Inner Child/Inner Oedipus

She belongs to me alone.
My Inner Child, Inner Oedipus, Inner Freak sees her as a sexual being, if not a sexual object. Her long legs and ample breasts, her classically beautiful face, frosted hair… Do I want to be with her or just BE her? With age and dates I jump around a lot. The Palestinian Egypt connection happens at six. At the moment I am nine. I sit quietly with Mom and my two brothers in her bedroom as the epic unfolds. She is mine now, mine forever. I would thank God but we are a family of atheists so my sense of Him is murky. This particular night of my deep joy that should never have happened starts out normally. Our father, Adam, is allowing us to spend the summer with our Mom, Sally, in Austin, Texas. My two brothers, Gary, thirteen, and Aaron, twelve, are gathered in her room, which is typical. We all often lie in her bed watching television, our dinner plates flat on our chests, a practice I follow still, though back then bits of spaghetti rarely got tangled in my chest hair since I had none.

That is how it is. We are pigging out on tacos.

Then suddenly Dad arrives and it all starts tumbling out of them, of Dad really, with Mom putting her arms around Aaron, who has no clue what might be going on, while she throws Gary supportive glances. I am virtually ignored, an incredibly rare thing that makes me so indignant I almost miss the real news. Our father gives us a few careful facts. He was married to someone before our mom Sally, to a local girl in San Antonio named Helen, and she was the one who gave birth to Gary and Aaron. A woman who is now, I kid you not, in a mental hospital. The parental units focus entirely on my two brothers, imagining, I guess, that they are the ones whose lives are about to change. They have no idea. My head wants to explode. The rush of joy is suffused with pain and mystery. I want to laugh, sing, and cry all at the same time, but I just sit there as my heart stops, time stops, and I silently let the Revelation flow through me. I have always wished for my mother to belong to me alone. Desperately. Secretly. And now she does.

Sally is my mother. Not their mother. Just mine. My father, the man who keeps me hostage mostly, away from her, traveling, in Egypt, in the Orient, in Hawaii, in California, my father, the bane of my existence has unknowingly given me the greatest gift possible. My sexy mother belongs only to me. My brothers? Let them go fantasize about the crazy woman in the hospital who gave birth to them.