Cat's in the Cradle

"You should write a book. Your dad is a great story." - Nick

Be that as it may, I am not ready to talk to the world about my father. I do my best to speak the coldest and harshest of truths, but my dad is still a sore subject for me - perhaps the only subject I cannot broach because it requires an honesty for which I am not ready.

To write about my father is to open up a trove of dark secrets that I am not ready to face as reality. For one, I have only the word of my mother to go by. For two, if those words are true, then it means facing a part of myself that may be too torturous to bear. I can only say what I know, but I would be remiss if I left out such a decisive piece of information about him.

I loved my dad. He was my daddy. I did not know that anything was amiss about his personality until I witnessed a whisper of the idea that my mom later told me was true. And I did not know how appalling the truth was until he told it to me himself.

"I had a shotgun, and I was coming to kill the whole family."

"Even me?"

"Even you."

My heart sank with the shattering illusion of the man I thought loved me more than anything. I was disgusted, disappointed, and not as amused as he seemed to be when relating the story of the time he was supposedly coming to pick me up for the weekend.

I was 12 years old waiting at home, excited about getting out of the house I called hell. It would be a couple of hours before dad showed up, so I sat and watched nothing in particular on TV. My mother was talking to my oldest sister in the other room, and I was oblivious to their conversation. A few minutes later, my sister came in and said, "Let's go rent a movie."

"But dad's coming. We don't have time."

"You can finish watching it tomorrow when you get home."

So we left. The video store was just a few blocks away, but my sister went the other direction.

"We're going to Fry's."

I reasoned that it was because she was used to going there, since she lived closer to it than the video store I always went to. When we got there, I knew exactly what I wanted to see - The Empire Strikes Back. It was a five years old by that time, but I had never seen it. I picked it up and said, "OK. Let's go."

"Don't you want to look around some more?"

"Can I get another movie?"

"I only have enough money for one."

I can be impatient and impetuous, but I humored her and went to the beginning of the video aisle scanning boxes for other movies that I know I didn't want to watch. I had my heart set on Empire. After about five minutes of blindly looking at titles, I was ready to go. My dad might be there by now.

"Not yet."

She walked me up and down a few aisles of the grocery store, picking up sundries, examining the packages, then putting them back.

"Can I get some candy?"

"No."

Finally, after what seemed like ages, we went to the counter and paid for the movie. I was excited. I got to watch the movie I wanted to see for years, AND I was going to see my dad!

And see him, I did.

As we turned the corner onto my street, I saw the police cars parked in front of my house, one in the driveway. As I got out of my sister's car, I saw my dad in the backseat of one of them. He was cussing at the police, and I don't think he even noticed me. My sister rushed me inside.

Confused. Despondent. I didn't know what to make of the situation. The police left, and my mom came into the house. She said nothing of the incident.

"Watch your movie."

I was dumbfounded. Why had she called the cops? Why did she not want me to see my daddy? Why was I stuck here with the other sister who hated me, the brother who terrorized me, and the mother whom I felt regretted my birth?

I cried. I cried so hard that I couldn't sit up. Curled up on the couch sobbing for my lost weekend, I could only think of the hatred I felt for my mother for doing this to me. Is 12 too young to hate? My passion for my release from this godawful hell burned me from within, streaming hot tears and mucous from my nose.

It hurt more than anything I had experienced in my short life. The betrayal. The indifference. The silence.

My sister put the movie on for me, but no one sat and explained to me what happened or why. I was left to hate with the hope that this movie I had dreamt about for years would entertain the pain away.

About half way through the movie, I stopped crying. I sat sullen and dejected, but tried my best to keep from crying any longer. It just hurt too much. Silently, alone, I watched, and eventually I recovered. I dipped into the realm of fantasy to escape the tortures of my life with these people who seemed only to exist to cause me pain.

"No. I am your father."

Fourteen years later, sitting outside my job smoking cigarettes with the man over whom I shed innumerous tears, I heard those words again.

"I was coming to kill the whole family."

"Even me?"

"Even you."

The memory of what I had gone through that day flooded my whole body. I couldn't say anything. I was in shock. He said it so nonchalantly, as if it were expected.

Harsh realities and cold truths. I spent all the years of my youth loving my father unconditionally, hoping for the day he would ask me to come live with him. All that love vanished in a wisp of cigarette smoke.

And that's not even the darkest of truths. There are still secrets - secrets that cause me to question my own mind and its rationality. All at once I felt more alone than those days of sitting on the couch waiting for the terror to end. I had just lost my dad. My heart dropped beneath the street, and he left me questioning every word he ever said to me, every word my mother never did.

In April of 2008, I found out that he had died three years earlier. My mom told me that she had gotten word from my other sister, and I said, "OK." I took two steps towards my room before bolting out the back door and into the yard. My strength left me, the feeling in my legs disappeared, and I collapsed in a heap onto the ground. I cried like I hadn't since that day he was arrested in front of me...for three days.

I know that I'm not like him, but he will always be a part of me the way I will always be a part of my own daughter. The cycle has to stop somewhere, and in the strength I had built over the years, I decided that it would stop with my dad, not me. Maybe it was for the best that I never really knew him. Some days I wish so hard that no one told me anything. I was not happy with the illusion, but it was real enough to me that I didn't mind holding onto it.

I loved my dad. Then I hated him. But over the years I have come to understand him, his way. That doesn't heal the pain or erase the tears, but it keeps me from hating him. I only wish that I could have taught him what I learned from life, given him a chance to redeem himself in my eyes. That time is forever gone, and I have to live with it.

Just another scar to cover the secrets I so desperately want to scratch away.