This Too Remains The Same

By Max Burstein

Everything changes and nothing changes at all; and with the passing of time my memory begins to runs a little hazy. Like most traumatic events the distant strands of what happened still linger, but they are strands nonetheless, a loose reenactment that I can’t even begin to tell if I’ve somehow falsely forged in my mind.

My parents never seemed happy, but somehow this never shocked me; I was always a little cynical, though my baby pictures would like to prove otherwise. Their folly was not visible to the point of misery, but I often heard fighting and saw unexplainable things for someone my age (was the couch just really more comfortable to my mom than the the bed?). Still, I was unshaken. Life had always gone on as what had appeared normal to me, and so they continued. Only many years later in my adolescence would I start to have the truth unravel for me.

I suppose I could start where the story begins. It was a particularly unassuming Monday morning, why this day, right before school, I would never understand. My parents called me to talk right in between the middle of my morning schedule: cereal; shower; dress. Thrown askew I sat awkwardly below my parents on the staircase trying to face up, but in dire need of the Honey Nut Cheerios I could just spy to my right. The conversation started as it always seems to in those “dysfunctional family” indie films.

“You know we love you very much?”

sure, why not?

“…And you have to know this has nothing to do with you, or anything you’ve done.”

What did I do this time?

“Your mother and I have decided that we need to get a divorce. We won’t be living together any longer”

Or so I think it went.

I remember distinctly wanting to cry, or perhaps just feeling the situation called for it, I was always accommodating like that, and I was still in grade school; the idea of a boy crying at that time was beginning to appear negative, but could still be justified. Instead I asked,

“what now?”

I don’t know why, and not only did my lack of emotion befuddle my parents, but it did myself as well. I guess I had just seen it coming and the idea that my parents wouldn’t be together, that the idea of having a “family” would never be the same had already played out for me, my parents had merely belabored the point. Still I wanted to know what would come next, while my parents were more concerned with the present: did I want to go to the arcade? The park? Did I not want to go to school? I wanted my Cheerios.

My indifference to the situation at hand remained. Everyone wondered why I wasn’t broken up, and came to the obvious conclusion that my levelheadedness was clearly me yearning to release my “pain”. In reality, however, I was just unconcerned with reflecting over the why’s and how’s of the divorce and was ready to move on to whatever was coming next; my years of traveling.

My mom had come to loathe Berkeley, everything and everyone in it (this was before she took up the raw diet, tailor made for anyone who really calls themselves a Berkeleyite) and so we began to move around to wherever was convenient or had a good school system I would never think of attending. Alameda was first. It was an insignificant time. My mom was trying to piece together her life while struggling with the madness of her ever-changing CSI schedule. With little time left for me during her swing shifts, I was enrolled in several activities to fill my after school hours with. The only one that stuck was golf, but golfing was the least important aspect of this time-kill of mine. I don’t remember how it started, nor do I remember much of the Alameda years, but one day when I was driving balls on the green I heard a man with a distinct Indian tinged accent laughing at me.

“You’ll never get the balls to go anywhere hitting’em like that. What’s the rush little man? Take some time with your swing, even out your stance, and relax your shoulders.”

I was initially unmoved by his seemingly insulting tips and I casually nodded them off, but he was unrelenting in his need to improve my game. And so Inder entered my life.

Inder was born in northern India, one of four sons to a general in the Indian Army. While still very young Inder’s father died of a heart attack leaving his wife widowed and insecure as well as all four children without any guidance. Shortly thereafter one of the four brother’s died of a heart attack at the surprisingly young age of 12 and in the shock of loosing both her husband and now one of her children Inder’s mom had a serious mental breakdown. With Inder’s mother now in a mental facility, him and his remaining three brothers moved in with relatives in the same city and continued their schooling as normally as they knew how. However, in his adolescence Inder began to act out with his brothers and no sooner had they started stealing fruit and bread from market stands did they start robbing train passengers at gun point. With a small string of train robbings under their belt the police caught on quick and one particular incident led to a shootout killing one of the three remaining brothers and landing Inder and his now only brother in jail. While serving his three-year term (as Inder had never been the one carrying the weapons, his role was merely an aid to armed robbery) Inder took up weight lifting and subsequently boxing. Upon his release Inder began to hit the minor boxing leagues and quickly moved his way up to more lucrative and publicized fights. However, his quick ascension proved too good to be true and in his first big time fight he was knocked out in the first round, broke his nose in three places, and decided this was no longer the sport for him. After this revelation Inder moved to America and as hackneyed as it may sound started his life anew. By the time I met him Inder had worked his way up the ladder at Hewlett Packard to traveling national manager of sales, gotten married and divorced, and found time to take up golfing, smoking cigars and yes, even sipping brandy.

I’ll spare you the far less extravagant details of my continued relationship with Inder, but suffice to say the tips and “chance” meetings continued at the golf course and were an obvious in for Inder with my mother. Some months later I moved again, still in Alameda, we moved in with Inder and for the first time stability began to establish itself in my mother’s life again.

