A Postcard from the Box

"Draw a square on a piece of paper. This is your safe place. Now, write about what you’re afraid to write about.”

Easy to say, but not so easy to do. To do so would be to stare into the dark drawers we hide the hurts and fears in and bring them out to the light for examination. I envision my difficult topics like a balled up set of last year’s Christmas lights, frustrating enough to throw them back into the bag they came from and buy a new set.

So consider this a postcard from inside the box. I’ll try to tell things the way they were, and not to oversensationalize or attach too much humor to the memories and incidents. That will come later when I write a character through it, so until then there is nothing left but to begin.

The first difficult topic that comes to mind is my father. It’s difficult in that I knew he was messed up, and I kind of knew why but I never got a chance to reconcile that. I don’t know all the details, and you can’t finish a puzzle when you aren't’t even sure some of the pieces even exist. So, having said that, I’ll begin with my first memory of my father.

We were at the hospital. Mercy Hospital in Portland, Maine. We were in a little room and my father had bent down to pick me up and together we looked into a crib. The child in the crib was my sister Juliana and I remember that the room was dark and she was sleeping on her stomach. I pointed to her and said something and my father shushed me. In the corner, on one of those high rolling tables was a brightly woven Easter basket and when I pointed to it, he brought me over and foraged in the green plastic grass until he came up with a couple of jelly beans to give me.

I kept it a secret even now, that I had pilfered her Easter basket before I could even talk although it did kind of set the tone for our relationship henceforth.

So now we come to the LAST memory I have of my father. I was living with him or a short time, having just left my husband, my son’s father. Earlier on, my father had made the offer that if I ever needed anything, that I could call him. Money, a place to stay, anything. I don’t think he ever expected me to take him up on it, because it didn’t go well.

He kept avoiding confrontation with me, and saying things to my son that no child who has been ripped from his home should hear. Things like, “If you don’t play quietly, you and your mother will have to find another place to live.”

I finally confronted him about it one evening after putting my son to sleep. I told him that if he had things to say, that he should say them to me rather than my son who was feeling pretty lost as it was having witnessed the final argument between his parents and all the fallout the accompanies such an event.

I sat with my father at the dining room table and delivered my request to him. He drew in a deep breath like a fireplace bellows and his eyes widened. Rage reddening his face, he stood up from the round table, he pointed a finger at me.

Seething, he bit out his words. “Don’t you dare…tell me…what to do in my HOUSE! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” He escalated.

“THE WAY YOU RAISE THAT KID HE’S GOING TO BE IN JAIL!” he thundered. I had the good sense to keep quiet because….Wait Wait. Hold up… You know what? Screw the “not making it funny” rule because even in the worst of times things can be absurdly funny. Anyway, I kept quiet, figuring that reminding my father of his own visits to the County Jail, twice that I know of, wouldn’t be constructive criticism at this particular time. I sat with my hands folded and waited, as I had learned to do with Ian’s father at Lecture Time and his tirade continued.

“WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? SITTING THERE. JESUS CHRIST BUT DIDN’T YOUR MOTHER TEACH YOU HOW TO BE A B*TCH! STEPHANIE F*CKING MANSON!” He spat my mother’s name like bile and I was surprised that he would even bring my mother into the equation. He obviously had more baggage to deal with than he let on. Still, I sat, waiting it out. I could sit there all night if I had to.

I guess he was looking for a fight and wasn’t getting one so with both hands he took up the heavy glass bowl in the center of the table the blue/green glass reflecting the dining room light. He held it up like Kunta Kinte’s father and looked from side to side as if to find a good place to smash it, frustrated that the dining room was carpeted.

Concerned for the first time about my safety should he decide to lob it my direction, I met his eyes and held them and spoke one word. “No.” quietly but forcefully. His shot up in surprise and slowly he lowered the bowl back to the table. I could tell, however, that his episode was not complete.

He began pacing back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room panting like a coyote in a too-small cage. He drew in a deep breath for another crack at it.

“IF YOU AND THAT BRAT AREN’T OUT OF HERE BY THE TIME I GET HOME TOMORROW. I’M CALLING THE SHERRIF!” he howled pointing at the ceiling to make his point before completing the circuit back to the kitchen. On his next lap around, he opened his mouth as if to day something more, but his teeth fell out onto the braided rug.

I looked at him and then back to the teeth and he looked at the teeth and back at me. He must have counted to three Mississippi because he gathered steam again. He picked the teeth up and popped them back into this mouth so fast I heard them racket over the teeth he still had.

“DO YOU HEAR ME?” he roared once his dental work was seated properly.

I nodded, still trying to keep my composure after the teeth on the rug moment and he finally brushed past me to stumble up the stairs muttering my mother’s name mixed with more profanity.

That’s the last violent, disturbing, absurdly funny memory I have of my father. In hindsight, I think he’d bitten of more than his mind could chew when we came to stay with him so this was a convenient excuse to get us out.

Regardless, I didn’t wait until the next day. I pulled my sleeping son out of his temporary bed and spent the night in a hotel returning later the next day to get our things. It was hard moving my son yet again into my in-law’s house and then into temporary apartment that was a way station to the one we stayed in for five years.

He died a year and a half ago, four years after my last memory of him. And no one thought to tell me.

But that’s for another day in the box