As a little girl, with my cabbage patch doll face and sandy blonde hair in waves down to my butt, I knew nothing of fear. At least not of real fear. I knew about spiders and the dark. Of tall trees and the sounds my old house made as everyone slept. I never knew of addiction, depression, or the total loss of control that even the dark fears.
He was my hero. A man who would appear with gifts and treats. Playing games and taking me on adventures. He was strong, kind, casual. I never had to follow the rules that my mother set forth. I was allowed to play and laugh and eat ice cream from the container. I could watch movies until I was in a mental coma and then I could watch them all again.
We would camp under the stars, he, my step mother and I, sleeping on a mattress pulled out into the grass. Or we would go fishing and I would see the world from that place that so often I forget. That quiet alone place, where it was just him and me. I think he taught me how to love being alone. I also think that his love of isolation is why I have such a deep longing for the simplicity of silence.
We never went to the busy places, no malls or parks. When we were together we had adventures. We went to the places I always thought were secret. He took me to, what he called, a tribal cemetery once, somewhere in the Columbia River Gorge. He told me scary stories about the graves. I believed every word, despite the pin wheels and plastic flowers. He had a gift for that, for spinning tales. I think that may be why I choose to write a shelter that people can cling to in the stead of their own realities.
I think that it is very possible that he is the reason I have such a sense of whimsy. He was never very in touch with real life. But as a child I never thought twice about it. In those days of mud and the heat of summer, of tea time under the sun with plastic garage sale teacup sets, of limitless possibilities and the freedom of ignorance, he was my hero. Our time together, though limited, was a kind of magic in my life. And why wouldn’t it be? He lived his life as a work of fiction. He wrote the life he wanted people to believe. What eight year old wouldn’t want to believe every word as fact? Disbelief is only a product of those moments that leave a person world-weary.
My serious parent, my real parent, never made me see that part. I never saw the hesitancy, the fear. I never once knew the panic of her mind. The sheer loss of control that comes from relinquishing that which you hold most precious into the hands of the one who has caused you the most pain.
My fairy tale never included the drunken anger. I couldn’t recall the tension, the fear, the hate, the broken nature of a heart in love with someone who would not love her but would not let her go. Threats and despair never entered my young world… not from that responsible parent.
It wasn’t until things turned sour in both homes that I began to see the nature of discontent. In one half of my world despair manifested itself in work. In the other home, I was allowed to stay awake late enough to see the slamming of doors and the searing of tears. I learned what it was to fear my hero for the first time. I would wake in the night to the sounds of his retching or his bone shattering coughs. I know the moment that he went from hero to human. From Daddy to Dave.
I was eleven. My birthday was coming up and I was with his family for the weekend. I was settled into my makeshift bed in yet another rental house. I woke up to reality. The light from the bathroom creeping into the dark I no longer feared. The sounds of sickness. Again. And it was as if I had finished the puzzle. That last piece fell into place. The reason he never shared is soda bottles. The reason he was always free to have adventures and never had to work, the reason my step mother drove pretty much everywhere.
My daddy was drunk. Pretty much all of the time. I finally understood that look in my mother’s face as we drove away from her.
