Father's Day

Father’s Day

 

Wow, I don’t even know what to say about my father.  Like my mother, if you saw him from the outside, you would think he was a good father, a good man even.  He went to work faithfully at the B & W plant in Barberton, Ohio every day without fail.  I only saw my dad miss work twice in my life.  The first time, his foot slid under the lawn mower when he was mowing the damp grass.  The second time was when I was a teenager, he had the flu.  I wanted to take him to the emergency room because if my dad missed work, he had to be really sick!  My dad was faithful to my mother, the only time he was away from her was at work, and he had us kids when she ran errands.  My dad was extremely frugal; he did not gamble or spend money inappropriately.  We had everything we needed, including a farmhouse where we spent most summers in Carrollton, Ohio.  I had three brothers and we were all reasonably well behaved.  My father was well liked with the people he knew, always laughing and joking.  When we had guests at the farm, the adults had a lot of fun.  Yes, from the outside it looked like I had a good life.

Even when my parents got divorced, my father paid his child support and came to his visitation.  Well, most of the time he came to visitation.  He would come take my younger brothers and not me.  I remember more than once my father would come to get the boys for visitation, taking them bowling or to the movies and I was left behind while they went and had fun.  I watched as my dad’s car pulled out of the drive and I was hurt and confused because I didn’t understand why they got to go and I didn’t.  My mother was not helpful, either.  She picked those times to tell me what a worthless man my father was.  Telling a child the failings of the other parent does not help ease the pain, if that is what my mother intended.  If she wanted to help me, she could have done something special with just me, even if it was just playing a board game. 

My dad did not always leave me behind, however.  When it was time to go to the farm, he took me with him.  At first, I didn’t mind going with them to the farm, because I loved that farm.  I loved the freedom I had there, and the peace I felt when I was alone in the forest.  I spent many hours playing by myself in the woods.  It was literally the only place in the world where I was truly safe.  No one ever found me.  I was around the house area for swimming in the lake on the property, or meals and sleep.  I was so happy to be going with my dad for visitation I didn’t notice the only reason he took me to the farm with him.  He needed someone to clean the house and make the meals.  The farm was where we went for our vacations, but it was also a lot of work.  There were the gardens to tend to and it took my father an entire day to mow it.  There was some time for fun, too, but I was responsible for cleaning the house while my brothers got to play.  There wasn’t a lot of time for me to spend alone in the woods anymore, which also meant there was more time for my father and brothers to hurt me.  The last time I went with him, he gave me a quarter after I spent the whole day scrubbing, vacuuming and cleaning.  It was in the seventies, so a quarter was not much money, even then.  I yelled at him for it.  Giving me a quarter as a reward for the work I performed was an insult.  I would have been happier if he had just shown some appreciation and said “thank you, the house looks nice.”  I refused to clean it after that, and I rarely went to the farm anymore.

When I was sixteen, I refer to that age as my “waking up” time.  I call it that because my life was a blank slate before that age. I only remembered bits and pieces of my life.  Even at sixteen, I couldn’t remember much of the previous sixteen years.  Like so much of my life, I did not understand how I couldn’t remember more than recent events.  Other kids from school would come up to me, talking to me as if they knew me but I didn’t have a clue as to who they were.  Some kids I knew, because I had more frequent interactions with them.  For example, I knew most everyone in band, but we spent most of our time together.  Everyone else I forgot.  I remember more, now, but it is fuzzy at times.  I lived my social life in a kind of terror, because people would come up to me and socialize, talking about something we had done together and I didn’t have a clue as to what they were talking about.  I learned to fake these interactions as best as I could, but if the conversation required me to respond, it was over.  I started to isolate myself as much as possible because I was so humiliated when I couldn’t remember what the other kids were talking about.  My childhood and teens years were painfully lonely.

