Brando_ Songs My Mother Taught Me - Marlon Brando [175]
Clifford Odets once told me, “I never heard what Beethoven was saying until I was forty.” You gain a great deal simply by living long enough. In some ways I haven’t changed. I was always sensitive, always curious about myself and others, always had a good instinct for people, always loved a good book and any kind of joke, which I think I learned from my parents, because they were both good laughers. But in other ways I am a vastly different person from what I was like as a child. For most of my life I had to appear strong when I wasn’t, and what I wanted most was control. If I was wronged or felt diminished, I wanted vengeance.
I don’t anymore. I am still contemptuous of authority and of the kind of conformity that induces mediocrity, but I no longer feel a need to lash out at it. In my twenties I always wanted to be the best, but now I truly don’t care. I’ve quit comparing myself with other people. I don’t worry if somebody is more talented than I am or if people invent vicious stories about me; I understand that they’re people not unlike myself who are just trying to pay the rent and who close their eyes to the vulgarity of their deeds. I realize they are doing it for their own reasons. Moreover, in telling the story of my life in this book, I must acknowledge that I am guilty of some of the sins for which I used to despise others.
I believe it is fortunate that my parents died when they did; otherwise, I would have probably wrecked what was left of their lives before I found a better way to live. Now I am happier than I’ve ever been. My sisters and I rode out the storm together with the help of one another. Both grew into wise, independent women who beat alcoholism and created new lives for themselves. Frannie died this year, leaving a void in my life that can never be filled. But before she died, she found happiness, too; in her late forties she went back to college and became a successful teacher. Tiddy, after one career as an actress and another in business, became a wonderful therapist and applied her extraordinary insight to helping others.
“It’s a long climb up Fool’s Hill,” my grandmother used to say about life, but Tiddy, Frannie and I made it to the top.
This book, an outpouring of what was long contained, has been my declaration of liberty. I finally feel free and don’t give a damn anymore what people think about me. At seventy, I’m also having more fun than ever before. The smallest details bring me joy—building or inventing something, being with my children or playing with my dog, Tim, laughing with my friends or watching an ant crawl on his way in my bathroom. Thanks to Dr. Harrington, my own efforts and the simple passage of time, I can finally be the child I never had a chance to be.
Recently I saw Kevin Costner’s Dances with Wolves, and midway through it I started crying. I didn’t know why. Then the image of the young Indian boy on the screen gave me the answer: it was like a homecoming, because I realized that in the past few years I have rediscovered a part of me that was clean, pure and straight and had been hidden since I was a child. Somehow I had come full circle, and I felt free.
I also finally realized that I had to forgive my father or I would be entrapped by my hatred and anguish for the rest of my life. If I didn’t forgive him for the things he had done to all of us, I would never be able to forgive myself for the things I have done and felt guilty about and responsible for. Now I have forgiven him and myself, though I realize that to forgive with your mind is not always to forgive in your