Set me reeling

Was set reeling by a sentence from Chief Sealth's (Seattle) 1854 speech, given after the U.S. government demanded his tribe, the Dwamish Indians, hand over  two million more acres in the northwest:

The white man's god cannot love his red children or he would protect them.

That was how I felt about my parents.  How could they love me, when they left me so unprotected?  

Weirdly enough, at least one other sibling had similar issues with feeling left unprotected.  Peter was, even in his late 60s, horrified at how our father didn't storm over to a neighbor's house when one of their kids tossed one of my sibs into a prickly bush.  Even in his late 60s, my brother displayed a deep sense of shock that Dad seemed - at least as far as Peter knew - to do nothing to protect one of his children against a bully.

Not having been involved & knowing - through my Mom & other sibs - that the bully in question seemed to be a downright psychopath, I tend to cut Dad more slack.  First of all, we don't know for absolute sure that he didn't do anything.  And if he didn't, frankly I wouldn't blame him.  It's quite possible that the bully in question might have retaliated, even against an adult.  But the bottom line is that we - neither Peter nor I - don't know what actually happened.

Those feelings of being hurt & experiencing parents who seemed to stay on the sidelines, remaining neutral in the face of what felt like blatant abuse, are all too familiar.  Yet while it's interesting that the quote from Chief Sealth set me reeling, I also know that I also don't know.  

Sound confusing?  Let me simplify.

In looking back over my life, there are very few situations where I can remember either of my parents standing up to my siblings if what my sibs wanted was counter to my own needs. Did they verbally stand up for me, arguing to their best ability my point of view?  I don't doubt they did their best. Still, when it came down to what was done, my sibs' wants were the ones they invariably heeded.

There were a few times when it felt like I was thrown into a metaphysical thorny bush & left on my own to struggle out.  But one thing I know in my very early 60s is that what I don't know is WAY more than I do.  One thing is for sure, because I experienced it myself - two of my sibs could retaliate in the most brutal way possible to Mom  ~ ~  without so much as a single word spoken, they could break her by simply withholding affection, by turning cold.

The white man's god cannot love his red children or he would protect them.

What Chief Sealth didn't grasp was that to the white man, there were no red children.  His thought presupposed that white men saw native people as fellow human beings.  Not in their power to grasp.  

One of the great AH HA! moments in my life was realizing it wasn't that Mom chose to not support me or intentionally turned her back on promises made.   She said it perfectly after one particularly devastating situation  - "I know that I promised I'd do that, but I couldn't."   

Can still hear her say it, because a flood of light came rushing in.  It wasn't that she didn't want to, wasn't that she didn't see the justice of it, didn't see the rightness of it.  She just couldn't do it.

The white man's god cannot love his red children or he would protect them.

That set me reeling.  Yet I know that the bottom line, in my case, comes down to - How do you define love?  

In my world, love is a verb;  in Mom's, it was a noun.  In her world, there was no boundary between someone saying they loved you & it being so;  in mine, the noun has no meaning unless it's backed up with the verb.  

Which leaves me still wondering, as I have for years ~ can parents truly love their children if they don't protect them?  And if it felt like I was being left unprotected, weren't my sibs equally so, with their wants forever met & their needs so often ignored?

So many thoughts triggered by a telling observation from a wise chief....