There were a few kids I played with in the neighborhood, but because of our frequent trips to Carrollton, and because I was always grounded to my room, I don’t remember many of them.  I have some recollection of them now, but I have a large part of my memory back.  Back then, I knew I should know them, but my ability to recall what we did together was a blank.  There was only one person I remembered; Diane Erich and that was because I spent the largest amount of time playing with her.  She was my best friend growing up.  As my life descended into hell, I quit playing with her, too.  I remember seeing her walk down Wunderlich Street, where we lived and I wanted to say hello to her, but I felt so estranged.  I knew I knew her, I knew I liked her, but I couldn’t remember in what context.  I felt extremely sad watching her walk down the street, I wanted to say hello, but I didn’t know anything to say after that.  If wasn’t long after that day when my mother had beaten me so badly I went to live with my father.  She reconnected with me recently, and I was happy to hear from her.  When we were talking, I told her how much I missed her after she moved away.  She never moved.  Because I had blocked out so much of my childhood, I thought she moved because I couldn’t remember playing with her very much after a certain point.  I was the one who moved away, going to live with my father one block over on Newell Street. 

As with my mother, after my parents got divorced, his treatment of me became much worse.  I was almost a carbon copy of my mother, and since his hatred of her ran deep and he couldn’t express himself to her, I was the next best thing.  I suppose it didn’t help when my mother told him I wasn’t his daughter.  Maybe he was still angry about it, but at any rate, the verbal, physical and emotional abuse became much worse.  I think because my parents didn’t have each other to take their anger out on anymore, I was the new target.  There’s actually a name for this behavior.  It’s called the kick the cat syndrome.  You cannot express your anger at whomever you are angry at, so you take it out on the next weaker target.  My dad rarely “spanked” me anymore, believing I was too old for corporal punishment.  Instead, he threw whatever was handy at the time.  Sometimes I knew when something was coming, and I could duck.  Unfortunately for me, there was a pool table in the house with more than enough balls to throw.  One of them hit me in the head, knocking me out cold.  I think that one scared him, because I can’t remember him throwing pool balls at me after that.  He used other things, but not the pool balls. 

After I left my mother’s house to move in with him, I had a part time job so my dad charged me rent.  I was also responsible for paying for anything else I needed, including clothing and school supplies.  When my dad would ground me for doing something wrong, I just went into my room and out the window.  I spent as little time as I could at home.  I thought if I was paying rent, he didn’t have the right to ground me.  I am sure he knew I did it, but he never confronted me about it.  I would always get into more trouble when I got home, though.  The housework wasn’t done.

When I was 15, I met a 21 year old man who would become my husband.  I spent as much time with him as I could.  He treated me so much better than my father had, so I believed he was a good man.  I graduated at age 17 and moved in with him the day after graduation.  That story is another topic, so suffice it to say while I thought he was my salvation, I had actually jumped from the frying pan into the fire.  I just didn’t know it yet.

I had always known (even as a child) there was something in my memory I could not recall.  I knew it was really bad, and I struggled to remember it, but I couldn’t.  Because of my friends, I knew there were huge gaps in my memory.  Like so many other things, I would be an adult before I had a term to describe that “something bad” I couldn’t remember.  Even while I was a young adult, I continued to have huge gaps in my memory.  I did the things I was supposed to do, but I had no memory sometimes for days at a time.  A psychiatrist might call this multiple personality disorder, but I don’t believe that was what was happening.  It was an extreme dissociative state, but I did not develop individual personalities which “took over” when the stress became too much for me.  I wasn’t completely gone in those times when I couldn’t remember my life for days at a time.  I do remember fragments of them.  I believe the stress was so great for me that I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around me.  It was the ADHD, and I was on autopilot. 

After I became an adult, the world was starting to openly discuss all forms of child abuse, including sexual abuse.  I listened with great interest, and starting reading all I could find on the topic.  Now I had a term for the “something bad” I couldn’t remember.  I still didn’t have the memory, though, so I didn’t know what had happened, or who did it to me.  I just knew that somewhere along the line I had been sexually abused.  Because I had two young girls, I became hyper vigilant and never left them alone with any members of my family.  I didn’t know who had molested me, or even to what extent the molestation occurred and I wasn’t taking any chances with my babies. 

