I doubt that any of us enjoy conflict, but the reality of being human is to endure conflict on some level throughout life. There are the angst ridden days of youth when encounters with playground bullies or the snark of gossip can rattle us to our very core. There are the conflicts inside our heads as we struggle to make important decisions. Sometimes we find ourselves enmeshed with cruel individuals who abuse us either emotionally or physically. We might become the innocent victims of conflicts between families, friends or even nations. Conflict may be a clash between beliefs or points of view. 

Each of us react to conflict whether simple or dangerous in differing ways. Some simply look away and attempt to pretend that nothing is wrong. Others go deeply inside themselves to the point of almost losing their identities. Then there are the people who boldly take charge of the situation, unafraid to advocate for themselves or others. How we react is at the heart of our personal philosophies, psychologies and totality of our experiences. 

I admittedly spent the early years of my life in a safe little cocoon carefully crafted by my loving parents. I had little idea about the kind of hardships that people were enduring. I lived in a world of sparkles and unicorns. That all changed when my father died. Suddenly I saw how difficult and cruel life can sometimes be. Still, my mother worked hard to be a positive role model for me and my brothers, never letting us see her worry. Nonetheless as I grew older I began to notice her whispered conversations with her confidantes that seemed urgent and worrisome. I was old enough to compare our new lifestyle with the one we had with my father. I realized that money was tight and that my mother was carrying a heavy load on her back. I quietly tried to be less of a burden. 

By my teen years my mother had finally begun dating. It was about ten years from my father’s death and she was quite tentative about the whole experience. She was only forty years old and still beautiful and vivacious. Some of the men she encountered were less than chivalrous and she often broke off relationships. I felt conflicted because I wanted her to be happy but in my mind nobody lived up to my father’s standards. Still, I knew that Mama was lonely and that dating was a healthy and good thing. I tried to find the good in the ordinary men who came to our home. Only one of them who was a charismatic and handsome history teacher lived up to my high standards. I was saddened when my mother broke up with him as well. 

Eventually she began to date a man whom she had known as a teenager. He and his brothers had rented a house across the street from her family home. She remembered thinking he was handsome but actually having a crush on his brother who was attending Rice University at the time. Nothing romantic happened back then, but somehow knowing that he had once lived near her made the man seem safe to her. In spite of declaring on their first date that he was not someone that she wanted to continue seeing, she was just lonely enough to keep accepting dates with him until he was asking her to marry him and she was delaying answers because it was not what she wanted at all. 

The more the man came to our home the more conflict I harbored about the whole situation. I was not so much adverse to the idea of my mother finding love again as I was to watching this man openly mentally hurt her. I wondered how bad he was in private when he made no attempt to cover his vileness in front of me. He seemed so shallow compared to my brilliant mom. He was in his fifties and had never amounted to much while my mother had a college degree and had been a respected teacher. I did not want to be materialistic, but I scorned him for driving a low end car while constantly boasting and threatening my mother with announcement about how much power he wielded. I wanted to tell him to get out of my house and leave my mother alone but I did not have the wherewithal to voice the words. I simply hoped that my mother would find her courage and send him away forever. 

I was unwilling to engage in conflict with the situation and so I sat watching my mother became quite mentally ill. This man had reduced her to a shell of her former self. I had heard him frightening her and tearing her down. I blamed him for her delicate condition that seemed to grow darker and more worrisome by the day. I was still a teen and unsure of what to do even though I was sure that something needed to happen. In a panic I called one of my uncles and told him all that I had witnessed. He was in many ways the most street smart of all of my relatives and I somehow reasoned that he would know how to handle such a horrible man. He told me to let him and his brothers take care of things. So I waited and while doing so got my mother the medical care that she so desperately needed. 

The man who had so damaged my mom never came to our home again. He never talked to my mother or attempted to get back into her life. She slowly but surely regained her mental health and never mentioned his name or the fact that he had seemingly just drifted away. I was glad he was gone and dared not even voice his name. That is how it ended but I needed to know the why.

In those days nobody had a cell phone. Making calls from a family phone was far from private. I had to ask a friend if I might use her phone to call my uncle. I told him how well my mother was doing and thanked him for whatever he he done to make the horrid man go away. He only revealed that he and his three brothers had visited their old neighbor and made him understand the he should never again contact or harass their sister. I let it go with that confession. I did not to want to know about any further conflict. 

I grown enough to be capable of handling such situations on my own, but I have been forever grateful to my uncles for so quietly and valiantly defending their sister. She never knew what they had done and none of us who enjoyed the truth ever said a thing. All of those folks are gone now and I miss them. I often wish that I had told them how much I learned from them. They taught me that horrific conflicts have to be faced. There would come many more times when I had to look conflict in the eye either personally or professionally. I realized that doing so in a dignified manner can be a sign of love. Sometimes I have to defend myself. Other times I would be derelict if I did not defend friends or family. Conflict is a part of life and now I am unafraid of it.