The Generation Game

We are all made of stars and yet we make of ourself ghosts. This is the game that is played all about us as we enter this existence and it is the game we are doomed to play unless we awaken to the absurdity of it all.

There are other games to be played. The game of ghosts is just one of many games on offer. We are after all inquisitive collectors of clues and we make of those clues what we will. The most important of our creations are the discards. Everything that we dismiss and ignore has far more value than that which we clutch at. In this respect, this world can seem contrary. A place of opposites designed to confuse and frustrate. But all we need is the cipher and that is that we need to do good. Good is not a passive force. It needs our effort and our energy. If we are to have a good life then we have to choose to live deliberately. This is a choice that requires constant affirmation. Just the same as we need to kick our legs if we are to swim ashore before the darkness transforms the waters and our end comes in search of us.

Sally was a woman and a mother when she awoke to one of life’s obvious truths. An irritant that she had learnt to live with had become more insistent and was worrying away at her. Her skin tingled and her nerve endings bellowed until she could no longer remain deaf to that siren call. 

The hurt became too much.

The pain came in blinding waves and she had become sensible enough to know that she would be wise to attend to the hurt. In attending to it she marvelled at how she had defied the voice of her own body and chosen to suffer for so long. And yet at this point she went no further. The clues that would lead to further revelations were all around her. No one runs at this first stage of the race. Many pack up and go home. Doing their best to erase their tracks in the sand. A small child playing hide and seek for the first time. Closing their eyes in an act of wanton forgetfulness. Believing that the part of them conspicuous beyond their own consciousness dies and is rendered invisible once they can no longer see it. Betraying their lack of care for the world and all it contains as they switch themselves off completely.

Sally courageously went further than the first phase of the race. How far she would go was anyone’s guess including her own. She would be afforded the time to keep going just as long as she never took that for granted. That was one of the unwritten rules of the game of life. A game that encompassed the game of ghosts and all the other games on offer.

“Your mother,” said her father, “had a bad childhood.”

Sally nodded and took this medicine as she had so many times before. Supplying her own sugar to sweeten the bitter taste that bade her pay attention and discern meaning from these words. But even now, her complicity was assured. After all, this was her father and they were considering her mother. Every child is required to swear allegiance to their family and keep its secrets. This is what is meant by a child being good. Keeping the family promise come what may. 

Don’t tell anyone.

Don’t tell a soul. Not even your own.

This is how the game of ghosts is played. And every player is required to check in their self and their soul at the door. The game cannot be played by the soul for the soul is the seeker of meaning and it grows in the light of truth. And the game of ghosts cannot be played in the fertile soils of true love. Love has no place where ghosts are concerned. Ghosts are a projection of pain. The trick is to believe in the ghosts and immerse oneself in the game completely. Only then will a player not see through all the ghosts around them. Better to be blind than alone. Loneliness is the threat used to temper all children and make of them something less that they were meant to be.

If you’re not good then you will be cast out to die helpless and alone.

These words are never said. They don’t need to be. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Absence terrifies and it haunts. We are all haunted as we play this game of ghosts. We are all complicit in our own haunting and the lake of fear that grows beneath us until it becomes a roiling ocean that we will one day succumb to. Floating down and down and down until we lose our minds in the madness we ourselves created. Knowing that we were to be a safe harbour of love, but that we wilfully deserted our posts and played with substances that harm. Hell is a dwelling we built with our broken dreams and lost hope.

A restless Sally returned to her own home and looked upon the place she had invested herself in and the people she shared it with. Everything was the same. And yet there was something that concerned her as she sat within the facsimile she had constructed using her childhood as the blue print. This another product of the game of ghosts. For ghosts repeat the same patterns over and over again. Haunting being a ridiculous and ceaseless madness that can never lead to release.

Something was wrong and Sally knew to leave those wrong things well alone. That there was a closet full of wrongs. She had learnt from an early age that there were wrongs that were to be ignored. The wordless promise she had made to her parents and family was to render such things silent and forgotten. She had been taught to curate a limited existence and never question the wanton discard of much of the world. The extent of the promise meant that she was in the habit of constantly ignoring herself. Her head ached, her heart broke and her gut vibrated but she kept the promise all the same. She had convinced herself that she knew no better and that to violate the sacred promise she’d been forced to make as a child would be to end the world itself.

