Blood

When I was fourteen, I thought I hated my mother. Her rules, her nagging and her helplessness and passivity drove me crazy. Years later, I realized she was not who I was most angry with: It was my father.

I am not a victim of sexual abuse. I am not a battered child. I suppose I am damaged nonetheless, as we all are in some way because of our parents. My scars are not visible and therefore not always understood by other family members who have asked me, “Why are you so angry with him?” My father can be very funny; with a sharp wit I appreciate and have inherited. The flip side of this is his destructive anger and self-pity that over the years he has succeeded only in turning inward.

The summer I was fifteen, my father got a DUI and sank into a depression after his fiancée broke up with him. She was the first serious relationship he had had since my parents’ divorce years earlier and he took it hard. The trouble was, he also took it out on my brother and me, sometimes with verbal abuse, a few times with the backside of his hand. My mother had encouraged us to visit him more since he was “so lonely.” For years, she had no idea what really went on during these visits. At times, Dad appeared to cheer up and take us out for ice cream, but the good times were often suddenly replaced by random outbursts of anger directed at our mother or his ex-fiancée; or in the form of road rage in traffic. My brother and I would shrink into the car seat, wishing we could simply disappear, and I felt like a small child again with no control over anything—even being able to say “Stop the car and let me out.”

Things came to a crescendo one evening when I arrived home after school and found myself locked out of the house—someone had forgotten to leave the key in the usual place. My mother worked 40 miles away and I knew I could not call her from her nursing shift without causing problems. Our neighbors were away, so I kicked out a basement window and squeezed into our house. I figured I would pay for the cost of the window and all would be okay—but my mother thought otherwise when she saw the damage and called my father to tell him what I’d done. She realized her mistake too late as he stormed over a short time later, taking all his rage and anger, all the injustices he’d felt that year, out on me. He was six feet two and over 200 pounds, and I felt all of it as his hand connected with the side of my face. I still remember feeling my head bounce off the front door I’d cowered against and my mother screaming in the background for him to stop.

Later that evening, he asked to see me. I stiffened and told my mother I didn’t want to. “I will go with you and I promise he won’t hurt you again,” she assured me. Once there, my father astonished me by crying openly and promising he’d never touch me again. He didn’t. He was more affectionate after that summer and tried to make up for things by buying me expensive clothes and jewelry. I recognized even in my late teens he was giving what he was capable of, but what I needed most I had never gotten.

As he has aged, my father still has a good sense of humor and is still very generous. But he still drinks and has become passive-aggressive with his anger. It is still too hard for me most of the time and the gap between us has widened. I e-mail him occasionally and see him once a year. I think he is disappointed with this, but it is what works for me.

I’ve often asked myself: Do I love my father because of who he is, or because he is my blood? Because loving your family is what you’re “supposed” to do? I think I know the answer even if I cannot say it.