I spent the weekend with my parents (my father’s 84th birthday) and cleared out some of the junk in the garage for them. My mother’s problem is that she is a hoarder. Sometimes the stuff gets in the way of her human relationships, IMHO. So I was in the garage struggling with ancient crumpled wicker that I knew she wouldn’t want to throw out, and cursing her relationship with the material world, and saying boy is she whacked.
Then a line from Janet Malcolm came to me. In Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession, Malcolm wrote (I think I have the right book) that the purpose of analysis is to understand that we are all "ordinary." I’d never understood that line, in fact had always protested it in my mind. I would say, I’m not ordinary, and I don’t wish to think of myself as ordinary. And Janet Malcolm isn’t ordinary either. But that is the goal of analysis? Not for me.
Well, while I was hauling the wicker about, I started thinking, Yes my mother really is crazy. But wait, I’m no different, I’m crazy, too, in my peculiar way. And everyone else is crazy too. When you’re adolescent, you single out your parents’ craziness as the Matterhorn of all craziness in the world. Whoa, they are really crazy. But that’s self-involved. Because so is everyone else, and it’s your task to figure out just how your craziness is different and not the worst, but… ordinary. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own special way, right…
I closed the door on the garage and felt better. It looked the same as before I’d gotten to work.
