Salinas California, 1970. I was ten
years old.
My earliest memories are of my parents
fighting. My very first memory is of my parents fighting. We lived in Chicago,
in an apartment. I was two or three. My parent were fighting. My mom threw a
bag of flower at my dad. They were in the kitchen when it happened. Everything
went white. Theirs was a complicated relationship.
My dad would come and go. He would be
gone for maybe days; maybe weeks, maybe months and then he'd just show up. We
moved all the time. My dad’s fortune was always in the next town. In business
and in life my dad would suffer one ignominious defeat after the next.
Why?
My dad
grew up in an orphanage, Drew Baptist Orphanage in Arkansas. His parents died
from TB when he was three. At the age of seventeen my dad enlisted into the
Marines and off to the Korean War where he earned four combat citations.
I don’t
know what damaged my dad more, the orphanage or the war? Both left my dad
scarred for life. He confides in me some of the horrors he experienced and
witnessed during his fourteen year stay at the Baptist orphanage. What my dad
witnessed and experienced gave him a visceral hatred for Christianity.
We lived
in Salinas California when I was ten. Our house was on Shasta Way. Our phone
number was 424-6278. My dad worked for Shippers Development Company which was a
short bike ride from the house.
He was
getting ready to leave again and told me so.
“I cannot
live with your mom anymore” he said.
He asked
if I wanted to come with. I said yes. Of course. I idolized my dad.
I was
instructed to go home, not tell anyone what I was up to when putting some of my
clothes in a bag. I was to meet him at the street corner. I did as instructed.
I went home and put some clothes in a brown paper bag and slipped out of the
house without provoking the interest of my sisters.
At the
end of the street I waited. Hours passed. Eventually I was forced to realize he
was gone again without me. He left me there. He abandoned me. He abandoned us.
Over seven years would pass before I would see my dad again. Seven painful and
turbulent years.
For seven
years I expected to see him every time I turned the corner to my house. I
expected him to show up with arms full of gifts. My dad was eventually going to
show up and rescue me, us. He would have a great job, make lots of money and we
would have stability and normalcy.
I
hungered for stability more than food.
I gasped
for normaly more than air.
How I
wanted to be from a "normal" family.
I married
an uncomfortable need for stress and anxiety. To some degree this was programmed
into me by my parents.
As the
years passed my hope to see him again never diminished. hope spring eternal.
Because
we moved so many times during my childhood I grew up with envy for those living
stable lives. I have two ex-wives that grew up in extremely stable homes. This
was part of their attraction.
At
eighteen I was clueless about what kind of life to create. I had no direction.
No discipline. The only thing I was clear about, I would NEVER leave my child
behind. Not me. I would never leave a child saying;
“Where’s
my dad”?
I was
confident I’d be a better father than the one I had.
Days
after my daughters third birthday I left her and would not return for six years
four months three days.
The apple
did not fall far from the tree.
To my
everlasting shame, I became just like my father…
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