Just the Dreary Facts...Even More

"The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother."~ Theodore Hesburgh

I remember very little of the fourth grade. I recall being at school still when the news arrived that John Kennedy had been shot. I was cleaning the blackboard for my teacher; I always tried to develop caring relationships with all of my teachers. I suppose I recognized the need for more nurturing in my life. My mom's attention was becoming more and more consumed by my father's insanity.

My teacher sent me home and I think I was a little dazed. Later, I grieved for the family he left behind. I also had some firm belief that I was somehow responsible for it. My birthday is in November, but there was no particular reason to take resonsibility for the tragedy, other than that it seemed I was behind all of the tragedies happening around me constantly. When it became clear that I would have to be home for some time, I was really miserable. At that point, any escape from my home was a blessing...even if it only meant going to school.

When i spoke earlier of my father's insanity, I was referring to an actual psychiatric illness, although I couldn't have known that at the time. I could identify crazy behavior, but my only real knowledge of mental illness was related to my father's sister who had been institutionalized more than once. My father seemed to like to believe that my aunt was just faking it or maybe that she just refused to pull herself together and get on with things. Whenever I did something he didn't like, he always threatened to institutionalize me. I wasn't sure what that meant, but it didn't sound good.

much later in my life, I found out that my father was actively psychotic for most of my childhood. I used to believe he suffered from schizophrenia, but it's more likely that he had some schizo-affective disorder. Psychosis explains his firm belief at some point around this time that my mother was trying to kill him by putting glass in his food. She wasn't, of course, but no one could have blamed her if she had.

My mom had a job at that time and my father believed she was having an affair. My mother would never have had an affair. After being with my dad, no one would wish to embark on another relationship with a man. So he got to torture her for that. I remember one weekend things got really scary. He was making my mom drink alcohol. My mom didn't drink; she was also a tiny person at the time, around 5'3" tall and 103 pounds. A little aochol went a long way with her. He made her drink, beat her, made her drink, beat her. It went on all weekend. He reassured me there was no reason to be afraid. Right. Then there was the glass in the food incident. That may have lasted an entire weekend, too, but all of this tends to run together after a while. More later. I've just reached my emotional limit.