Gone are the days when we say confidently of our forebears: “They were strong and good.” We tend now to view our parents and grandparents with suspicion and hostility. Everyone is now traumatized. Even things that seem like they wouldn’t be bad are also very, very damaging. If your parents sought to give you the best education available? Devastating. If your parents did not affirm your inner emotional life in the middle of a summer beach vacation? Crushing.
These may sound hyperbolic, but this is the content of books like “Running on Empty.” For some people, it’s understandable that seemingly innocuous interactions could have long-lasting, painful emotional impressions. That these emotions from childhood traumas over trivial matters are so burdensome as to stunt growth in the present is hard to wrap your head around. There is surely a place for the work of Jonice Webb and her compatriots, but the constant dredging up trauma and revisiting childhood through the lens of trauma is oppressively dour. Is there an alternative?
As on the topic of modesty, we would be oversimplifying things to call for a return to the stifling emotional reserve of some past times. If a child in the family died and the response was to destroy every picture and artifact of the deceased child and carry on as if nothing happened, that would rightly be viewed as most as a seriously disordered, unhealthfully truncated emotional environment. That said, wallowing in every fleeting emotion and analyzing every perceived deficiency is exhausting and confusing.
An approach taken in recent past centuries was humor. Especially when thinking about fathers, humor—well-intentioned and tasteful—can go a long way to appreciating mortal men and their foibles, all that make them endearing, if flawed, patriarchs.
John D. Fitzgerald does not condemn and mock the eccentric choices of his family struggling to establish themselves in Utah Territory. Instead, he tells uproarious stories of his youthful recollections in which his admiration for his father is not tarnished by his poking fun. A warmth of affection is conveyed through his keen sense of humor.
Humor as a response to dysfunction is nearly the defining feature of “Cheaper by the Dozen.” The recollections of two of the 11 surviving Gilbreth children are chock full of minor abuses, coercions, slights, and bullying. Yet, what most shines through is a father weeping uncontrollably at the cinematic image of a woman whose children abandon her, a dad who relished few things in life more than taking the whole gang out for ice cream well past their bedtime. What could have been tragic becomes full of life—and laughs.
Finding humor in our parents can come about all the more once we understand their predicament. The absurd events of childhood crystallize with meaning as we gain our own life experience . Dad napping while the boys cut their sister’s hair off. Mom banishing mischievous brothers to time out in which, terrified to face their mother again, they remain despite having inadvertently set fire to the house. Dad reaching for the spanking spoon stowed in the car door to send a nonverbal message to unruly passengers. Each of these episodes has all the makings of trauma and neglect. Or, if you think about it, a really funny story.
Laughing about our parents is not just a coping mechanism and means of diffusing all the trauma of our childhood. Maybe it’s not necessary to find it all so traumatic. But the humor also trains us in the way we see other people. One of the few ways available to us to reflect deeply on our own faults without falling prey to despair is humor. With our own crushing inadequacy we have two options: flight to delusion or devastation at our hopeless state. It turns out there is a third, which is a cheerful good sense of the humorous state we find ourselves on this adventure known as life.
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