Love – Page 26 – One Woman's Quest

Acceptance

“I know what I want to give my Father.” Dee looked at me through her veil of blonde hair. Her face always bore such sweetness, yet the young girl I knew was so intense.

“Tell me.”

Dee was dying. This was her third dance with cancer, and the doctor’s said it would be her last. I visited daily, at her request, and we talked about fears, and dreams, and spirituality. Lately, it had been on her mind that if her life was to be a short one (23 years), then she had to make it purposeful.

“I have decided that the best gift I can give him is to accept that he loves me, even if he doesn’t show it the way I’d like. What do you think?”

Dee and her father had been fighting since the news came. He wanted to take her home, but she refused. She wanted to die here, in the town she had been living the past four years. He couldn’t understand her unwillingness to fight in the face of death. He wanted the doctors to do more. She wanted him to let it go, and to be more emotionally available to her. We had been discussing their relationship during my past two visits.

“I think that is an amazing gift, Dee. I am forty years old, and I haven’t even been able to do that with my own father. That’s the best gift ever.”

* * *

Dee had me thinking. What would happen if I were to accept my father, just as he was?

Dad’s 75th birthday was coming up and I hadn’t yet bought him a gift.

He had asked for my acceptance once, and I’d said no. It was the night he shared with me his awful secret. He sat the family down and told us all. He said that all he wanted was acceptance, and when he turned to me I said I couldn’t do it. I said I needed my Father, and what he asked of me was too much. I stormed out.

So, on his 75th birthday, I wrote him letter. I apologized for that girl so many years ago, and I told him that I never really understood his problem. I told him that I knew he loved me, and that I loved him too. And I said that when I got past all my self-righteous anger and frustration, I had to admit that he was probably the best teacher I ever had in life. If it hadn’t been for his struggles and the challenges they presented for all us, I might never have been the person I was. If there is a divine plan, or higher purpose for life, I wrote, then he accepted a hellish existence in order to give us the opportunity to grow and evolve.

He cried when he read it, and he called me up after, and said I had an odd way of looking at life, but that he appreciated it. He appreciated it that I was willing to accept him as he was, but he wanted to be better. Did I think it was too late?

I told him what Alan Cohen said: “Look in the mirror. If you see yourself looking back, then there’s still time.”

* * *

Dee’s father liked his present, too. His anger had broken the next time I saw him, and he even let me see him cry.

Whiskey Fights

Most evenings I would return home from work at 10:30 exhausted by my day. Juggling school, homework, and a part-time job was taxing, particularly as I worked from six to ten, four evenings a week, as well as eight hours on Saturdays. Typically, I would stop to visit with my parents before heading off to bed. It was always at these times that my father would engage me.

It started with an empty drink glass he would balance on his knee. This was to be my cue. I would ignore him.

“Ahem!” He would nod at the empty glass.

Continuing to ignore him, I would talk to my mother about the day.

Clink, clink, clink. My father would tap the glass to get my attention.

“Your legs worked fine the last time I saw them.”

He’d raise his eyebrows in displeasure. “I worked hard all day. It’s the least you could do.”

“I worked hard all day, too.” I’d object. “Get your own drink.”

My mother, the peacemaker, would take a step towards him.

“Don’t you dare, Mom! You worked equally as hard all day. He can get his own.”

“Is this the thanks I get? All I want is a simple drink, and my own daughter won’t even get up and get it for me.”

It was the point of the thing. My father was the epitome of male chauvinist pig. It was his home, his castle, and everyone and everything was expected to pander to him. It made me mad.

My mother stood by, hesitant.

‘It won’t hurt him to serve himself once in awhile.” Now I was arguing with her.

“Your not going to win,” she’d sigh. My father leered with satisfaction.

“Not if you give in.” It was a hopeless plea. My mother always gave in. Didn’t she realize I was on her side? I was doing this for all of us?

