Agape and Personhood. David L. Goicoechea

kept them all going.

      By the time Mother was ten she was secure in herself and

      with others for her father was doing well and she was as proud

      of him as he was of her and she was well protected from

      the mere mother-daughter dyad that would never freely

      and fully wean the child and give her security with others.

      Without the mother-father-child triad the mother and child

      can get locked into a bi-polar relation so that the child

      feels like an abject throw-away rather than a strong subject.

      If the mother is abandoned or abandons the father then

      the child will identify with the mother’s abandonment and

      go through life aggressive with mother and sullen with others.

      In Levaur’s strong, traditional, Mormon community of Carey that

      did not happen and the father would say: “She learns so quickly!”

      And the father would love the mother in the daughter and the mother

      would love the daughter in the father and all of his, and relationality

      was built up and Joneva was relating independently at ten.

      The triad by opening beyond the dyad became an open quadrad.

      I.2.2 In the Logic of the Quadrad

      By the time she was eleven mother and her family had moved

      from their summer home up Iron Mine and their winter home

      on the Fish Creek Flats into the town of Carey and into

      their farm home on the Little Wood River Canal.

      Mother’s youngest brother, Elwin, was born when she was ten

      and the roles within the family were by then quite clearly worked out.

      Mother was her mother’s helper and perfected her art of mothering

      as she did much to care for her baby brother and she and he

      bonded almost as mother and child as the first and last children.

      Mid and Bob helped their father even as ten and twelve year

      old children trailing sheep from Carey and Picaboo and the

      railroad shipping station built by the Union Pacific for sheep.

      So mother bonded in a dyadic relation with her mother

      that never became monadic and self-centered because it was

      quadratic when the new baby sister came and then the first

      brother and six years later the second brother whom she babied.

      Mother in the activity of her complex and passionate relations

      was never the least bit bored for everyday was filled with

      all kinds of tasks and it was difficult to find time for reading.

      At the age of eleven the first signs of puberty started to show

      and mother was reflecting on the many voices speaking

      within her and to her and she was beginning to decide just how

      she wanted to be as her exemplars picked her and she them.

      The triadic and quadratic relations helped her through weanings.

      And mother had identified with her mother’s terrible weaning.

      And Johannes de Silentio wrote: “When the child has grown big

      and is to be weaned, the mother virginally conceals her breast,

      and then the child no longer has a mother. How fortunate

      the child who has not lost his mother in some other way.”

      And mother was fortunate as her own dear mother had not been.

      With affectionate support mother was weaned through puberty.

      I.2.3 In the Logic of Quadratic Weaning

      Mother identified with the unlimited voices of her mother as

      they chorused in her preconscious attitudes, moods, and feelings.

      She identified with the unlimited voices of her father as

      she knew them in his thoughts, words, and deeds, and as she

      saw him in relation to his extended family in all their fun.

      Mother was thus a very complicated mix of expanding relations.

      She began to reflect on herself and to imitate certain teachers

      and not to relate and identify with many around her who were

      not in keeping with her taste, but even her taste was expanding.

      In March her father brought her a black sheep bum-lamb.

      She nursed it with the bottle and cared for it in the spirit of

      the Good Shepherd story and picture in her Bible Story Book.

      She played with it through the spring and summer and then

      one day on about her twelfth birthday she went with her dad

      to the barn yard and he took a sheep by the scruff of the neck

      and cut its throat and hung it in the barn by its hind feet.

      Then he grabbed a black lamb like hers and did the same.

      She felt sick and thought that that lamb could have been her own.

      Then he asked her to go to her mother and get a platter.

      She brought it to him and he put the head of the first sheep

      on the chopping block and split it open with the axe and then

      he put the brain on the platter and he did the same with the lamb.

      He told her that tomorrow they could have scrambled eggs

      and brains for breakfast and he said it with obvious delight.

      She talked to her mother about her feelings and her mother

      told her what a good sheep-man her father was and how

      lucky they were to have such a good life during the depression.

      At breakfast next morning the twelve year old Joneva could not

      identify with the hearty appetite of her parents and siblings.

      And she was being weaned again and through her life.

      Traumas can either break us or make us stronger teacher-healers.

      I.2.4 In the First Deceptive Weaning

      Although Grandpa Coates’ family pioneered with the Mormons

      they were not practicing Latter Day Saints and as “Jack Mormons”

      with a completely secular attitude they loved drinking and good times

      and would not enter the church except for the occasional funeral.

      The parents agreed that the two girls would be raised Episcopalian

      and the boys raised Mormon but mother was the only one with

      any religious inclinations and she often went to the Mormon church

      and primary school with her school friends and she liked to pray.

      She greatly admired the healthy family life of her Mormon friends.

      For Christmas Aunt Sadie gave the thirteen-year-old Joneva

      a