Early on, without naming it, I learned to secretly applaud the oppositional child. That was Dr. Spock's advice and my mother's own wish. Spoke said to cater to the whims of the child, to find the genius in every utterance. He said the emotionally liberated child resulted in the emotionally expressive adult. His teaching must have struck a deep chord of longing in my mother who was raised by strict, immigrant parents. When Spock said the child needed fresh air and my mother didn't feel like going out, she'd put on my winter coat and to my grandfather's guttural dismay, stood me in front of the open window and let me hang onto the bars. Ours was a madhouse of play therapy before anyone thought of that term. My mother looking for her identity in dolls with messy hair, in the sandbox, in the bathtub with rubber duckies.
"Dr. Spock ruined you," my mother informs me.
"Damn Spock," my father says. "We might have avoided the sixties if it wasn't for him."
I learned that my bed was made a long time ago in collusion with Spock, my mother and 1950's affluence and the sheets are now soiled. I learned that I have no choice but to lie in them. And if this is the way I want to look at things, then my mother says her hands are tied. She says she never told me the world was fair but I say she never taught me how to fight dirty.
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