The Fine Line Between Our Blood and Your Bullshit

It's only been a month since I last talked to my dad. Honestly, we've gone longer even when we weren't fighting. It's the fact that I went home for the holidays and we didn't see each other that still has that whole fist driving into my nervous system effect on me.  Not that I miss him. This is a man that showed up at my little sister's work drunk and stared at her breasts the entire night. This is a man that hits on sixteen year old girls while his wife is at home, pregnant with his child. This is a man that locks himself in a room with his youngest son and beats him with a belt. I still wonder if he locks the door so that my half brother can't escape or so that none of us can save him. I don't want him in my life yet there is this strange instinct within myself and my siblings that urges us to protect him.

I have this beautiful hand-carved wooden box that my high school boyfriend gave me. He bought it for me at a little Indian shop in Chicago. Being a broke teenager, he collected some soft stones on the beach and placed them inside along with a poem he wrote for me. This was during a time in our relationship where his own human decency was most palpable; during a time when he wasn't sexually abusing me and telling me how hideous I was without make-up on. Although, that time lasted all but 6 months and now here I am, nearly fifteen years later, still struggling with the reality that I chose to stay with him for two whole years of my fragile adolescence. But when someone tells you that you're stupid and ugly long enough, it begins to feel as if you should be grateful that that particular someone is even with you, because "who else would be?"

Although the repercussions of that relationship still haunt me, I can't lead myself to let go of the gift. The stones are gone, along with the poem. Now it's a pretty box, with nothing inside, that causes me a little bit of heartache at the sight of it because of what that young woman suffered, but it seems to represent the tiny fragment of goodness within him and within our relationship; the reason I stayed and maybe the only good thing that came out of what we had.

My father is like that box, the idea of it is beautiful, but when you open it . . . nothing.  This recent episode began with him calling me drunk and me asking him if we could modify the plans for our visit home.

"Dad, me, Jeanette and Charlie will all come out to your place over the weekend and spend the day there. I'm just asking, for the visit with Hunter, if you would be willing to come out our way because he's got a lot of driving to do that day and it would make it a lot easier on him."

"Well, I just don't understand Angie I though we had everything planned out. I mean, it's just sad, you know, I'm sure you're making time to see your uncle and your friends and Hunter's family but you can't even take some time out of your busy schedule to see your own dad. It's just sad."

"Again dad, the rest of us will come over that following weekend. I'm just trying to make the day a little easier on Hunter. He has to drive 45 minutes to Chicago and then another hour and a half to Indiana. It's a lot of driving in one day and your house is thirty minutes in the opposite direction. We're spread pretty thin here trying to make time for his parents, his sister, his grandparents who live in Indiana, mom and you guys. I'm just asking you to help me out here. I don't know why you're being so inflexible. I've spent the past twenty years coming to you. I think you can come to me, just this once."

"I'm not being inflexible. I just think it's sad. I'm really confused. I thought we had concrete plans."

"You know Dad, I'm a little confused as to why you're so confused." 

We pretty much went around in circles for about fifteen minutes until I offered him my ultimatum.

"You know what, you're being ridiculous. Here's what's going to happen. Plans with Hunter are off. Obviously it's too much to ask. You can call me tomorrow and apologize for being a jerk or don't plan on seeing me at all. Don't call me again tonight though." And that's when I hung up on him. Needless to say, he chose the latter and on my annual trip home to Chicago, I didn't see my father.

This didn't exactly give me the feeling like the roots of my existence had been chopped down from beneath me, I mean, I don't really believe he has that kind of power anymore. It's, more or less, the knowledge that this common behavior on his part, is not common to so many of the families around me. Every so often I have to check with Hunter. "Is this normal?"

"No, no Angeline, this is not normal. I don't understand this natural inclination you and your siblings have to want to protect your dad. I mean, the guy's an asshole. If it were me I would have dropped him years ago. I don't believe you should keep people in your life if they make you feel like that, family or not."

The thing is, when it comes to family, I'm pretty sure deep down Hunter knows it's not that easy. Every once in a while I see a ray of light come out of that darkness that has encompassed my dad and it touches me so resolutely my memory suddenly becomes a false perception. "There's good in him. It's really not that bad. He can't help himself." It's as if all the concrete understandings I had collected from my past that have aided in putting together the pieces of the strange and confusing puzzle that is my dad, suddenly shatter and the puzzle goes down with it. Then I'm left with a thousand pieces and no recollection of what the end result is supposed to look like. I don't know, perhaps it's time for me to stop living in this mindset that his puzzle is mine to put together.  Let him pick up his own dam pieces.