Page 50 - WTP Vol. IX #6

Inevitability of (continued from preceding page) fathers. Such is the lay of the land.
The change occurs incrementally, subconsciously.
So slowly that one day you wake up with rollers in your hair at the ripe age of 50 and realize that you snore like your father once did.
What are we to expect?
Children learn through observation. We pick up every action, reaction, every word.
My mother has a tendency to become irrationally angry.
She loses her temper almost as easily as she finds it. She will yell and scream till her voice is raw and we, the children, must let her, because interrupting would turn the direction of the attack towards us.
She is timid. I have never seen her argue with manage- ment or waitresses.
She is obsessively neat. She has trained me to hunt for dust in the most obscure places, because god forbid! A guest sees evidence that we do, in fact, breathe.
I have seen her every quirk, studied her since infancy, grew up with the desire to be just like her. So why does she yell at me when I begin to yell?
Mother, how could I possibly know how not to harbor a grudge, how to live and let go, when you have never taught me?
When you fight with my father over the cigarettes you find in his pockets, are you teaching your daughters to do the same?
When you weep silently into your pillow at night, do you know your daughters are watching you, picking up every action, reaction, every word?
Free will. A lovely sentiment. Like the salty stain of a tear long wiped away.
Destiny. The idea that we are masters of our own ships, all sailing towards one unchanging goal. A joke. That is all it is.
Because if any aspect of our previous musings regarding genomes and upbringing is true, then who we are and how we act is already decided. It’s just a matter of react- ing to whatever life may throw your way. My identity has been outlined before I was born by people whose identities were made the same way.
I think there is a sort of comfort in this notion. That everything is completely out of my control.
That I am nothing but a leaf floating down a river, oblivi- ous to the currents that attempt to drown me.
I do not like to choose because I do not want to regret. My indecisiveness is my shield, it protects me from the
daggers of reality. If no choice is made, no loss is felt. Therefore I am content with floating through life, not because it’s easier but because it’s safe.
And I am scared.
Some may see me as cynical, but the sea calls me pragmatic.
I will not lie, there are days where I wish this was not true. Days where I am a rock that sinks to the bottom of the
"There comes a time when parents distance
themselves from a child’s singularities. Suddenly, the child’s exhibited traits become their own and the providers of those traits are somehow wiped from history."
river. Unmovable by the tides or the winds, I fight against destiny.
Days where I want to scream and claw at my eyes, my hair, my stubbornness, because I want something that is mine, not my mother's or my father's, but mine. All mine.
Because I know that their journey is not my own. That I can set out and trek on my own. And I will. Someday.
But right now I am scared.
I lift my mother’s green eyes and look towards the future.
I pray that passion and purpose find their way towards me, that they catch up someday, as I obliviously float down my river.
And maybe with children of my own I will point out their hair, chin, and smile and remark how it looks like mine.
And the game will continue and we shall fade.
Kuzma is an undergraduate student from New York City, NY. She is studying at Clark University in Worcester, MA, as a Political Science and Economics major with a passion for creative writing and poetry. Her work has been published in The Classic.
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