Only now she had her own family, and she had this feeling of being caught between two ancient rock walls. Those walls were cold but alive and they were moving. Desensitised by the haunted existence she had endured all of her live long days, she couldn’t delete her awareness of these two monoliths and the slow, grinding conflict they were engaged in. 

One day, whilst out shopping for food, Sally’s thoughts returned to her father’s words. Words used any number of times. An incantation made in the sacred place of her childhood. But in the brightly lit third aisle of a supermarket made to look like any other supermarket and vaguely reminiscent of a morgue displaying body parts removed during a conveyor belt of autopsies that never rendered the truth of existence, only of death, Sally had a moment.

The thing with moments is that the initial ring tone of the moment necessitates the recipient to pick up and answer. After that, there are the options to consider before a choice is made. These actions are notoriously difficult for the dumb creatures addicted to their game of ghosts, but somehow Sally managed to make a choice.

Sally thought about the words her father had uttered. This was the first domino to fall. Sally would have to push more dominoes over to build sufficient momentum. 

“So did I,” she muttered under her breath. This simple expression caused a discord within her that knocked her subtly out of true and despite her having written a shopping list she failed to purchase bread and milk during her shop. Much to the chagrin of her hungry family. Discord leading to further discord. Ripples reaching out further than we care to consider. This an unravelling that we can so easily mistake for the originating pain that we are becoming aware of after an age of denying its existence within us.

The matter of bad childhoods continued to chafe away at Sally. Something wasn’t right. The thing that lurked in that state of wrong was humungous and it was made up of many small things that in isolation were nothing to worry about. They were spilt milk that she wasn’t to cry over. That was one of many traps that made all these small matters cohere into something too monstrous to ignore. And yet she had. As had everyone around her.

She felt like a bad mother and she was terrified that this would prove to be the case. Sleep came in drips and drabs as she thought of the SS coming to her door and taking her children away. There was something ominous about Social Services sharing the same initials with a once legitimised terror organisation. These organisations swam along the tide of indifference and danced to the tune of the silent majority. Sally felt the weight of those rock walls shifting closer together.

Wanting to talk to someone about her childhood and what she might do about it, she visited her brother. Her tea was cold and the cake eaten by the time she broached the subject she dearly wanted to share with him. 

“She had a bad childhood,” said her brother.

And that was that.

These words were a warning for her to cease and desist. But this didn’t sit right with her even without the threat of those two rock faces drawing ever closer. Something rose up within her and a voice she didn’t recognise simply said deserve better. The siblings parted as they exchanged pleasantries whilst Sally cradled a sad dissatisfaction between them and wondered how her brother truly felt. How he felt about their childhood, his mother, his father and her. Mysteries she should have been able to voice but couldn’t thanks to the family promise they had made so many years ago.

As she drove home she also wondered how he felt about himself as a result of those formative years. She smiled into the oncoming traffic as she realised she was skirting her own feelings and what this meant for her and all who sailed in her. She’d gone to her brother seeking an ally. Wanting to share the problem of their shared experience and half it. The question was whether her real motive was to hand the poison chalice to him? An easy route was always compelling however noble a person was. Had he offered to intercede and talk to their mother, she doubted she would have stopped him. There was no glory to be had here. This was dirty work. Bringing the family secrets out into the back yard and airing them for all the neighbours to see and judge harshly and hypocritically. 

The problem was that the family wasn’t a simple amalgam of Sally, her brother and her parents. The family was a crest that represented all that went before and as a result the future generations that would wear the genes and carry the name into the battles of life.

Sally was really up against it. Who was she to break with centuries of compliant tradition? She was one and she was up against a throng of ghosts. That was something else they didn’t tell you when you were co-opted into the game of ghosts – the odds were stacked against you from the very beginning because the opposing team was far larger and consisted of longstanding experts in the game.

