You have the right to rage, but there is a price you must be willing to pay.  You might think the rage itself is price enough, but you would be fucking wrong.

A mother, say, may rage at her child.   In the moment nobody is fast enough or strong enough to prevent the attack, certainly not the kid.   The enraged woman might have a right to her rage, a lawyer could argue, but if she takes a bottle and skulls her kid she has a right to be taken to the police station and sent over to the Laughing Academy for observation.

My father had been treated to this kind of tough love as a very young boy.  This kind of tough love may be more properly called hatred.  It leaves only betrayal and rage behind in the child who, instead of being protected by his mother, was beaten by her.  “A face only a mother could love,” has a bitter ring to someone who was brutalized by his own mother.

My father, to his credit, rarely lashed out with his hands to hit my sister and me.  It was the tongue, sharp as a bullwhip, that he lashed out with.  I won’t describe the torrent of hate speech that often foamed out of his mouth.  I understand it now, but, shit…

It is not unusual for children, watching one parent rage and the other cower, to make the obvious mistake:  the raging one is strong, the cowering one weak.  It is not weakness to cower and not strength to scream and threaten, or lash out.   I’ve seen many situations where a kid winds up emulating the style of the parent they identify as strong.   These situations are always sickening.

My father was very smart, and a gifted arguer.  He taught me the Socratic Method years before I heard of it.  A series of logical questions, with answers beyond dispute, leading to a conclusion, also beyond dispute.  I did some ju-jitsu on him one day on line at a wedding buffet in a bistro on Metropolitan Avenue.

“You’ve said many times that physical violence and verbal violence are exactly the same in the harm they do to the victim,” I said, piling some shrimp on my plate.

“Yes,” he said, swallowing, dignified, ready to rumble.  He already knew where we were going.

“So all the verbal violence around the kitchen table directed at A___ and me was the same as if you’d been beating on us?”  I asked, pulling a celery heart out of ice.

“That’s right,” he said, not avoiding it now.

“So would you say A___ and I were victims of child abuse?” I asked him, moving the Queen behind the Rook, and the celery heart behind the shrimp.

“Yes,” he said, “I would have to say that you were.”

The thing I remember most about this exchange, which took place more than twenty years ago, is the angry look my sister shot me over the old man’s shoulder.  She was mad on his behalf, her identification with the strong parent was greater than her realization of the damage he’d done to her.

You have the right to rage, everyone does.  But for the love of God, don’t do it.