Pulling his yellow raincoat on and rushing out with the rest of his classmates, the boy looks up into the gray sky and feels the sting of rain. Looking further up the hill, he searches for his mother’s station wagon, always there on the days when it rains. He pulls his hood over his head and hurries the pace. The rain comes down steadily and as he reaches the top of the little hill outside school, he still cannot locate her station wagon.
Tentatively pushing forward through the rain, he is unsure whether to wait, or keep moving. Time travels differently for children. He doubles back, suddenly doubting himself, and passes the same cars he did before. She is not there. He returns to the way home, passing each car and looking down in shame and embarrassment. He’s done nothing wrong, but he doesn’t feel that way. Surely there is shame in being forgotten?
The initial flash of abandonment is replaced with a sudden prickle of anger, which is quickly subsumed by a feeling of guilt and worry – what could have happened to his mother? The worry and the stress stays with him as he walks to the end of the block and turns up the long hill that brings him closer to home. His eyes wet with rain and strain, and the nagging fear of guilt gnawing on his heart, he walks into the rain, letting the hood fall from his head, letting the rain sting his face, giving in to the dimming of the day. Halfway up the hill, his Mom’s station wagon speed into view. He gets in, wet and a bit of a mess, relieved and hurt and mad and silly. By dinner, he pretends he’s moved on to something else.
It’s strange the way hurt seeps into the soul, and it’™s different for everyone. One person’s sensitivity barely registers a forgotten ride in the rain while someone else feels it so acutely it stays with them for life. First world problems, some would snarkily suggest, but if it’s your very first first world problem, and you’re only a child, who can say what scars will be wrought in the end? Who can say how deep they will run?
The most frightening moment of my life thus far was not when I let a stranger bring me back to Brandeis from Boston in a big white van, which he pulled off the road on some dark, desolate stretch of Waltham only to park and negotiate questions on when he might see me again, but when I was five or six and holding my mother’s hand in the Amsterdam Mall. I let go for a second to look at some storefront, not letting her silhouette out of my peripheral vision, and when I reached up again to the hand beside me it wasn’t my mother’s. Immediately I panicked. I didn’t see her right away, and the terror was intense. It lasted a few mere seconds – my mother didn’t even know I was gone – but the fear was instantly crushing, crippling and debilitating. When I saw her just a few feet up ahead, unaware and unconcerned with our separation, the world returned to normal, but my heart had been stricken forever. It’s something I recall vividly to this day – one of my first memories, seared indelibly on whomever I was about to become.
I’M LOSING MYSELF
IN THE DARKNESS OF THE WORLD
CATCH ME BEFORE I FALL
SAVING MYSELF
IS ALL I REALLY KNOW
SEEN IT BEEN DONE BEFORE
The Fall Song of 2020 has been selected and it’s called ‘Dynasty’ by the amazing Rina Sawayama. With its familial themes and defiant streaks of rage and independence, as well as its dramatic musical bombast, this is a perfectly powerful statement in an age when families are being rendered apart thanks to things as light as politics and as deep as four-decades of mistakes and angst.
Those relationships with family members are what run the deepest, my therapist confirms after I recount a childhood memory that has haunted me for years. Almost inextricable, they have hooks that are intertwined and entangled with the entire history of a human being, conveyed from the moment of birth and running through the formative stretches of a person’s existence. They are the most difficult patterns to change, and their chasms run deeper and darker than we usually realize. Our families mark us from birth – they know our most vulnerable weaknesses, they know our most formidable powers, and if we’re lucky they only want what’s best for us. Yet it’s never quite that easy, at least not for me and mine.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
I’M A DYNASTY
THE PAIN IN MY VEIN IS HEREDITARY
DYNASTY
RUNNING IN MY BLOODSTREAM, MY BLOODSTREAM
DYNASTY
AND IF THAT’S ALL THAT I’M GONNA BE
WOULD YOU BREAK THE CHAIN WITH ME?
In the midst of my teenage years of turmoil, when social anxiety was heaped on the impossible fact of being gay, I was the oldest child in a family where I did everything I was supposed to do, was the perfect son in every way I knew how to be, and still felt the chill of being different and never quite belonging, sensing even then that love was contingent upon how proud I made my parents, and one wrong misstep would result in punishment or desolation. Whether or not it was all in my head is a question that creeps into my mind to this day, a lasting effect when stability is rocked, such as when you come out as gay and it’s not greeted with a hug or instant love and assurance, but rather concern and worry and the desire to keep it secret and silent.
