{"id":288,"date":"2019-06-25T15:40:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T18:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/?p=288"},"modified":"2019-07-08T01:19:46","modified_gmt":"2019-07-08T04:19:46","slug":"my-father-was-a-monster-with-a-pretty-good-sense-of-humour-im-left-with-ptsd-a-handful-of-happy-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/2019\/06\/25\/my-father-was-a-monster-with-a-pretty-good-sense-of-humour-im-left-with-ptsd-a-handful-of-happy-memories\/","title":{"rendered":"My Father was a Monster – With a pretty good sense of Humour – I’m left with PTSD & a handful of happy memories."},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, June 25th, 2019 – +21\u02daC \/ +70\u02daF – sunny & bright with a deep blue sky @ 11:11 am\u00a0 –<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

— “Not a poem” from my friend, Douglas Jay Otterson in the Ithaca, New York area —><\/p>\n

“My Father Was a Monster”<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
1.
\nHe was everyone’s friend at family gatherings
\nBut two swigs later his eyes could turn glassy
\nhis huge strong arms swung violently through the air.
\nAnd his roar was as bad as his bite.We never knew what to expect
\nHe was everybody’s friend at home in the kitchen
\nsinging \u201cDaddy’s little Girl\u201d with a big smile on his face
\nand one of my sisters on his knee.
\nOne slam of his fist on the kitchen table
\nrattled all the silverware in the house.I don’t think he physically hurt
\nany one of his daughters
\nBut the psychological terror was always
\none or two seconds away.I might have been thirteen years old
\nwhen somebody gave me a lockable diary
\nfor Christmas or my birthday.
\nI kept it in a bureau drawer
\nunder folded tee shirts
\nBut somehow he found it and picked the lock-
\n-Got drunk at a family picnic and
\ncalled me an asshole in front of everybody,
\nquoted two lines from one of a hundred pages
\n-somewhere in the middle of the book, middle of the page –
\nThat kind of betrayal never goes away<\/p>\n

I started writing in French. And in code.<\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

P.T.S.D.
\nI was not the only one-
\nI had friends who would never want to be there
\nwhen their fathers came home.
\nOur babysitter \u2013 whose father worked with mine
\nsurprised us one night when dad was working nights
\nand her father on another shift had just come home.<\/p>\n

She’d run out her back door and across three back yards
\nthen down someone’s driveway, maybe another hundred yards
\n-across a main road and knocked our door.
\nShe was trembling when she asked my mother
\nif she could hide out with us
\nuntil her father simmered down.<\/p>\n

We didn’t ask why her father might have been crazy mad-
\nmaybe even not mad at her.
\nWe let her in. And I got sent upstairs to mind my own business.
\nAnd her mother called several hours later and said her father had passed out drunk
\nand it was safe to come home.<\/p>\n

I was just beginning to realize when my father was drunk
\nand when he wasn’t
\nwhen he gave me a twenty dollar bill one night and told me to get
\nwhatever I needed.
\nI bought a pair of shoes that fit me better than the ones I had.<\/p>\n

The next day he asked me where the new shoes came from
\nI was confused, I said, \u201cYou gave me the money last night -\u201d
\nHow much? Twenty dollars.
\n\u201cYou took advantage of me, pal-\u201d he began
\nand he went on a verbal warpath that evening-
\ndemanded the seven dollars change I gave my mother
\n-terrorized every one of his five kids and his wife.<\/p>\n

He raised his hand to strike one of us several times,
\nbut never did – not that evening –
\nOne sister went upstairs crying and he ran up after her
\nWe were terrified
\nEvery nerve on edge
\nwe listened and were ready to jump
\nand try to subdue a monster bigger than all of us together
\nif it sounded like he was about to slap or punch a girl-
\nnot even half his size
\nWe heard him using his soft, friendly voice –
\n“I would never do anything to hurt you-”<\/p>\n

He hit my mother twice.
\nBoth times she packed us up and spirited us out of the house.
\nThe first time she had my aunt pick us up and drive us to Vermont,
\nto her mother and father.
\nWhere my grandfather groped all three of my sisters
\nand spouted the strictest, straight-arrow, black and white
\nmoralistic b.s. I ever heard.<\/p>\n