Without realising it, Sally was flicking another domino over. She wanted better for her own children. Despaired at her coming far too late to this particular party. Marvelled at the timing of her coming to realise that she could do better. Only now was she thinking that she should do better. 

Her childhood could have been better, because her mother was the product of a bad childhood. Sally cast her eye back towards the mothers who had gone before. It stood to reason that her grandmother had had a bad childhood also. She was grinning as she stood between two mirrors and surveyed all the bad childhoods to a point where everyone had it bad and there was no differentiating any of it. There was no way she’d change places with anyone who lived one hundred and fifty years ago. No electricity. No hot showers. Few of the everyday mod cons that she took for granted. Life was hard for everyone and as far as Sally was concerned, that was bad. But for them, it just was.

There was also the question of her father’s part in all of this. By definition, he must have had a bad childhood too. Maybe a different version of bad to her mother’s, but he hadn’t fought for a good childhood and so probably didn’t know what that looked like. More importantly, he didn’t know what it felt like. Again, Sally looked back into her family history and saw the same fathers waving through the same anger. They probably thought they were making the best of it. Didn’t like to make a fuss. Feared causing a scene and losing what they did have.

Thoughts percolated down through Sally’s filters as she focused on improving life for her children. This wasn’t a selfless pursuit. This was as much for her as it was for anyone. Now she was aware of bad childhoods, she didn’t want to visit this upon her own children and certainly not on her unborn grandchildren. She had a notion that being a grandparent was the best gig in town and she intended to enjoy herself thoroughly as she doted on babies that she could hand back before there was any potential for sleepless nights. Have her time over again on a consultative basis that provided rewards for her long service in the family. What wasn’t to love about the prospect of such happy times?

And so Sally invested in that future by attempting to break patterns that could only damage her happy ending and the joyful beginnings of another generation of her family.

“I just want to talk,” Sally said as her father placed a mug of tea in front of her and took his seat at the dining table. Her mother eyed her in that appraising way that she used often. Waiting to pounce. Sally played with her hands under the table and the years fell away from her.

You’ll always be my little girl, wasn’t always a loving affectation. Sally was afraid and intimidated. She reassured herself by thinking about what was needed. There was a simple list of things she wanted to say. That list had the potential to be long. She wanted to be given a chance. She wanted to be heard. All of the items on the list came down to one thing; she wanted to be loved.

The usual conflict raged within her and she felt the tremors begin. Didn’t want to be here. There was danger here. She was poking the bear. And the bear would do its usual. Rear up to its full height and crush her before she could do anything to defend herself.

Well, she wasn’t a little girl anymore and that levelled the playing field. Only she was still that little girl. She would always be that little girl when she sat in this home. In this room. Opposite a woman who made every exchange a matter of life and death. Her mother always won the game of ghosts and Sally died a little with every victory inflicted upon her.

I’m a mother too! She protested within herself as she struggled to keep it together. Mothers fight for their children! They protect them! That’s what Mummy Bears do! She wanted to cry. Bit her lip and tasted copper. And just as she thought the game was up and she’d suffered another defeat even before she had begun, that unbidden voice came from a secret place within her; I will always protect you.

She paused in the echo of those words and a calm befell her as she understand a truth about herself. Yes, she would always be a little girl, but now she was also an adult. Now it was time to be the adult this little girl had always needed. If that was why she was here, then that was enough. She would stand firm in the face of this vengeful bear and she would try to make herself heard. Whatever the outcome here, she would always be there for her child and in so doing she would be the mother she deserved, and that wasn’t half bad. It was at least a good start.

Still there were whispers of dissent as she spoke. A certainty that she wouldn’t be heard and nothing would change. That was no longer the point. This was her statement of intent and she had to make her vows to her all of her ancestors before she lived the promise of love for herself and her children. 

She would be the loving change.

Now the dominoes were rattling against each other like brittle old bones as the winds of change caressed them and bade them return to the earth. The ghosts fled from the field of battle before they could be crushed under the weight of a monolithic past that no longer held sway over Sally’s future.

Already, Sally felt lighter as she spoke her truth and embarked upon the greatest of adventures as a player in the game of life and love.