Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You

Two Small Rooms in Minnesota

in I Imnesxrb^ n the mid-1980s my parents move to Rochester, Minnesota. To me, it seems as if they go there to die, although to live in a retirement complex associated with the Mayo Clinic is not without logic. This move scares me. I don't want to feel my fear of their deaths, so I look for the joke. I tell my friends I have the only parents in the world to retire in frigid Minnesota. Visiting them in Minnesotais scary. Who are these two old people? Have I ever known anything about them? They're going to die with alltheir secrets intact. They're going to die alone, even as they're surrounded by people. I want to imagine they have souls that will slip from their mouths as they exhale their last breaths. In the restaurant on the top floor of the retirement complex, my parents' friends meet me. They exclaim about my wonderful parents. I smile and agree. What a fascinating career my father has had, they say. I smile and agree. My father gives lectures wowing people with the breadth of his knowledge. After one of his lectures a letter to the editor appears in the local newspaper with the headline "Positively Electrifying." The letter ends by 224 TWO sMANLL rOOMS L Two Small Rooms in Minnesota 225 saying, "Dr. Silverman, those who know you must truly love you!" I want to bolt. Because of the hypocrisy? Because my parents have gotten away with it? There is no one to significantly disturb their final days, interfere with their decorum. Even if I told these people in the restaurant the truth about my parents, they would not hear me. The truth would be too difficult to consider. After all, each table is set with linen and flowers. The arrangement is too pretty. Who would want to disturb it? Who would want his or her equilibrium interrupted? No one wants to hear; so no one will know. But of course /am the one who says nothing, who can't tell these people, who can't confront my parents. So maybe I— not these people, not my parents—really, I am the one unable to face it. Instead, like a Fundamentalist preacher, I am obsessive in my mission to "save" them before they die, as if / can be the one to nourish their souls. I talk about spirituality, about the need to discover a higher power, to believe in something greater than ourselves . I ask my parents about themselves as children. Mom—what were you really like as a child? Dad—who were you? I want them to remember themselves, find something within themselves that's gentle. Surely they—all of us—began as sweet, cute children. Or maybe I am the one who wants to know them as children. Before they die, I want to be able to love them, if not as adults, then as children, as who they were when they were little. But even though they listen to me, they don't understand me and aren't able to respond to anything I say. In a way, though, perhaps they help to "save" me instead, by giving me what they always provide: money. When my insurance 226 B L U E ends they agree to pay for my therapy. And while money isn't spiritual , it helps, is a way they can help "save" me, even as they don't understand that what happened in the past is why I need it. D D D While visiting them I sleep in a blue sweatshirt with an emblem of Mickey and Minnie Mouse across the chest. One evening when I'm saying good-night to my mother, she reaches forward to touch it, pretending she wants to see the design more clearly. I step back. She steps forward, her arm still outstretched. Unable to say "stop," I again step back until I'm against the wall. She laughs awkwardly, asking what's wrong. I say the word "boundaries." She doesn't understand . I draw an imaginary line in front of my body. Still she doesn't understand I now own my body and she can't touch it. In her need she lunges forward—I try to turn—but her fingertips graze my chest. My father has diabetes, and in the morning the resident nurse comes to check his blood sugar. My...