Heartbreak

 

“Your wife doesn’t beat your kids, does she?”

“No, she beats me.”

“Well, my wife, she goes after the kids. And my instincts say protect at any cost. My instincts take over. Not my logic. Not my reason. That primal drive that goes from zero-to-sixty in less than a heart-beat when I see the blazing dilations of anger directed at my children accompanied by a full set of gnarly adult teeth bared in a snarl below that set of  wide open sockets of irreconcilable maternal rage. ” 

(Breathe)

“What happened?”

“Had I been trained to control my anger in a reflexively aggressive manner, you would be reading about it in the paper." 

"Don't go there. Man, you don't want to go there. Not worth it."

"I know. The bright side is, thanks to the table between us, I missed. And now I am paying the price. Just, I don’t know how much it is going to cost until the physical account is tallied. The minimum price is bound to include a few sessions with the dojo approved ding-repair guru.  The body-therapist is good. He’s got experience and should be able to give me his opinion. A lot better than running off to hospital to endure having a number of unnecessary and costly diagnostics performed on my dairy air.”

“You must feel ashamed of yourself?”

“A bit of that, for sure. I let myself down. Funny thing is, I’m still hoping she gets the message that there’s a difference between disciplining the kid and attacking him.  Especially considering the fact that all her rage, all that hellish energy she was directing at her child was triggered by her own actions. She knocked over  her own glass in anger. And then she became something else.  Blame it on that wicked temper of hers. Maybe she was furious that I let her know I was not going to help her clean up her mess. Unfortunately, the torrent from the river of fire in her mind was directed toward her kid. And I attempted to step in front of that. She triggered my primal ignition switch.”

“I guess the fact that my wife beats me is something to be happy about. There really is a bright side to everything.”

 A or B?

 Which is it? Take your pick...

“And this?”

“Daughter is the youngest. The bright light.  And she sees all. This is how she expresses it. She doesn’t have the vocabulary, but she’s able to connect the visuals.  Only two cards from which to choose. Pretty simple. "A" or "B". But it has to be a choice. And it takes two. That is the divide between wife and I. She lives in a world tormented by an undeveloped, shadow child-side that appears to be taking over. Alcohol doesn't help.”

“My mother-in-law says she first saw the rage when she was three. Daughter who sees all, she’s not too far from that age. Hasn’t even started school.”

“And your daughter, she can see this?”  

“Guess she gets that from my side. The contrast on the photo has been turned up to that you can see what the "B" side looks like. All frowns. She made extra effort to point out the fact that there's a crack down the middle of the heart. Her gift can be a curse.” 

"She drew a few more of these on other pieces of paper as her way of coping. She's handing them out. One for Grandma. One for Grandpa. This is how she is coping. There is no easy way. And I'm not going to ignore the mess. Not going to buy my head in the sand while son gets ripped to shreds by maternal demons."

These are the cards...