At age twenty five, I left my husband after years of violence.  I was pulling into my father’s drive for a visit one bright summer day, and that’s when it hit me.  That’s when I knew it had been my father who had done the “something bad.”  I still went in his house for a visit; I went on doing the things I needed to do in my life, but things were starting to unlock inside my mind.  I still did not know what my father had done; I only recalled it was him.  After my very brief visit with my dad, I sat down after the girls were sleeping and I made a family tree of sorts.  I started to list the pedophiles in my family.  Now I knew there was my father, and my Uncle Bob, who was married to my father’s sister.  My great uncle Harry, infamous for “getting to all five of his girls” who was my grandfather’s brother on my mother’s side.  There was my grandfather, who was my mother’s dad. Later I would add my grandmother, my dad’s mother, my mother (a counselor called it covert sexual abuse because while she never actually touched me, she instructed me how to behave sexually with men from a very young age, and had me practice with men went she took me to bars) one or more of my mother’s boyfriends after the divorce and the final person added to the list was my first husband.  He pressured me to have sex before I was ready and he would later rape me.  I would come to find out after I left him that he was molesting my precious little girls. 

I have had nightmares my entire life.  I suffer from chronic and severe insomnia.  Sleeping pills are worthless, so I don’t bother with them.  Now I remember enough of what happened to me, I no longer have nightmares, I have what they call night terrors instead.  Because I couldn’t have a conscious memory of what happened to me, the pain lived out in my nightmares.  My mind was trying to tell me what happened, but the truth was so painful and horrific I couldn’t deal with it.  Night terrors are a different kind of sleep disruption.   Essentially, I am still having nightmares, but I don’t remember a thing and I am fighting back against my demons in my sleep.  I have awakened upside down and sideways in my bed, with the area around my bed destroyed.  Everything that was on my nightstand is on the floor, my bed covers and sheets are twisted or on the floor, as are all six of my pillows.  I have awakened with pulled muscles and I am certain it aggravates the back pain I already suffer from. 

The earliest memory I have of the things my father did to me is at six years old.  The content of the memory indicates the abuse had been going on for some time prior to that.  It went on until after I got my period at age thirteen or fourteen.  I clearly the remember the day I got my period.  I was in the bathtub washing up when I heard my mother announce to my father my period had begun.  I was embarrassed and humiliated because I didn’t know why she had to make an announcement to my father and everyone else in the house.  I think she made such an issue of it because she was completely aware of what my father had been doing and it was her way to tell warn him of what might happen if he didn’t stop.  I was now able to bear children.  My parents were going through the divorce by this time, though they were still living in the same house.  My “awakening” began at sixteen because the stuff my nightmares were made of was pretty much over by then. 

I have forgiven my father, and it is a story for a different time.  Forgiveness was quite a journey all by itself.  I have tried to find something good to say about my father and the only thing I can come up with is he taught me the work ethic I have now.  I only saw compassion from him twice in my entire life.  The first time was after that last beating from my mother.  She had taken a metal spatula heated from the stove to beat me.  My back was burned and bleeding.  It was enough to disturb him into being nice to me for that single evening.  The other time was when I was hospitalized for depression severe enough I attempted suicide.  He came to visit me at the hospital every day, bringing me whatever I wanted.  I asked him for Coke, Ho Hos, puzzle books and magazines.  He brought everything I asked for.  He picked me up from the hospital when I was ready to be discharged and drove me home. 

I cannot find anything to honor my parent’s for.  Father’s day is not as difficult as Mother’s day is for me.  I don’t worry if I was a good father to my children.  I struggled for decades trying to get my father’s love and approval until I realized nothing I could do would elicit his love nor his acceptance.  I don’t wonder why my father didn’t love me, I know he did.  He never said the words, but when he refused to get a DNA test for paternity, it was because he felt it wasn’t necessary.  He told me I was his daughter and DNA would not change how he felt.  Sometimes I think his kind of love I could have done without.  I try to justify what my father did to me by saying he was an alcoholic.  Maybe he wouldn’t have been so awful if it weren’t for the alcohol.  I know that is not truth, but I have to have something to mitigate the reality. 

