Whitney & Whitman, Mother & Father (Part 1)

In a world full of plurals -- men, jobs, bills, "Golden Girls" reruns -- it's not always easy to find singular truths, but one thing is at the moment certain: every person in the world has a mother and a father. Only one of each. I'm speaking in biological terms because I find it consoling, in a way, to think that we all share this basic trait -- we arise from the union of one person and another, whether that union occurs on a heart-shaped honeymoon bed, in a petri dish, or underneath the light of a candid moon. In January of 2006, as a freshman in college, I wrote this about my mother and father:

"She sees everything as either in or out of place. I want to say my mother is like a pin cushion. Fluffed and folded, she holds things in place to prevent them from being lost, to prevent the pain of misplacement. But then she is constantly on her feet, folding clothes, fluffing pillows. She straightens and cleans so that everything in front of her looks immaculate, looks intentionally placed, prepared, perfect.
    My father is the opposite. He’s natural. Better, he is made of earth. His skin is leathery, sun-tanned. His green eyes look like glowing swamp water shining through two holes in a bed of dirt. He is like an earth-god who cannot be controlled, or rather, chained, nailed down. He lets on that nothing is serious, that everything is an accident of some kind, but I can tell he knows something about the world. How old it is. How things stop mattering after a while."

    These are still my parents, although today I'd propose a theory about what catalyst enabled these two opposites to attract: laughter. "Tumultuous" fails miserably to describe the kind of relationship shared between my mother and father, who met when they were children, and yet "tumultuous" is also the best I can do. Separately they beat strange drums; together they  are a loud, screaming burst of laughter -- part gasp, part squeal, part music. At once a barbaric yawp and a voice so refined it sounds raw.