Taking the Scenic Route

It began with a phone call from my twin brother asking me if I wanted to ride with him to California to deliver the rest of our mother's belongings to where she now lives near San Diego.

I could barely contain my excitement at not only traveling to places I'd never seen before, but also meeting my younger brother's wife and two-year old baby girl and spending precious time with mom.

I'll spend the next couple of days logging entries and sharing some pictures taken from the passenger seat of the U-haul we were driving. Speaking of which, I took a little "trip" two days before we left. It left me with a badly sprained right ankle and a broken left leg. Made traveling a bit uncomfortable, but you can bet it didn't stop me from going.

These pictures were snapped in Utah, where we finally stopped overnight. The scenery in that state brought tears to my eyes. The colors were absolutely breath-taking, from the lush greens in east to the arid and painted cliffs near Mt. Zion National Park. I've had a profound change of heart about the color orange. It's now one of my favorites.

One Teardrop

I often wonder how one person could live each day desiring absolute control over the people he claimed to love the most--how that love could drive him to instill a fear so deep that his raised voice would cause uncontrollable trembling and on several occasions, even loss of bladder control.

I've heard some say it was the war--it made him mean. Others have defended him by saying he was spoiled as youngster--he was the baby and his momma let him do whatever he wanted without punishment. I had always associated his complete loss of self-control with the death of his momma, my granny, when I was 12. It wasn't too long after her death that he selfishly made a decision that altered the course of my life forever. However, I've learned recently that he molested several of his nieces--my cousins many years before then, years before his momma had died. Of course, no one admitted that until he had died. I was in exile for 17 years and no one in my extended family was brave enough to defy him.

With his death, a life of fear ended. As the fear faded and the protective barriers began to fall, the little girl who loved her daddy began to mourn. I cried when my mother spoke of the last moments they shared together before he fell into the coma that led to his death. She spoke of watching silent tears flow down his cheeks--he couldn't speak. My heart broke when I heard that. I sobbed for his pain and suffering, this man I had sworn I didn't care about. I wondered if maybe, just maybe one of those teardrops was for me.

I'm trying to be supportive and strong for my mother and two brothers; they still struggle with his loss every day. I don't need to hear apologies and will deal with their sometimes misdirected anger and hurt. I'm so completely grateful to have my family back that nothing else matters to me. And, in spite of everything, I loved my dad. I don't know why admitting my love for him makes me feel better, but for some reason it just does.

Almost There

I try to be an optimist. Quite challenging to do when concentrating on veering around potholes while rainbows sometimes fade without me even realizing they were there.

I've been very busy the past few months trying to fill potholes before crashing into them, but the road is still a bit rough.

Looking into the future, I swear...Yes, it's there...A smooth path. Every day brings me closer.

No Whispers

My father hated whispering. My brothers and I could talk loudly and run through the house and not disturb him, but a whisper would wake him up immediately. No whispering was a household rule. As a child, I never really understood why. But, an incident when I was almost 19 years old made me realize that he hated whispering because he thought that he was the subject of the hushed conversations. And with every passing year, his paranoia and anger grew in tantamount proportions, fed by his abuse of cocaine and whiskey and, I would like to think, his guilty conscience.

On this particular afternoon, Mom and I were in the kitchen, talking quietly. Dad was sleeping on his couch in the living room, two rooms away. Suddenly, loud stomping erupted from the direction of the living room and Dad's angry bellows resounded through the house. We didn't have a chance. He was in the kitchen faster than I had seen him move in years. He charged toward us, screaming that he would not tolerate us conspiring against him. He slammed his fist into the side of my head. The impact sent me flying backwards into the tiny alcove beside the stove, where I crumpled, crying and dazed on the floor cupping my bruised and throbbing cheek. He grabbed my mom by the hair, yelling that he wanted us out of his house, threatening her with death if she didn't get out immediately. She was crying and begging, "No, David! Please, no! I don't want to leave!"

Then suddenly, he pushed her hard against the stove and stormed out of the kitchen toward the front door. He slammed open the screen door and stomped across the porch. I pulled myself up and begged my mom to hurry--to go to ber bedroom to pack her things. I raced toward the stairs leading up to my bedroom, shaking so badly I could barely stay standing. I had made it to the top of the stairs when I heard the front door slam again. Dad had returned with his pistol--he'd retrieved it from its hiding place in his van. Crouching low at the top of the stairs, I could see into the bathroom where mom kneeled in front of the commode vomiting. My dad had the loaded gun to her head screaming that she had one hour to get out; that if she was still there in an hour, he would kill her. She continued begging him to let her stay, telling him she loved him and didn't want to leave. I ran into my room and began throwing my things into a bag.

Suddenly, there was an ominous silence. Returning to the top of the stairs, I dropped to my stomach and peered down to see that mom was still sitting on the bathroom floor, sobbing quietly. My dad was nowhere in sight. Grabbing my packed bag, I tenatively made my way down the creaky steps and ran to kneel beside my mom. She told me to go. I pleaded with her to grab some things and go with me, but she refused to leave. Just go, she said.