A couple details are scrambled lately
\nbut I think my uncle came and got me and brought me back home
\nwhere we sat with my father and he looked broken and lost
\nmy father looked broken and lost.
\nI thought he was genuinely remorseful. (I was fifteen or sixteen years old)
\nHe promised to be a better person.
\nHe promised all kinds of things.
\nMy uncle drove me back to Vermont.
\nWe packed up and came back home.<\/p>\n

His best behavior lasted two weeks.<\/p>\n

Another incident. I was already in Vermont
\nworking at my grandparents Motel, Restaurant and gas station
\nRunning the gas station pretty much by myself at the age of nineteen
\nfor ten dollars a week. (and room and board?)
\nI don’t know what happened
\nBut my mother and the other four kids showed up and dug in to stay
\nThe younger kids were enrolled in local schools
\nMy mother worked as a waitress and sometimes ‘hostess’
\nat the restaurant where I was designated emergency fill in dishwasher.<\/p>\n

I don’t know \u2013 maybe it was a month later
\nmy father found out where they were and came up, got a room in the motel
\nand threatened to charge mom with kidnapping.
\nThe local Congregational Minister sat and talked with mom and dad
\nand in the end
\nMom broke down and believed him
\nonce again,
\nbelieved he could change
\nbelieved he could be better.<\/p>\n

So they went back home
\nAnd I went with them,
\nthinking maybe he’d be more apt to keep his promises
\nnow that I was six foot three and weighed a hundred and thirty pounds
\nI got a job pumping gas.
\nThat lasted a couple months,
\nuntil I came down with hepatitis<\/p>\n

My favorite uncle came to see me and his jaw dropped
\nhe later said I looked three quarters dead.<\/p>\n

I was slowly getting better.
\nThe doctor said it might take a couple more months
\nmy father, working his part time job,
\ndelivering oil in an area close enough so he could stop home
\nto use the facilities, et cetera,
\nstopped home mid morning and roared
\nThat if I was still there when he got home from work
\nhe’d pitch me out in the middle of the road
\nHe said he knew I got hepatitis
\nso I could avoid working
\nand paying him rent.<\/p>\n

Ya know, I know-
\nA lot of kids had it worse
\nA lot of kids had broken bones and worse<\/p>\n

But what convinced me that I had PTSD
\nwas not just the nightmares.
\n{ or other weird dreams, like the time
\nI dreamed he came charging up the stairs
\nto beat the ‘living cement’ out of me \u2013 again –
\nand I jumped out of my body –
\nI probably really had an astral projection-
\nI leaped through the roof and out into a starry winter night,
\nbare trees, cold wind-
\nI turned around and saw through the walls and saw my bedroom
\nin bright sunlight
\nwith the bed made
\nand nobody in it –
\nIf this wasn’t enough to scare me –
\nI knew that I had not completed the task
\nthat God or one of the ArchAngels had assigned me –
\nI hadn’t written my books
\nand I snapped right back into my body,
\nit was still night, and nobody had run up the stairs
\nin a bloodlust
\nto beat up anybody.<\/p>\n

I was amazed at how miraculously relaxed I felt }<\/p>\n

I had several dreams in which my father fell asleep or died
\nwhile driving a family car
\nand I tried to climb out of the back seat, over him –
\nto get into the driver’s seat
\nand steer us to safety.<\/p>\n

Most nightmares had invisible demons coming after me.<\/p>\n

but worse than nightmares –
\nwhenever he threatened me \u2013 or my mother,
\nor seemed on the verge of losing control
\nI had immediate visualizations of anything within reach
\nthat I could use as a weapon
\nand a felt myself summon the adrenaline I’d need
\nto smash his skull or drive a knife into his jugular vein,
\ngive him a karate inspired knuckle punch to the adams apple –<\/p>\n

I somehow never lost control –
\nwell- one time
\na dog followed one of the kids into the house
\nthey were petting him.
\nMy father picked the dog up and
\nviolently
\nthrew the dog down the stairs
\ndidn’t break any bones
\nbut it yelped and ran like crazy to get away –
\nAnd as my father started screaming
\n\u201cWho the Christ Jesus let that dog into the house?\u201d
\nI jumped out of my room
\nwith blood in my eyes and
\nwas half a heartbeat away
\nfrom pushing my father down the stairs
\nAt the last moment
\nI turned and smashed a hole two feet in diameter
\nin the sheet rock wall at the top of the stairs.
\nHe didn’t hear the crash
\nas he was roaring and stomping down the stairs.<\/p>\n

