Parenthood Is Complicated

"I lay in bed and looked at the painting on the hotel-room wall. It was a print of a detailed and lifelike painting of a smiling clown's head, made out of vegetables. It was a painting of the sort that you do not intend to look at and that, alas, you never forget. Some tasteless fate presses it upon you; it becomes part of the complex interior junk you carry with you wherever you go." - Annie Dillard, The Eclipse

According to Anne Lamott, when you sit down to write, all your neuroses pull up chairs and gather round. I like that idea. I like it because it implies that although your neuroses are you, they are also somehow not you. It also implies that your neuroses can be easily quantified and identified.

I don't think that is quite what Anne Lamott meant when she wrote it, but stay with me.

My husband and I watched all of the first four seasons of the television show Parenthood in a few months this past year. We loved the show. The characters are likeable and easy to relate to; the difficulties they face are complex but not impossible; the soundtrack is an eclectic blend of great music. Sounds like a great show, right?

But after we watched it for a while, I began to notice a disconnect between the show and my life.

Unlike Anne Lamott's neuroses and unlike the insightful characters on Parenthood, I cannot always identify the "complex interior junk" I carry with me. I can't always remember that the reason I don't like cabbage is because it was the skull of some creepy clown painting in a hotel room. (I really don't like cabbage, but I don't think that's why.)

And more importantly, I can't always figure out that my irrational response to my husband's actions is because of the traumatic break-up I experienced in junior high. Nor am I able to realize that my husband's irrational response to my actions is because of some traumatic event in his past. It could be because of any of the thousands of pieces of life that are stuck with us.

I read somewhere that people who watch shows like CSI expect cops to dust for fingerprints, put tape on the floor, and declare a crime scene on every call. They want to see crimes solved now! The huge number of detective shows on television draw us in by the lure of truth. We eagerly anticipate when the good guys will get to the bottom of things and nail the bad guys. But in real life, a lot of bad guys get away. Or even if they do get caught, the truth remains elusive, and the mystery of "what really happened on the night of ___" is never solved.

Likewise, shows like House appeal to the same desire for truth. We think that if we can only find that one doctor who can think outside the box and consider the most unlikely of possibilities, whatever disease we have will be cured once and for all. If one doctor can't figure it out, maybe the next can. We just need someone who can get to the bottom of this!

Shows like Parenthood do the same for our emotional lives. Why was Kristina so upset when her sixteen-year-old daughter was dating a 20-year-old recovering alcoholic? Maybe because, as her husband pointed out, her own mother got married young and suffered through a terrible marriage. See how nicely he wrapped that up!

Why can't my husband help me get to the bottom of my feelings? Why can't my brother listen to me talk for a few minutes and then remind me of that time when we were young when I did the same thing? Why can't I suddenly remember the exact time and place when my opinion on some subject was irrevocably changed?

Sometimes we do get to know. Sometimes we catch the criminal. Sometimes we cure the disease. Sometimes we understand what made us feel this way.

And sometimes even if we don't ever get to the bottom of things, everything turns out all right anyway.

But more often than not, we figure out a little bit of the truth and do what we can with that, hoping for the best.

I will probably keep watching Parenthood, but I do wonder how much discontentment is created by the disconnect between the world of television where everything is nicely wrapped up within thirty minutes to an hour and real life where some things only make sense after years and others remain a mystery forever.