sister #3 and her husband, 9 3/4 left the bbq in a huff. she was angry at him. because he wouldn’t jump when she called him. apparently 9 3/4 was inside taking care of the peanut. anyway she got angry, started crying and announced they were leaving. she does this often and it upsets me everytime. it reminds me too much of how my dad used to act.
now i can’t sleep. whenever sister #3 acts like this it just brings back every wretched memory of the terrible things my dad ever did to me. this no doubt will be the toughest thing i’ve written since this. but the time has come to let it all out.
there’s a spot on my left cheek that’s lighter than the rest of my face where i was slapped so hard as a kid.
i was kicked out of the house for the first time when i was 10, sister #2 was 8. it was christmas day, my grandma had come over and we had made a mess of wrapping paper and what not. dad didn’t see the mess until we had come home from the holiday festivities at my cousin donna’s house. he was irate. he said he didn’t want such filthy pigs living under his roof.
he said he didn’t care that it was winter and that i was only 10 and sister #2 was 8– he wanted us out– that very night. he made us clean up the mess and then pack our bags. i remember sobbing while throwing the ribbons away, but i had a plan. i always had a plan. my aunt eileen didn’t live too far away. sister #2 and i could walk there and they’d take care of us. that was my plan, i was 10.
somehow mom talked him out of his rage and we were allowed to stay. but we couldn’t play with any of our christmas presents for a month. plus he didn’t want to see our faces. whenever he was home we were to be in our bedrooms. that was his favorite– not wanting to see our faces. i spent so much time in my room as a kid when we lived in Blaine that sister #3 and #4 don’t really remember me being around.
i was sent to my room for talking too much, for reading too much, for crying too much when he sang “fatty, fatty two by four can’t fit through the kitchend door.”
i spent four weeks in my bedroom the summer i was 15 because i was 4 minutes late– a week for every minute. a week later sister #2 showed up 15 minutes late, nothing happened to her. he was anything but consistent.
they always say parents are harder on the oldest child. i’m not sure how much of that is true. i just know that sister #2 and i had two very different upbringings. at the age of 11 i decided i wanted to play a musical instrument. i wanted to play the drums, because the drums were cool. dad said no, because you had to have years of piano lessons before you could play the drums. i settled for the alto sax, because jennie baker said it was cool. the alto sax was all fine and dandy, but i better be damn sure it’s what i wanted to do. because once i started, i had to stick with it until i graduated high school. after that, it was my own decision. i played the alto sax for six years.
two years later sister #2 decided she wanted to play a musical instrument. she choose the drums. oddly enough the piano lessons rule disappeared. she had a drumset and private lessons within a month. she quit playing the drums after the seventh grade.
i was grounded for a week after bringing home an algebra midterm with a D on it. it was the last D i ever got. i graduated high school with a 3.89 GPA. on the night of my high school graduation, he had a fight with my mom and refused to be in any pictures with me in my bright blue cap and gown.
sister #2 held her breath all during her high school commencement. she was one gym credit short, but they never noticed. she graduated with a 2.00 GPA, she has lots of pictures of her in her cap and gown with a proud, smiling dad.
i’m sure each of my sisters have similar stories to tell.
thankfully things have changed for the most part. i love my dad, depsite his imperfections. he’s not the kind of man who should have married a woman who already had a child. parents claim to love all their children equally. perhaps it’s true, but i believe they all love their children differently. i have no doubt my dad adored me for awhile. he thought he knew love, until sister #2 came along. flesh of his flesh, the sun rises and sets on her. it always has and i’m pretty sure it always will.
i think my mom always tried to make up for this by babying me, favoring me a little.
i remember when i was 16, we were driving to roseville, to some family function. it was just me and mom. she told me that he’ll never love me as much as the other girls and that there’s nothing i’ll ever be able to do about it. she told me that he was jealous of me, because i was so much like my biological father. that i should never let what he thinks stop me from doing whateverit is i want to do. that because of this, i’ll always do better than sister #2, because i’ll work for what i want. she also told me that she’s never loved my dad as much as she loved my biological father. somehow this was comforting.
things changed a lot between my dad and i, the summer i turned 17. he packed up the family and moved to wisconsin. i refused to go, opting to stay behind to finish out my senior year of high school. it was then i realized that he could not control me anymore. that i was free to be the person i wanted to be.
things changed even more after he had his heart attack in 1998. he’s become a kindler, gentler dad. he’s apologized for the sins of his past. i forgave him.
i know that i’ll have to continue earning his love. i’ve done really well these past few years. i’m the only daughter who still helps out at the bowling alley, even though i was voted most likely to bail.