The next morning
\nhe discovered the hole in the wall –
\nAsked my mother about it
\nshe told him he came home drunk and he did it.
\nHe’d already kicked and punched through a couple other walls
\nhe believed her. (I think she only lied in life or death situations.)<\/p>\n

Years later, working at the post office
\nseeing supervisors and managers bullying
\npowerless employees,
\nvandalizing post office property and blaming custodians
\nthey wanted to get rid of any way they could-
\nlying on official documents and when, in the grievance process
\nthey were confronted with evidence that they’d lied, they’d reply
\n\u201cManagement has the right to make comments.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the post office-
\nI never came close to bashing any skulls in-
\nbut I did have to walk away and calm my breath
\nseveral times<\/p>\n

It took me two years of
\ndelivering newspapers
\nof an unethical publisher
\nin New York State –
\nOut – driving throw-away junkers
\non a two hundred and fifty mile loop through three counties
\naway from supervisors and managers
\nmaking peanuts, actually losing money
\nas they double charged everybody that worked for them
\nand claimed I owed for more papers they never issued to me-<\/p>\n

it took me two years of fresh air and sunshine
\nand wind and rain and driving snow
\nbefore I could think about idiotic post office supervisors
\nwithout imagining me in a dark foggy alley with a metal baseball bat
\nwatching them approach, half drunk and bragging about how they
\ngot to the Puerto Rican guy they didn’t like,
\nand got the African American custodian to resign for health reasons
\nwhen I was no longer there to protect them –<\/p>\n

I would have loved to see the look on their eyes
\nwhen the cop they called to press charges against me
\nfor smashing windshields and slashing tires on post office delivery vehicles
\nwhen the officer was a friend of the family and laughed in their faces,
\n\u201cI know that man \u2013 he’s working for a newspaper three hundred miles from here-
\nand has been for three years now.\u201d
\nThis was somebody who’d listened to me ‘belly aching’ about the nonsense
\nthose supervisors were pulling against innocent employees
\nAnd he only half believed me, thought I was exaggerating.
\nUntil they tried to frame me for something
\nsome other stressed out postal worker
\nor random pissed off customer
\nor slithering supervisor committed.<\/p>\n

It took me at least another decade and a lot of yoga
\nto calm myself down to where my first thought-
\nwhen faced with slimy evil manipulating son of a guns –
\nwas not, \u201cyeah, the world is full of idiots\u201d
\nwasn’t even, \u201cLet it go \u2013 somebody will get even with someone like that –
\ndon’t go to jail because you let him get to you.\u201d
\nbut an actual \u2013 \u201cBe patient, God isn’t finished with a lot of us yet.\u201d
\nor, \u201cThere really are two kinds of people on this planet-
\nAngels in Training and Angels in Trouble. –
\nAnd a lot of us have one foot in each camp –
\nAnd some of us are centipedes.\u201d<\/p>\n

3.
\nSixty something years into this life
\nand I need to work on my delivery.
\nI fought the anger down
\nI no longer jump at the sound of brakes
\nI no longer spend half my life expecting a sucker punch
\nfrom a huge right hand.<\/p>\n

He was six feet, two or three
\nWhen I was more like five foot nine
\nHe weighed around three hundred pounds
\nwhen I was more like ninety nine pounds with my ribs showing<\/p>\n

He’d often drop or misplace a pen
\nand start an inquisition with a roar –
\n\u201cWho stole my pen and what did you do with it?\u201d<\/p>\n

a teenaged zit was dinner table conversation –
\n\u201cWhat the Christ ya got growing out of your head?\u201d
\n-he’d ask with a leering grin.<\/p>\n

We moved from a project duplex
\nwith paper thin walls and neighbors so close
\nyou could spit out a window and hit their outside walls
\nWe moved to a ‘nicer neighborhood’
\nwhere we could hear the large man across the street
\nroar at his wife with ‘f’ words I never heard
\nin the old ‘not so nice’ neighborhood.<\/p>\n

