadness. The terrain of my life brought me to New York, her birthplace, where I learned to reach up and grab the snake by the neck and squeeze with a white-knuckled grip, forcing it to loosen. I won space to breathe, but I’ll never be free of that reptile.

Now I have a son who is going back to Michigan to become a man. Does the snake slither around his soul as well? Is my inheritance also my legacy? Or have I accomplished my dream of holding that greedy serpent fast before it can slither to fresh meat?

I believe my son is a jumper, but not like his grandfather. He also watches, not with separation like his grandmother did on that late spring day in the schoolyard, but with the wisdom of one who learns and grows. He will jump towards, rather than away from, those he loves and those who love him. He is going to college. And my heart is filled with fear—and hope.

 

222 people have visited this page. 1 have visited this page today.
About the Author
C. L. Harris

writes from New York.

Social Share

  • google-share

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Comments will not be posted until approved by a moderator in an effort to prevent spam and off-topic responses.

*
*

captcha *

Get the Human Life Review

subscribe to HLR

Recent Posts

State Constitutions and Abortion Rights

08 Feb 2023

Minnesota passes one of nation’s most permissive abortion laws

01 Feb 2023

Hit and run violence after Roe: Can't we talk about the morality of abortion?

28 Jan 2023

CURRENT ISSUE

Anne Conlon Anne Hendershott B G Carter Brian Caulfield Christopher White Clarke Forsythe Colleen O’Hara Connie Marshner David Mills David Poecking David Quinn Diane Moriarty Dr. Donald DeMarco Edward Mechmann Edward Short Ellen Wilson Fielding Fr. Gerald E. Murray George McKenna Helen Alvaré Jane Sarah Jason Morgan Joe Bissonnette John Grondelski Kristan Hawkins Laura Echevarria Madeline Fry Schultz Maria McFadden Maffucci Mary Meehan Mary Rose Somarriba Meaghan Bond Nat Hentoff Nicholas Frankovich Patrick J. Flood Peter Pavia Rev. George G. Brooks Rev. Paul T. Stallsworth Stephen Vincent Tara Jernigan Ursula Hennessey Victor Lee Austin Vincenzina Santoro W. Ross Blackburn Wesley J. Smith William Doino Jr. William Murchison

Pages

  • Issues
  • Human Life Foundation Blog
  • About Us
  • Free Trial Issue
  • Contact Us
  • Shop
  • Planned Giving
  • TOPICS
  • GREAT DEFENDER OF LIFE DINNER

Follow Us On Twitter

Tweets by @HumanLifeReview

Find Us On Facebook

Human Life Review/Foundation

Search our Website

Contact Information

The Human Life Foundation, Inc.
The Human Life Review
271 Madison Avenue, Room 1005
New York, New York 10016
(212) 685-5210

Copyright (c) The Human Life Foundation.