WINTERS

PERSONAL AND GENERATIONAL

Dec. 22, 2024

Last night it snowed 4 inches atop our manicured lawn transforming it into a Baked Alaska with random indentations and peaks. Not only was there a frigid finger-stiffening wind rearranging the drifts, but it was also the Winter Solstice, the least light-filled day of the year. Adding to the lack of external light was the realization that it is also the Winter of my life as I turn 80 in July, and, if the experts are correct, a prolonged Winter season for our nation as well.

I was the earliest born of the Boomer Generation in 1945 and our cohort was raised amidst relative prosperity and peace. Whereas my personal timeline continues forward past July, I believe our nation’s (and others’) progression trends in generational cycles of about eighty years which then repeat. At the end of these cycles which are metaphorically explained as Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter (we have entered our Winter), crashing tectonic plates of political/social/economic changes will result either in a new foundational synthesis--or in overall destruction. This reminded me of the warning from Game of Thrones that “Winter is coming”.

Such a reverie drew me down into negative emotional quicksand, and I knew I had to reverse my orientation. I felt drawn to a specific poem my mother Leah wrote over her long life. She had won international prizes for both her poetry and short stories, excelled as a seamstress, was lauded as a culinary success, and as an artist in a variety of media. Whatever Mom attempted, she mastered, except for her depressive inner life. Her multiple mental diagnoses led to self-sabotaging behavior and left her with only one trustworthy friend: me, my parents’ only child. I was awed by her limitless talents but shied away from the sadness that permeated her poetry. Yet there was one, I recalled, that might buoy me through this night:

“THE WINTER SKY IS FULL OF SPRING” by Leah Greenberg Rocker (1908-2003)

Clear call the timbrels of the tinkling frost

Glasslike seraphs singing in the wintry light,

And deftly strung in snowy halls, the brightly

Colored figures of the world are lost.

Though faceless, statues of the trees still stand

All made white angels by the soft-tongued snow

Where sharp seas holding frozen earth-waves grow

Deep buried; white on white in Winter’s hand.

Yet, see the sun’s red bowl of evening blossoms blow

Where Spring’s long stems of early peach-bloom fly,

Swirling pink tendrils through the welcoming sky

That shines its mirrors on the white below.

While my lone self in deeper drifts goes forth

The flowered sky looks down in wonderment

To my head cowering where the wind is bent,

Facing the feathers of the furious north.

Then night’s sky-meadow spreads its spacious room

With Spring-grown gardens, brilliant lit. And lush

Starflowers riot on their cosmic hush

Where rises in full bloom a yellow daffodil of moon.

I may not have understood or appreciated her poetry when I was young, but she was a profound nature mystic, and it was this aspect that inspired me this night. Her duality confounded and ungrounded me, and extended well past her life into my own senior years. Her floral oil paintings line my walls with their raucous beauty, yet she had been diagnosed as borderline psychotic with histrionic tendencies, in addition to being both depressive and narcissistic. Her confusing superiority beliefs combined with her mantra as “the most victimized person” created an impenetrable wedge that separated me from my father’s family and young female cousin who lived across the street from Mom’s own siblings. I couldn’t associate with this cousin as we were “so superior” to her family, yet I was not permitted to befriend her owing to Dad’s family’s alleged victimization of my mom. Think of me as the young Juliet torn asunder by the disdain of Mom’s intellectual yet damaged family and the rejection by my dad’s normal yet average folks.

As beautiful and talented as she was, there was never a group that did not ultimately reject her, or that she failed to distance herself from. Season after season I, her only child, was taught that I, too, would be discarded, rejected, and betrayed. She even shared with me a lengthy memoir she wrote about her family’s history dating back to her great-grandmother and how they had all been victimized. Handing over this tome to me she eerily remarked, “Now it’s time for your story.” It should be of no surprise that I wound up as everyone’s choice scapegoat in school, in college, and thereafter into my personal and professional life.