I have two step-sisters from my father’s first marriage.  They are 15 and 16 years older than I am.  We were talking about Uncle Bob and how he liked little girls.  She said she never told dad what he did to her.  I asked her why and she replied “because dad would have killed him.”  I don’t know about that.  Her answer indicated dad never sexually abused her, but I am not sure of that, either.  Maybe she doesn’t remember and at her age, I hope she never does.  I also tell myself it is possible dad never did anything to her. By the time I came along, the alcoholism had reached levels which resulted in his behavior.  It’s just stuff I tell myself to try to make it better.  I do not believe you ever heal from the stuff my dad and other relatives did to me.  The beatings throughout my childhood were nothing to me.  Every time I was beaten, I was defiant.  I never cried, not once.  I never yelled out in pain, either.  I remember being beaten, and while they were beating me I turned my head around to look them in the face while they were doing it.  I glared at them.  I remember thinking “You can beat me all you want.  I will not cry, I will not yell in pain, I will not give you the satisfaction of knowing you are hurting me.  You can do all this and more to me, but you will not have my soul.  You can’t have it and I will not allow you to take it from me.”  I don’t know how old I was when that happened, but I remember it very clearly.  I know that is why my parents beat me more severely than my brothers.  My brothers cried.

You can heal from being physically abused.  Like I said, that part is nothing to me.  The sexual abuse is something I will never heal from, though I believe if it were possible to do so, I would have.  I have recovered, but recovery is not the same thing as healing.  Healing means it does not carry significant impact in your life after the event.  The sexual abuse means I can’t go to bed at night, I can’t sleep peacefully and I never will.  I have demons to fight.  During the day, I can go about my life without a problem.  It does not interfere with my ability to be in a relationship with someone, and I can have a sexual relationship with a man without my experiences as a child marring it.  I like sex, and more importantly, I love intimacy.  I treat my body and my sexuality with reverence.  I went through a lot of counseling to get to this point, but I am glad I am here.  But I can’t sleep.  I try hard to go to bed, and have used a number of techniques to make it easier but nothing works.  Sleeping pills will get me to sleep, but only for a couple hours.  If I take what I need to sleep through the night, I can’t live my life the next day.  Sleeping on the couch doesn’t make a difference, because it is not about where I sleep, it is how vulnerable I am when I do sleep.  Sleeping during the day is easier for me, but I don’t live in a world which is accommodating to someone like me.  Even so, sleeping during the day doesn’t mean I won’t have demons; they just come to visit less often. 

Father’s Day Pancakes

I wish there was a flip side to my father.  I wish I could say there was something heartwarming and wonderful I could point to, but I cannot.  I’ve already mentioned the only two times I can remember any kindness from him at all.  There is no honor in the type of man my father was.  He went to work and supported his family, but honor requires a greater call to duty. 

My second marriage didn’t work out either, but I did gain something from my time spent in it; my father-in-law.  Usually when a marriage breaks up, the in-laws are immediately rallying around the side of the ex, but when my husband left the marriage, he did it in such a way that not only was he cruel, he placed me and daughter in jeopardy.  The details of his leaving are not what this story is about.  It is about his dad, who would become like a father to me.  That was not an easy task since I do not trust men easily to begin with, but the thought of having a father figure in my life was unacceptable.  Before my husband left, I would say I had the usual type of relationship with my father-in-law that most people do.  We shared family holidays and conversations with each other, but that was about it.  I knew and respected him, but we were family just like any other. 

After he left, I struggled to keep the house.  I had put my nursing license on hold to be the housewife my husband wanted.  I had to do certain courses to get my nursing license current and that took some time.  It was not a good period in my life.  My in-laws called me frequently to see how I was doing and to offer any support they could.  The house went into foreclosure and I would soon have no place to live.  I didn’t have any money, either.  Getting an apartment was out of reach for me.  My in-laws opened up their home to me until I could get on my feet again.  They refused to take any money for rent, either.  It took just over 6 months for me to get another place to live, but without their help I don’t know where I would I been.  It was more than just a sacrifice of space and utilities on their part.  It caused a rift in the relationship my ex had with his father.

My father-in-law was a truck driver before he retired.  He had to be to work by six in the morning, so I would talk to him most mornings on my way to work or on the way home in the afternoon.  My shifts varied greatly, so sometimes I talked to him on my way home in the morning.  We talked about a lot of different things.  He was the father to me I never had as a child.  Anytime I needed something, he was there.  He simply would not let the world get me.  Without his support during that time, I am sure I would have made it, because that’s what I do…I survive, but I would not be where I am today without him. 