Every dynasty has its outcasts. Every dynasty has its rebels. And every dynasty has its stars who rise above the binding shame of history and biological bonds to ascend to something they deserve. Call it survival, call it independence, call it the righteous rage that results from a person finally refusing to be anything less than beloved – the human spirit will forge a way and we will craft our own families when the ones we’re given cannot or will not play fair.
I’M GONNA TAKE THE THRONE THIS TIME
ALL THE WORLD’S ALL MINE, ALL MINE
IT’S BEEN WAY TOO LONG, TOO FAR
TOO GONE, TO CARRY ON
YOU CAN’T HIDE IT IN THE WALLS
SWEEP IT UNDER MARBLE FLOORS
IT’S BEEN LIVING IN OUR LIVES
BEST TOLD DAMN FAMILY LIE
I remember a morning in high school, trying to rush my way out and feeling utterly defeated by something someone did or said – I don’t even remember what it was, but I remember throwing open a desk drawer, ripping out a sheet of paper, and violently scribbling in bold, black, smelly marker: ONE DAY I WILL LEAVE THIS PLACE AND NEVER COME BACK.
Every dynasty has its drama queen. I taped it to the mirror of my bathroom, hoping someone would find it, hoping someone would try to help. No one did. I took it down when I got back from school. It was still hanging there from the mirror, the same dejected face peering behind it, only the tears had dried and the rage had dissipated. I had to let go of the anger, and the notion of fairness and equity. The world was not fair or equitable. Families weren’t either.
ANYTHING YOU GET, RETURN TO
DYNASTY
THE PAIN IN MY VEIN IS HEREDITARY
DYNASTY
RUNNING IN MY BLOODSTREAM, MY BLOODSTREAM
DYNASTY
AND IF THAT’S ALL THAT I’M GONNA BE
WOULD YOU BREAK THE CHAIN WITH ME?
Families beg for forgiveness, over and over, and if you happen to be the one who continually gets hurt, who continually must forgive and forget, it does start to feel a bit personal. You feel a bit paranoid. You wonder if it’s you, and what might set you apart from everyone else. When you’re gay, you wonder if that’s the difference, because what else could it possibly be? You’ve done everything else right, you’ve done everything else perfectly, you’ve never messed up, and still somehow you stumble enough to be the one who gets hurt.
When parents try to correct things in the past by doing better in the present, it’s rarely with the original cast, even if we’re still around, only older. Back then I didn’t see that, so I fought harder, even as I understood less.
MOTHER AND FATHER, YOU GAVE ME LIFE
I NEARLY GAVE IT AWAY FOR THE SAKE OF MY SANITY
HURTING INSIDE, NO END IN SIGHT
PASSING IT DOWN, I’M NOT LOSING THIS FIGHT
MOTHER AND FATHER, I KNOW YOU WERE RAISED DIFFERENTLY
FIGHTING ABOUT MONEY AND THIS INFIDELITY
NOW IT’S MY TIME TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT
AND IF I FAIL, THEN I AM A DYNASTY
Every dynasty has its trials and tests, those moments when you decide whether to stay or go, whether to keep working at it or to give up and find an easier path. Every person has their own journey to take, in whatever dynasty they find themselves, and even if their family isn’t the one they would have chosen, there is no denying the bonds and the love that almost every family has at its heart. We don’t always do it well, we don’t always do it right, but we are still there, repeating some mistakes, making new ones, hoping that this time it will be better, that this time it will all work. Humans have that basic primal need – the need to belong, to be part of a tribe, to be a valued member of a family. And luckily for us, we can make our own families, because that’s what you sometimes have to do to survive.
DYNASTY
THE PAIN IN MY VEIN IS HEREDITARY
DYNASTY
RUNNING IN MY BLOODSTREAM, MY BLOODSTREAM
DYNASTY
AND IF THAT’S ALL THAT I’M GONNA BE
WOULD YOU BREAK THE CHAIN WITH ME?