Whenever I sought her succor for another psychic wound, she explained that her family for generations back suffered under a “curse”: “The Curse of the Greenbergs,” as she called it. She repeated it to me endlessly until it filtered into my DNA and left me highly sensitive to the expectation that cruelty would soon arrive at my feet. I came to see this repetition as dependable as the frigid ice of Winter. In reaction, I clung to the hope that somewhere there was a “family” to which I might be safely welcomed, however it might be constituted: an institution, communal group, or kinship. After decades of failed attempts to “belong”, in my seventies I at last landed into safe hands both internally and externally here at my home, with my daughter, her husband and their son with whom I live.

Whatever creativity I possess is unlike Mom’s. I was an honored teacher and winning litigating attorney. My demeanor and prose could win over juries and judges in court cases and captivate excited audiences, but I so wished I could have expressed my passion through piano, canvas, or voice. Indeed, I remain jealous of her many talents.

Ironically, it is while I am dreaming that my creativity bursts forth. Night after night these dreams appear to play out over hours, rich in color and plotting, with exciting surprises that even astonish me, the Dreamer: “Wow, I didn’t see that coming!”

But in daylight I fear I might not have more time to create healthy alternatives to victimhood and thus free up dormant creative outputs. Approaching 80, I don’t know whether the shadow of dementia or other incapacity might suborn my voice. How much more time do I have to interact with others and send/receive nourishing interactions? How many turns toward self-understanding am I capable of performing? And what ultimate life lessons must I confront about the psychic and physical assaults I have received as the scapegoat in almost every community I have attempted to feel secure?

As a Jew (another group preordained to be victimized, rejected, and unable to feel safe in a family) I became fascinated with the Rosh Hashana mention of the scapegoat which permitted me to weave a life narrative, or “theory of mind.” Except it didn’t help heal me; it only reinforced “the family curse.” But after decades with a patient and marvelous trauma therapist, I discovered Rebecca Mandeville’s YouTube channel on Family Scapegoat Abuse, bought her book, joined her writing group, and realized what I had been living through over the many seasons of my life.

I do acknowledge having a singular talent, that of “connecting the dots” over disparate areas. I integrated being a Family Scapegoat Abuse survivor with insights gained from decades of trauma therapy; I saw how I had been preconditioned to being hypervigilant as well as expecting personal rejection, betrayal, and loss. No true healing could occur until I retired and replaced these introjects since past somatic wounds of rejection, betrayal, and loss popped up unexpectedly to pull me back into victimhood. If not a scapegoat or victim, what role do I now assume?

In addition to educator, writer and attorney, I am a political scientist/constitutional researcher who is admitted to the United States Supreme Court Bar. I find congruence from all of my knowledge and experiences with Neil Howe’s book, The Fourth Turning Is Here. I believe we in the United States stand at a watershed at the national/international cyclical stage that follows a seasonal repetition of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, as Howe labels them. His erudite integration of both personal and external cycles often left me overwhelmed as I sensed and struggled with the challenges of enduring both internal and external Winters.

I worry whether I have replaced being a scapegoat with an expansive sense of paranoia on both the micro and meta scales, but I do not believe so. I am aware of my personal Winter, and am convinced we are in the Winter of our national and global order as well. Many of my generational cohorts in the Boomer Generation see this repetition now as well, as they decry having to re-litigate women’s and reproductive rights we believed had been secured long ago. As a US history educator for over 25 years and student of totalitarian autocracy, I believe only ostrich cosplayers and bubbly Dr. Panglosses from Voltaire’s “Candide” can party while we face impending catastrophe in 2025 and beyond.

However dire I foresee my personal and our national/international future to be, I take refuge in Howe’s direction for me and for all of us. If I/we can handle this Crisis in a healthy and integrated manner, we shall indeed turn toward longer daylights and the coming of Spring.

Returning to Mom’s poem, she offered me personal hope as I see myself and our world order in Winter’s dimming days. I acknowledge the reflective light of the wan sun on this most frigid day in the Winter of my own and our public life while I turn my gaze above and beyond to the mystery of her nature mysticism:

While my lone self in deeper drifts goes forth

The flowered sky looks down in wonderment

To my head cowering where the wind is bent,

Facing the feathers of the furious north.

I shall embrace the Mystery of our joint Turnings, “in wonderment”.