No sooner had my mom begun to start fresh than my dad found control again as well. The divorce, like his one previous to that with my mom left him quite visibly shaken. A small prescription bottle covered with tin foil, which had been obviously hidden from me and therefore far more enticing when I found it, was unmistakable for anti-depressants. Many months passed before my dad returned to his vibrant outgoing self, but as time does, things faded into the past and my dad too found another partner; initially a young lady of whom I’ve now forgotten the name or even appearance of. The only memory that remains of her in fact was one fateful night that I had forgotten I was no longer in my own home and hadn’t locked the door when using the bathroom, a mistake I haven’t replicated since. The second and more long-standing of my father’s partners was Dina who was the perfect balance to all the eccentricity that encompassed him.

I too, in this transitional period, found my place. I had initially been sent, quite unsurprisingly, to therapy, which I had a good deal of fun with. I loathed the thought of therapy to begin with, which probably (analyzing from a psychoanalytic perspective, naturally) stemmed from the fact that my dad himself was a therapist. I had grown up in a house where if I didn’t want an apple with breakfast was then asked,

“Why don’t you want the apple? Do you not like apples anymore? Did you eat something else this morning?” the litany continued.

The tedium of over analyzation of minutia and inability to accept things for their baseline meaning had lost it’s appeal long ago and regardless I still really wasn’t feeling all that upset by the divorce. If anything I was just learning to cope with having to be in perpetual movement, I had lost the stability of a centered family. But I digress, Kate was my momentary therapist and at first she had tried treating me like a child. I had none of that despite the fact I was still very much a child. She asked me questions about my day, I replied usually the same; she tried to play board games with me, writing pensively in her little note pad at every vague comment I might make about the inability of Candy Land to really fascinate me in any way. After the first several sessions I realized this was going nowhere and was really stretching out my Mondays and Thursdays, I had had enough. I tried reasoning with my parents, but they weren’t having it.

“Why would you spend hundreds of dollars every week for someone to talk to me about how fine I am with everything?” I would plead.

“How could you not be affected by everything?” my dad would respond.

“You just need a place you can feel safe and free to talk and share whatever’s on your mind” my mom would throw in.

The age-old trick of pitting parents up against each other had failed as I had convinced neither of them and so I took matters into my own hands. The next session I had I didn’t let Kate speak.

“Listen, you’re a nice lady, this isn’t personal or anything, but I’m just not really trying to do this anymore, honestly it’s pretty boring and isn’t doing anything for me. I hope you understand why I won’t be speaking anymore, as this is just a waste of my time. Sorry.”

And with that I ended communication with my therapist. My plan seemed genius enough to me, but initially backfired. My sessions were hardly confidential as Kate always informed my of the problems she became “aware of” in me during our time together. So they soon found out, as planed, that I was no longer speaking. Then they proceeded to add another day to my therapy. I stood strong and a month of silence passed. Still they were unrelenting, still Kate somehow managed to write me up without my ever speaking. Perhaps my eyebrow raises or backward smiles were manifestations of my inner longing to let out all of my chained up emotion? I scoffed at the ridiculousness of the situation I was in and so I stepped up my game. When Kate wasn’t looking one day I pulled out a lighter I had found on the ground earlier in the day and without any premeditation I lit the box of tissues waiting caringly next me ablaze. I was immediately terminated as a patient as the flames had spread to the couch and nearly torched the room. Rather than try to find me a new therapist my parents caved, as I knew they would and I was finally free once again.

Slowly overtime everything began to weave its way back to normality. The idea of that whole family gathered around the dinner table began to ease its way out of my common knowledge. My mom and Inder moved again, this time to Orinda and I grew accustomed to the BART commute to Berkeley, I expected it. My dad moved past his depression and began traveling with Dina whenever the opportunity presented itself: Australia, New Zealand, Croatia. He was no longer irritable and I was allowed the freedom I had always had without his scrutinizing eye, as he was distracted once again. This was a peaceful time and as such its presence was only momentary.

Paths began to become retread, I had gained my own little insight, perhaps untrue about both my parents, but I saw things slowly emerge the same way I had been informed things had ended previously. The cycle continued.

My mother had decided that she couldn’t live with Inder’s constant traveling for HP and Inder was interested in starting to run his own business anyway. Together they purchased a small hotel and restaurant near Tucson, Arizona and the madness began. At first it was money problems, but then came time split between Orinda and Arizona; who would watch the hotel, me, the dogs and when?

Dina grew tired of dealing with my dad’s need to plan everything out, to always be in motion, and never just relax. The trips became shorter and shorter and if it weren’t for an open-heart surgery my dad needed things would have probably ended sooner.

Both relationships went sour and once again everything was thrown out of order. Though not for me, I had become accustomed to this, I knew what was going to happen before my parents could see it coming. I realized I had been wrong all along. The divorce and all the repercussions had affected me, it affected me in all the ways I thought about relationships, about the patterns in life, and what was important. I don’t claim to know anything beyond my years or anyone else’s for that matter. I could not poetically scribe down ageless words of wisdom, but I’d like to think I’ve found some sort of peace out of meditation on the passings in my life. If nothing else I’ve had fun with things, looked for the good in a situation that by relativity isn’t even all that bad, I’ve learned that nothing has changed, or maybe everything has.