Bathtub Blog

Five stolen moments. One thought. This past week I sat with the estranged sister of my dead friend. I liked her. She told stories of her childhood. Of her stingy father, and her mentally unstable mother. To both my friend and her sister the father is the looming presence--the strength, the tyrant, the voice in their heads. Both are angry for different reasons--my dead friend, and her still living sister. But the weirdest thing was that when they talk about themselves, each other, or the mother, they all sound like they are channeling the father. His opinions are their opinions. His pronouncements, his judgements, his views of each of them are what they carry around as truth. Even though none of them seem to like him very much. And so I wonder: When families tell their stories, define themselves, make their mythology, is the strongest person's story the only one that matters? No matter how warped, how awful, does the strongest win? Does their truth become THE truth?