Brotherly Love, Part Two

I knew I'd discovered a treasure the minute I saw the picture in the muddle of our mom's box (now mine) of old family photos. Our father beaming with unhindered joy. This was not the man his children called Daddy - the man whose temper was feared, whose approval was a bar too high to reach, whose belief in the world as a hostile place was a foundation stone of our childhood.

It was such a rare thing, I needed to share with my brothers. And what better way to share joy than at Christmas, the season of joy. As I pondered the most powerful way to give this gift to them, I found myself wondering if a similar picture of our mom existed.

Back into the box and the albums, an inheritance whose value cannot be measured, I turned over one picture after another, one page after another. I've been through these pictures a hundred times and know many of them by heart. Still, from time to time, one has the power to be so new and so heart-opening, it's like I'd never seen it before.

Mom's joy picture was one of those. Playful, open, mischievous even - she's a child of maybe eight or nine. One of the only pictures I have of her with a full toothy smile, and as it turns out, the only one I could find where her happiness was not damped with tight lips or an air of sadness so strong the paper held a chill.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas I studied the two photos as I wrote the message I wanted my brothers to receive along with the prints. These surprise versions of our parents watch me now as I write this.

A small dark-haired girl who had been abandoned by both parents, whose body had already been violated, for whom being invisible was the only safe place. Her spirit still shining through. Hope not lost yet. I long to hold her and give her the childhood she deserved. In part so that she could eventually give me the same thing, but at this point more than anything I just want to ease her pain.

A handsome dark-haired man, not yet thirty, who had survived childhood polio and the distance of his own mother who couldn't bear his suffering, who nearly died again as a logger, whose carnal appetites were already beginning to eat away at the fabric of his young family. It's harder for me to look at this picture - my feelings are still so conflicted about him, healing insights still a blur on the road ahead.

But what these pictures speak loudest to me, and what I most want my brothers to hear, is that joy runs in our blood just as much as fear and pain. We are not doomed to the patterns of the generations before us because the potential is there for so much more. And if joy exists, love has to be the fuel that ignites its brilliant flame. That's the best news of all.

There was love in our family. And so there is love now. For ourselves. For each other. For the deeply wounded people who brought us here.

Seeds of joy survive

in quack grass choked gardens,

floodwaters,

devouring plagues of sadness, drought.

Seeds of joy survive,

to flower as thornless

radiant smiles,

withering in early June frost.

Seeds of joy survive

even sins of the fathers,

poison-soaked

slicing barbs, twisted mutations.

Seeds of joy survive

as dormant as fireweed,

viable,

waiting for wildfire to restore.

Seeds of joy survive,

now burned free, tear-nourished,

hearty shoots,

stretching unhindered sunward.

Seeds of joy thrive.