That day, I moved in with a friend. It took years for me to whisper without fear of retribution.

The Trip

When I was 16, dad took me and my younger brother on a trip from our home in Illinois to Texas to visit relatives. He had just bought a fully-loaded Ford Econoline luxury van and asked me to go to help him drive. By that time, I had completely withdrawn from as much contact with him as I could and had managed to avoid his groping hands for months. I was confident that he wouldn't touch me again. The temptation of going to Texas to visit relatives I had never met before was exciting and I decided to go. Hell, I reasoned, my little brother was going, too. It wasn't like I was going to be alone with him. I can not tell you how much I lived to regret my decision.

For that entire week, there was no bedroom for me to run and hide. There were no locks on doors. During the road trip, he made me pull into rest areas for the night. My pleas for him to allow me to continue to drive while he and my brother slept fell on deaf ears. By the time we had stopped, he'd emptied the sterling silver flask of Wild Turkey he kept close by--his bottled courage. He made my brother sleep on a reclined captain's chair in the front of the van and forced me to lay next to him on the makeshift bed in the back. I can still hear him whispering that no one would love me like he did, his rancid breath making me gag. I can still remember trying to scream, his hand over my mouth suffocating me. My sobs were met by his harsh whispers to be quiet. He taught me to weep silently. He taught me shame. He refreshed the fear used to control me.

To date, my younger brother, Robert, struggles to understand why I refused to let my father have contact with my daughters. When we were reconciled just before my father's death in 2004, I tried to explain. He had just become the proud daddy of his own baby girl, so I truly believed that he would understand. Before I could say even a few words, his eyes turned cold and he boomed, "We're not even going there." It scared me enough to make me jump and bring tears to my eyes. In his defense, Robert was facing the imminent death of his father. To agree with me would have been impossible for him to do with his dad laying in a coma near-death.

Since my father's death a little over a year ago, Robert has emailed me to tell me that by becoming the loving father of a precious daughter, he was beginning to understand that I had done what I needed to do. That by ignoring the past, we were doomed to repeat it. Finally. The shame has begun to lift as the blame begins to shift.

Family Affair

Where we had been, I don't remember, but my mom, my brothers and I returned home very late one night. I was about 8 years old. Climbing sleepily up the dark enclosed stairway to the second floor of our house, I undressed on my way. I stepped into the dimly lit hallway and pulled open the dresser drawer where my favorite nightgown was always kept. It wasn't there. Rifling through all of my drawers, I still couldn't find it. Mom came upstairs and told me to wear something else. She helped me slide my legs into a pair of my brother's Spiderman pajamas, then slipped one of his pajama shirts over my head. After tucking me and my brother in, she gave us both a goodnight kiss. I plopped my thumb in my mouth and was asleep before her creaking footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs.

The next morning, sounds from downstairs woke me and my brother. Yep, there were definitely kids down there. Excited and expecting to find our Aunt Chris and our six cousins had come to visit, we jumped from our beds and raced downstairs.

My brother reached the bottom of the stairs first and wriggled the door handle back and forth a few times until finally swinging it open. Jumping off the last step onto the dining room floor, Floyd and I stopped short when we realized that the voices we had heard belonged to strangers. A woman with pitch black thick curly hair sat at the table next to my dad. Seated around the table were three kids. Everyone had turned their eyes toward us and were staring. I shyly stepped behind my brother and quietly stared back. There was a little girl about 4 years old with blond pigtails and a round face, a little boy no more than 6 with eyes magnified by the thick glasses perched on his nose, and a girl with long dark hair who looked like she was our age. And she was wearing...my nightgown!

That was our introduction to our new family. My father had moved his current girlfriend, Helen, and her three kids (Jackie, Bobby, and Tina) into our home sometime before we had arrived home. Of course, we weren't told that Helen was my father's girlfriend (I would figure that out on my own soon enough). We were just told that Helen and her kids needed a place to stay because her husband had kicked them out. For several years, we lived as sisters and brothers. I loathed Helen. I had to hand it to her, though. She was as mean to me and my brothers as she was to her own kids, showing no favoritism.

I don't recall any good times, but I do remember loving Jackie, Bobby, and Tina like they were truly my siblings. Then, one morning we woke up and they were gone just as they had appeared. We weren't given any explanation except that they had gone back home. I cried for days.

The entire situation was wrong. Completely and utterly wrong.

Playing Tootsie

How lovely they looked, setting upon the glass-top counter of our small town’s grain elevator shop; a bouquet of brightly colored wrappers atop white paper sticks. A nickel would buy an hour of utter bliss. Each swipe of the tongue was accompanied by a number as I counted to see just how many it really did take to reach the delicious chewy chocolate center. Smoothing out the wrinkled colorful paper, my eyes scanned for that hidden icon—the majestic Native American wearing his headdress and that glorious star always found right beside him. Finding that elusive star would have me running back to the shop to redeem another hour of delight. I never knew if the shopkeeper actually got paid for those special wrappers. I often wondered if it was something she did just to see us smile.