Fault lines in Cape May

Cape May concluded itself reasonably well. As tends to happy on family vacae, we were fairly sick of each other by the end of it, or more accurately the kids had kind of had enough of the parents. This brought an end to the sitdown dinners and the beginning of takeout. Fortunately, there's no shortage of that in Cape May, be it from a sandwich shop or a pub.


I grew up in a household influenced by Tom Lehrer. This included an admonition that he gives on one of his albums, where in describing a movie where all the characters bemoan their inability to communicate says, "if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is shut up."

However, I can say with virtual certainty that having a family workshop on communication skills is a good idea. Nobody is a good at this as they would like to be. One thing you have to know as a parent, however, is that your kids are going to be mad. About something. This also fits my contention that every parent screws up their kid. That's one of the joys of parenthood. You may not do it on purpose, you probably don't do it on purpose but you still do it and then you sit and watch what happens next.

So if you are like me and have done some bit of therapy over the years, you spent some time convincing yourself that the mistakes you've made are not your fault. And that you shouldn't feel bad. That's what individual therapy does. Family work is an opportunity to find out that it was your fault, and that you have to live with the consequences. I find this somehow comforting.

The other thing I found equal parts disturbing and freeing is that the psychological profession has so expanded its definition of the word abuse (which now means doing pretty much anything that makes someone else feel bad, or maybe even less-than-good) that any parent, or in fact, any human being who has ever interacted with another human being, is guilty of abuse. Based on what I said last paragraph, this is both your fault and not your fault, depending on who you ask.

So where does that leave us? For me, somewhere other than Cape May. Next weekend, it'll be time to go visit my parents at their vacation house in Martha's Vineyard, where we can resume our past communication practices. What a relief!