When I was 12 years old, my father came to visit us. I remember his visit very vividly because there were only a handful of times during my entire childhood that he did visit! But at 12, half-grown, I was starting to see him and our situation from a different perspective. I was starting to question the stories that he was bad and evil, and that my mother had almost died when she lived with him on his ranch, and that he was coming to try and take us away to live with him forever.
Through my middle aged eyes, I see that my father was not bad, that my mother had a difficult situation, but not life-threatening, and that I seriously doubt my father ever intended taking two young girls away to live with him on his ranch. I simply do not think he ever wanted the full responsibliity for us. I think, in retrospect, that my parents, though good people, were just a bit immature.
So my father came for a visit. I remember everyone being pleasant enough, although I don’t think my grandmother was speaking to him (that woman could carry on the silent treatment for weeks at a time!). I do remember the next morning hearing my father’s voice in my mother’s room and my sister and I both being rather scandalized until we logically thought it out (logic – even then!) and figured they were still married, so it probably wasn’t a mortal sin. My grandmother was less flexible. She ranted and raled and started calling him all types of terrible names including “n*gger face” and worse. He yelled back, but my grandmother clearly had the upper hand. She fought dirty. I don’t remember my father reciprocating.
So my father called a cab. I begged him to stay. I reasoned with him that grandma would calm down. I suggested he get a motel room. I promised to show him my dance from my dance recital and play my flute. I wanted to show him my school. But no matter what I said or how I pleaded, or how I cried, my father got in a cab and left. The visit was over. I remember that I was still sobbing about this when my grandma told me that if I didn’t shut up, I could go with him!
It’s hard to describe what that felt like. I felt abandoned my my father, but also by my grandmother. I felt helpless in a situation that I could not control, abandoned. And somehow I thought if I could have been more persuasive, if my I could have been more convincing, my father would have stayed and maybe my grandma would have been nicer. But mostly bothered me the most was that I couldn’t control anything. I couldn’t make my father stay.
Fastforward and I’m a married lady. There have been a few times in our marriage, of course, where my husband has had to leave me for business, or to go to a seminar, or to take the kids somewhere. And when that happens, that 12-year-old stirs within me and wants to beg him not to go. Not to abandon me. It’s the strangest thing because I know better. I understand that he is going for a specific reason (usually a reason that is good for his business and for our family) but I still feel abandoned.
Mr. Pete is taking two of our boys and some other kids to a Steubenville Catholic Youth conference. He will be there as a chaperone. He gets to sleep in a dorm bed or on the floor, and he has to be responsible for these teens. It is a job wrought with responsibility – not a vacation. But I feel those old stirrings and I find that the closer this comes the more I close up towards him. I can’t be affectionate, I don’t want to talk or be touched. After all the years of marriage, Mr. Pete knows the drill, he knows I’ll get over it and life will go on. It’s just very hard for me to separate.
I truly hope and pray that I never do or say anything to my children that will affect them as deeply and negatively as this has. I think to still have to control feelings about something that happened over 30 years ago is a bit much.
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