Roots of Growth

Being thirty years old now and taking this moment to reflect on a story I remember from my childhood is honestly quite nerve-wracking. My childhood has a few gleaming treasures amidst the tarnished stain on my life. Not to be so hyperbolic, but emotional and physical abuse were heavily strewn about my life.

The story, “I’ll Love You Forever” by Robert Munsch, is something that I remember envying as a child. As an adult, I understand why. Now, it is a story I can see for what it was, the expression of my hopes and desires to be loved.

The first twenty years of my life are filled with much juxtaposition, especially in the form of gaslighting by my parents. Each of whom had their own issues and having had me young were not well equipped to raise a child. Being an adult, I can have compassion for them.

When I was about six years old, I remember this book being read to me and my younger sister. Our father was the one who always read it. He is an alcoholic who also engaged in other drug use. He was physically abusive, while our mother was physically and emotionally abusive. This story, “I’ll Love You Forever” is about a mother loving her son and being there for him through his life. The concept was foreign for me. In the end, the mother is old and watching her granddaughter. The son comes home and takes his mother to bed, singing the iconic lines, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby [Mommy] you’ll be”.

I remember the first time my father reading this being the first time I recognized love and compassion in my father. I knew my paternal grandmother, my Farmor, and I knew their relationship wasn’t the best. We had, after all, lived with her for a couple years when we first moved to Connecticut.

I was confused. To my little kid’s worldview, people couldn’t be that complicated. People couldn’t do such horrible things to their own children seemingly without remorse, but also feel sadness and who knew whatever else at this point.

This story is what cracked open the window to fresher air. This window, that had long been painted shut, screwed shut, nailed shut, that I felt was built to never be opened, slid ever so slightly. The taste of fresh air, the taste of tears on my cheeks, the taste of hope.

I would request the story often. When our father was home for the night and lucid, I would have a moment of connection. Connection I thought I couldn’t have, didn’t deserve to have. For a moment of my day, I had hope that my life could be better. I had hope that I could feel so much for a child I could have one day.

The bulk of the story is the mother always being there, behind the scenes sometimes, for her son. I identified with the mother. I wanted to show my parents what caring for a child meant. It wasn’t until these passed few years that I have been able to have more compassion for myself and for my parents that I have been able to identify with the son.

I had previously never cared much for the end. The part where the son took care of his mother was just sad. I had lost much of my family at an early age, and I could only see that the mother, now grandmother, was old and sick. I could not see passed this to the compassion and love the son had for his mother. It took a lot of work on myself to be able to see this. The parent child relationship is never fully on stage, never fully shown to anyone, not even themselves. The mother cared for her son, even when he was a rebellious teenager or otherwise not easy to like; but she did and would always love him.

Over the years the window, that cracked open the first time my father read that story, continued to open wider. The glass cleaned so that, even on rainy days when it had to be closed, I could still see out and have hope for when I could crack it open again. The paint refreshed, jagged nails and screws removed. The dark room I had found myself in was slowly being renovated.

Eventually, there was the night I wouldn’t know was the last time I’d hear him read the book. This is the way with all things in life. Usually, we don’t know that any given instance could be the last time we experience it. In this case, the book was just shelved and never read aloud again. I would read it on my own of course, being drawn to it back then as a means to fuel my misguided ideals of adulthood.

Looking back now, taking this moment to do so, I am proud of how far I’ve come as an individual. Reading the prompt, this story immediately came to mind. I am grateful for its mere existence for giving me this opportunity to reflect on something I had not thought of in so long. Thankfully, my parents are each still alive; though divorced for many years. My relationship with them nearly non-existent. I find myself lightened by the memories this story provides rather than encumbered and being sent back to such dark times. Robert Munsch’s “I’ll Love You Forever” is a story that unknowingly changed my life for the better and without which I might not have had the courage and hope that I developed from it, as well as the experience of my father reading it, to be here today.