slowly, ever so slowly, i think he’s realized that i’m not so bad. i’m not so lazy. i’m not too sensitive.
i know he had a hard time with this giant of a daughter who outgrew him by the time she was 10. i will envy my sister forever because the got to sit on dad’s lap and be daddy’s little girl forever. even now, sister #2 will still crawl up onto his lap and it breaks my heart.
he never really knew what to do with this fat, awkward, too tall girl who read too much and lived in a dreamworld he couldn’t even imagine.
slowly, ever so slowly, i’ve realized that he did the best that he could with the limited tools he had at his disposal.
that’s it. i can’t write anymore, i can’t cry anymore. my throat hurts too much and my eyes have grown heavy. i feel so much lighter now, relieved even. and so very, very tired.
Jodi, that was beautiful and sad. I’m sorry about, I guess I’d call it loss. It seems like you’ve come to terms with it though. Your writing is great, and I hope you keep it up. Thanks for sharing.
What a hard thing to grow up with. I can relate, on a much smaller level, and it hurts. But I think it’s wonderful that you’ve come to accept your dad as he is, and for what he’s capable of.
*hug*
i can’t even remember how i got to your site a few months ago… but entries like this one is why i stuck around and continue to come back — your intense honesty is so rare, it seems, on the web. it’s great to see what you’re doing with your site. keep up the good work! and, thanks for sharing.
The fact that you have forgiven him for his unforgivable treatment of you shows your vastly superior capacity for love and understanding of human failings.
For that, you should be proud.
For that, your friends, family and co-workers are more lucky than they will ever know.
Has your mother ever explained to you why she chose to let your father treat you and your sisters unfairly, rather than stand up to him and help someone who was heavily overweighed by the balance of power in the family? It sounds like she preferred to avoid the conflict she may have encountered even if it meant failing to help her children. that’s sad, it’s like the mother who lets her boyfriend abuse her children. Is a man worth that much? Silence is not always golden, it’s passive aggressive when you don’t step up to the plate to help the disenfranchised, when you can do something about it. I’m tired of people looking the other way, it’s time to take a little self responsibility. If you’re going to have kids, then by all means, protect them, cherish them, and pay attention to their distress!!! If you don’t want to bother, don’t bring them into the world. If they’re in the world, don’t let your spouse abuse them, either physically or mentally and emotionally. there I said my piece, I don’t know if anyone else agrees, but it’s really affected you, so maybe someone else will recognize their own actions and step up to the plate when the need is there.
much like my father, i think she did the best she could with the tools she had. i used to beg her to leave him, but she never will. there’s so much there that i can’t ever understand. and really being angry about it still would just take entirely more energy than it’s worth. don’t you think?
Situations are different, but have some similarity. There were many times when it seemed my mother chose my brother over me. My feelings and my safety seemed less important than ‘keeping peace’. In her efforts to ‘keep peace’, my father knew little or nothing of the violence involved in my relationship with my brother. He was confused and felt betrayed when I crashed and burned emotionally. He pulled away from me then. I had two parents, but felt abandoned for a very lomg time. And angry.
But, like you, I think they did the best they could with what they knew at the time. I understand that my mother was lost and didn’t know what to do about the rages. I understand feeling the need to hide what was wrong or deny the seriousness of it.
I’m nearly as old now as she was then. Parents aren’t perfect. They’re just people… lost, confused, and scared sometimes.
And you’re right… being angry now is a waste of energy. You’re a strong, wonderful woman, Jodi. Thank you for sharing something so difficult and personal.
Jodi, I think you are right to not harbor the resentment and realize that your parents are not perfect. My daughter asked me the other day why if God is in everything and created everything would God have created sickness. I told her that sometimes illness and sickness can be a strong teaching tool. It sounds like the heart attack did for your father something that really needed to be done. I guess in writing the comments about your mother I’m thinking of the whole family dynamic, how it affects us and the patterns still crop up in our day to day distresses, you know, why we feel competitive with coworkers, siblings, and inadequate. Maybe by recognizing some of the roots we understand why, not that we condone them or hate them, just that we gain understanding. By seeing what others have learned, maybe we will suffer less, have more compassion and more tolerance of why people react to certain situations. By writing about these things I really hope it allows you to release them and not let them burden you, also knowing that they’ve taught you a lot to be a whole person. take care, you still are that beautiful shining girl who’s picture you showed us. Believe in her, don’t let anyone knock her or others like her down.
I admire your honesty and writing ability. You sound like a person my wife and I would like if we met you, and someone we could hang around with playing videogames et al.
That’s it, I wanted to say thanks. If you every wander to Michigan, drop a line.