Gratitude in Darkness, A Memoir by American Poet Dustin Pickering, serialized in Himalaya Diary, Part 4

Link to the third part of the memoir: Gratitude in Darkness, A Memoir by Dustin Pickering, Serialized in Himalaya Diary, Part 3 – Himalaya Diary -Leading News Portal from Nepal, Kathmandu, Asia

Gratitude in Darkness 

A Memoir by Dustin Pickering 

Part 4 

“The root of suffering is attachment.”   -Buddha

“Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.” –Mississippi John Hurt

My father fled Atlanta in 1983 following my mother’s infidelity—he took me to Mississippi where his mother lived with her parents. I was less than three years old. My mother tells me that my grandmother had little to do with me before that point. She showed up to my parents’ wedding in a blue jean skirt with muddy paw prints, according to my mother. At court I am told my father commented that women “always had to care for the children,” although he denies this. My mother tells me that my father commanded her to “go to Jeff,” her ex-boyfriend.

They met in a psychiatric ward. My father was under-socialized, and my mother suffered from anxiety. My mother tells me that my father was jealous of Jeff, her previous boyfriend.

My mom brought her friend, a psychology teacher, to my great grandparents’ house in Mississippi to visit. My grandmother said my skin was orange and I was malnourished when I arrived at their door. There were tranquilizer drops in my diaper bag. She assumed they were to numb my constant crying. My mother, however, tells me I was a quiet baby. She has photos of me as a child and I do not think I looked malnourished.

During my mother’s visit, my father brought me outside for her to hold a few moments. She threw me in the car but my father’s feet blocked the closing door. My father’s family calls this a “kidnapping attempt” on my mother’s part. Extreme cries of agony escaped me due to the sudden separation from her. My grandmother emerged from inside the house. Before she died decades later, she commented that she would not have allowed “that woman”, my mother, to hurt a baby.

My grandmother was granted custody because of my mother’s absence from the case and my father’s economic situation. He joined the Navy to help financially with me, but life turned its other cheek. I am told he never paid what was asked of him to support me as an infant.

My mother also once visited with a getaway car and her new boyfriend. A meeting at a Pizza Hut was arranged but she was not allowed to hold me and I had police protection.

*

As my grandmother neared death one afternoon she slipped onto the floor. My aunt was supposed to pick me up and was not answering my calls. I dashed from my apartment and jogged two miles to their house. I lifted weights at the time so the run was easy. My grandmother was on the floor, breathless and frightened. I leaned and offered my shoulder for physical support. She was a heavy woman her whole life. I was able to help her to the couch using my back’s strength.

My early family confusion never prompted me to disavow my aunt and grandmother. They raised me to be decent and kind.

When I met my mother I discovered she was a chain smoker like my father and uncle. My grandmother, a sincere Catholic, believed smoking tobacco is sinful. Perhaps once or twice I smoked cigarillos without her knowledge. I prefer food and caffeine.

My arguments with family in my teen years were likely expressions of rage at these events. I hated Christianity with a passion and absorbed Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy. I agreed with Kurt Cobain that Christ should have been aborted, and that God is gay. I scribbled such slogans on my Catholic school desk from time to time, particularly in world geography class. I was never good at geography.

Bio of the Writer:

Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press. He has contributed writing to Huffington Post, Café Dissensus Everyday, The Statesman (India), Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, The Colorado Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote Journal, and several other publications. He was given the honor Knight of World Peace by the World Institute for Peace in 2022. He hosts the popular interview series World Inkers Network on YouTube. He is author of the poetry collections Salt and Sorrow, Knows No End, The Alderman, Only and Again, The Nothing Epistle, The Stone and the Square, and several others, as well as the novella Be Not Afraid of What You May Find. His most recent poetry collection Crime of the Extraordinary resonates with themes of guilt culled from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

Himalaya Diary urges the readers to check out the new book of poems titled “CRIME OF THE EXTRA-ORDINARY” by Dustin Pickering. Here is the amazon India link: amazon.in/dp/8119858956