So I figured every one within three hundred yards, maybe more
\ncould hear every tirade \u2013 would know we kids could drive a saint to swear
\ncould hear that my mother belonged in a luney bin,
\nCould probably wonder what the hell it meant to be told,
\n\u201cYou sound like someone with a paper asshole.\u201d<\/p>\n

The really scary part was –
\nHe could be warm and affectionate
\nand even make sense
\nSo there were times when I doubted my own sanity
\nand thought I might have judged him wrong
\njudged our whole situation wrong.<\/p>\n

But then my middle sister reminded me of the time
\nHe knocked me down in the back yard, knelt on my arms,
\nremoved my glasses and pummeled my head with both fists
\nscreaming, \u201cGive me a knife, I’m gonna kill him. Get me a knife!\u201d<\/p>\n

And we never knew what set him off.<\/p>\n

If we didn’t have a clue about some evil deed he was accusing us of –
\nwe’d often hear, \u201cDon’t play Mickey the Boo with me, pal-\u201d
\nand maybe need to duck or get smashed
\n-so who the hell was Mickey the Boo? None of us knew.<\/p>\n

4.
\nThe woman I love probably saved me from an early grave
\nin more ways than one.
\nAt a critical time in ‘my life’
\nshe fell in love with my voice and one poem I wrote.<\/p>\n

I told her I’d drive five hundred miles for a hug
\nand turn around and drive right back if she took one look and went, \u201cugh-\u201d<\/p>\n

I drove more than twelve hours across New York State Highways,
\ncrossed the bridge \u2013 went through customs
\nremembered what she said, answered all the questions
\nand appreciated the young customs guy’s smile as he welcomed me to Canada.<\/p>\n

I called from a convenience store, apologized for taking, what?
\n-maybe five hours longer than I’d expected that drive would take me?
\nWe met through a locked and chained door
\nin a semi-public place.
\n-On a scale of one to ten \u2013 I felt like a three
\nand the first glimpse of her I got
\nI thought, ‘Oh my god, she’s at least an eleven -‘
\nBut we hugged and talked and
\nshe didn’t send me right back home.<\/p>\n

Now- it’s seventeen years and a couple months later
\nAnd I believe we have the best relationship of any couple
\nI’ve ever known or heard of.
\nNobody’s perfect, but maybe our neuroses mesh
\nwithout exploding
\nAnd there are times when she’s actually said
\nshe wondered why I stuck around
\nthrough a couple odd stretches
\nthat I guess she thinks
\nwould have sent anybody else packing –
\nand \u2013 man \u2013 I think I wonder how she puts up
\nwith my ‘quirks and idiosyncrasies’ and outright failures –
\nI think I wonder about that at least twice a week.<\/p>\n

But I found something this morning
\nI thought we’d used up long ago and I felt good about that
\nI showed it to her and wondered if she’d found it a put it where I’d find it
\nAnd when I asked her if she’d known it was there
\nShe nearly lost her temper and said
\nshe didn’t need to face an inquisition while she
\nwas getting ready for work<\/p>\n

I was stunned.
\nI’m not my father.
\nDo I sound like him
\nwithout meaning to?<\/p>\n

Good Grief?<\/p>\n

 <\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

— Douglas J Otterson – June 25, 2019 —<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, June 25th, 2019 – +21\u02daC \/ +70\u02daF – sunny & bright with a deep blue sky @ 11:11 am\u00a0 – — “Not a poem” from my friend, Douglas Jay Otterson in the Ithaca, New York area —> “My Father Was a Monster”   1. He was everyone’s friend at \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,10,26,9,19,5,12,4,7,29,31,13,6,28,1,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-should-be-more-fun","category-life-should-be-more-relaxed","category-schnarr-is-my-favourite-euphemism-lately-especially-if-its-used-to-describe-stinky-slimy-creepy-stuff","category-the-truth-is-within-you","category-understanding-is-a-virtue","category-we-dont-want-to-be-allowed-to-vote-for-someone-elses-agenda-we-want-to-change-the-agenda-germaine-greer","category-creativity","category-how-to-lose-friends-and-annoy-everyone","category-insight","category-personal-evolution","category-poetry","category-politix","category-schnarr","category-spirituality","category-uncategorized","category-we-need-more-positive-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6lJAn-4E","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295,"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aerendel.ca\/awakening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}