When I needed a refrigerator, he helped me pick a good used one out.  I had to have a car to get to work, and he helped me with that, too.  Then I needed a stove and he helped make sure I was able to obtain that.  When I hurt my shoulder at work and workmen’s compensation was giving me a hard time about it, he made sure I had everything I needed.  He stopped by several times to make sure I was getting along all right.  Those things meant a lot to me, but the times I valued the most was when we talked.  We talked several times a week.  Sometimes we would talk about the news, sometimes it was politics, and sometimes it was about whatever his son was doing at the moment.  We talked about nearly everything.  He was more than my father-in-law, he was my friend and he acted like a father to me.  Without him standing by my side, I don’t think I would be able to have the attitude I do about men.  Despite what I have been through, I know there are good men out there.  My father-in-law is one of them.  My experiences with men are not representative of all men. 

The most important gift he gave to me was the one he gave to my youngest daughter.  My youngest daughter is not my second husband’s biological child, but he raised her from infancy until he left when she was around eleven or twelve.  That is a long time to raise a child.  My ex doted over Milena.  He told Milena she was daddy’s girl.  She worshiped the ground my ex-husband walked on.  She knew her biological father, but he was only in her life for short sporadic periods, so my ex was daddy for all intensive purposes.  When my ex left, he didn’t just leave me, he left my daughter as well.  My mother-in-law and I tried to keep the pressure on my ex to continue visitation and to provide financial support for Milena, and for a while it worked.  There came a time when no amount of pressure on him to do the right thing was enough.  I understand he was not her biological father and had no legal responsibility toward my daughter.  But when someone raises a child as their own for that long, there is a moral obligation.  Family is not always bonds of blood. 

When a father abandons a daughter, it scars her for life.  Fathers shape a female’s perspective on what men are, and how men behave.  Fathers influence the type of person the daughter will choose as a partner.  All men who enter a female’s life are judged by the bar the father sets as an example.  A female child derives critical components of her self-esteem from the relationship she has with her father.  My ex destroyed my daughter’s view of men, and caused her to question her own self-worth when he abandoned her.  What my ex did to me was bad, but the damage he did to my daughter was unforgivable.  I do not forgive those who have harmed my children, but I know Milena must forgive him so she can move on to a happy life.  I want this for her. 

But in comes Grandpa who was determined the world was not going to get us.  She saw how he was there for us every time we needed him and he never asked for anything in return.  With Grandpa around, she knew we would be OK, times might be hard, but we were not in it alone.  Grandpa kept her faith in herself alive.  Just being Grandpa restored her view of what a good man is and she was able to see clearly the man who called himself her father was not one of them.  He is the type of man who deserves honor on this day.  For his presence in my life, I am grateful.  For his presence if Milena’s life, there is not enough gratitude because he kept her from losing herself.  I know he doesn’t understand how important just being in our lives was. 

I talked with him on the phone almost daily for years, but it was not without sacrifice on his part.  Just having a relationship with me caused disharmony within his family.  He is a stubborn man, and tried not to let it bother him, but it was difficult to maintain a relationship with us when we are not his blood, and his son divorced me.  When he was working, no one had to know about how frequently we talked, or when we went out to lunch to catch up on each other’s lives, or just to say hello.  He retired a couple years back, and it has not been the same since.  My life was very busy, so if I wasn’t on the road going to work, I was at work.  The only time I had free was when I slept.  Telephone reception where he lives is not the best, so even when we did talk it was garbled.  I haven’t talked with him in a long time, now.  I miss talking to him. 

I understand why we don’t talk so much anymore, but it doesn’t mean I don’t miss it.  For a little while in my life I had a father.  I had someone I knew I could rely on, and someone I knew would protect me against the evils in the world.  My daughter had a Grandpa that she will use to measure the worth of any man who comes into her life.  He set the bar pretty high.  While I may not be able to celebrate this day with him, I do celebrate him for the father he was, and for the man he was to my daughter at a time when she needed to know there are good men in this world.