This wasn’t about the drink. It was about all the times he made her have dinner on the table the moment he walked through the door, then pushed his plate away after two bites, exclaiming disgust at her cooking; humiliating her in front of all of us. And how he always had to have the first helping of pie, and it had to be flawlessly served; no broken pieces for him. It was about how he insisted on napping in a chair beside the dinner table, forbidding us to talk even though we were busting to discuss our day. And how every time we were watching the movie of the week, he would come in just at the climax and insist on changing the channel, even though he had a TV set in his room, which only he was allowed to watch. He was the King of the Castle, he’d remind us. As if we needed reminding.

For once, I wanted to win. To prove him wrong. To see him back down. It wasn’t going to happen.

I got up and grabbed the glass. There was no winning against my father. He knew it. She knew it. I seethed inside.

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What Is Right If Everything Is Wrong?

My father ‘borrowed’ his brother’s identification and enlisted in the war effort at the age of fifteen. He told me once that it was an opportunity to escape home. He trained as a commando. His mission was to go into enemy territory, scout out where they kept their ammunition, and get out without being caught. His instructions were to swallow a black pill (cyanide) if captured, and kill any soldier he should encounter, in order to keep his unit’s operation covert. He did not carry a gun; gun’s were too noisy. He was trained to kill with either a knife, that he kept strapped to his leg, or his bare hands.

He knew exactly how to render an enemy immobile, and apply pressure to end their life. I know, because he practiced on me.

He never let me forget that he was boss, and he could snuff me out in a moment.

He would do it in a state of drunkenness, in front of his male friends. He’d twist my body in such a way that if I moved, I would surely break an arm, or a leg. He’d hold me there, humiliated, angry, and make me tell him I loved him.

“Yes, Dad.” I would say, teeth clenched, breathing like a trapped animal.

“What?” He’d pull tighter. “I don’t think that was very convincing.”

“I love you.” I don’t know who I hated more, him or me. I felt so cowardly. Inwardly, I plotted revenge. He might conquer me in the moment, but not the long term.

How long he held me there, depended on how much pleasure he was deriving from the moment. He said he did it because he loved me.

“Your father loves you,” my mother would echo. “He’d never really hurt you.” I was not reassured. She said the same thing when he attacked her verbally, and psychologically.

She said the same thing when her brother tried to slip me his tongue. “Your uncle fancy’s himself a ladies’ man. He’s harmless.” Even when his own daughters accused him of sexual abuse and refuse to see him, she defended him. “Boys will be boys,” she’d say. “The woman has to control the situation.”

I was twenty-eight before I told her the reason that I disappeared when I was fourteen was because I had been abducted and raped. It took me fourteen years to build up the courage to tell my mother that when men behave inappropriately it is wrong. That they alone are responsible for their crimes, and that women are not to blame.

“I’m sixty years old,” my mother told. “And I’ve never told anyone.”

“What, Mom?”

“I always thought it was the girl’s fault. I don’t why I thought that, but I just did. I knew my mother would say so, so I never told.” She was only six, and riding in the backseat of her family’s new car, when her uncle took her little hand and made her fondle his penis. Her parents were in the front, but she didn’t say a word. She thought she did something wrong.

The abuse did not stop there. “My mother would make me visit my grandparents, even though I hated it. Grandma would be working in the kitchen, and she’d tell me to go and keep Grandpa company.” ‘Keeping Grandpa company’ meant climbing into bed with the old man. Mom didn’t explain any further.

The same brother that tried to french kiss me, was also a problem growing up, she confessed. She’d just shoo him away.

Her younger sister wasn’t so lucky. Their grandfather dragged her out behind the barn one day and raped her, while the rest of the children stood by helpless. Only the youngest son grabbed the shotgun and threatened to kill the old man. It was an empty effort. Years later, the family would shun that aunt for her inappropriate sexual behaviors.

A child may be born with an innate sense of right and wrong, but it is not long before she learns to question her own instincts. How do you unravel the corruptly tangled web of abuse and denial? How does a child who has not been protected from wrong, learn to trust in right?

For me, it has been a slow dawning realization that words have no meaning. A man can say and promise whatever he wants, but it is action that speaks the truth. Holding your child in a death grip to prove your prowess, is not an act of love.