Parent/child relationship

There appears to persist a universal conviction – East and West – that the parent child relationship represents value in and of itself, like gold, or ivory, or purple. It is your mother, for Christ’s sake, people say.

I am puzzled by the extraordinary vitality of this idea. To me the parent-child relationship is like any other: good and worthwhile if it is loving, respectful and pleasant; and thoroughly undesirable if it is abusive, disrespectful and unpleasant. Undesirable, destructive, hurtful relationships are best broken off; and once broken off there is little reason for them to be reestablished.

I suppose nationality is the same way. I was once, in Berlin in 1988, asked why I do not strike up conversation with a group of fellow students in my language school, fellow students who were of my nationality. “They are your people”, I was told. But of course they weren’t. I had never met any of them. I did not recognize as pleasant their manners, or way of dressing, or speaking. To me, as human beings, they were not just complete strangers, but in fact worse than just strangers – the particular group was repulsive.

And as with countrymen, so with mothers: one isn’t always lucky in the matter of the place where Fate has thrown him. But there is nothing to be gained by sticking with the dictates of one’s misfortune.