Dad

I’m in a bring up the past kind of mood lately.  Not to say there isn’t a lot going on in the present… there certainly is, probably more now than at any point since my break-up.  It’s just I prefer to let the present unfold and I’ll talk about it after the fact.  It’s been a busy, busy week with little time to read anything, let alone blog or comment, but the pace should return to normal by next week.

Maria wrote in my last post that she thought I was mature for a 19 year old.  I suppose in retrospect in certain ways I was, but I still have to stifle a chuckle about that.  The good and bad thing about blogging is that I paint myself with my own brush.  Good because I know the exact truth of my own experiences and I can relay them to you as a way of releasing myself from my past.  Bad because I know the exact truth of my own experiences and I can twist, distort and sidestep them as I see fit.

The truth as I remember it was that I was probably about as mature as the average 19 year old young man is.  I engaged in risky behaviour.  I drank a ridiculous amount of booze and took a ridiculous amount of various drugs to the point that I barely remember my late teens.  I never cheated on anyone, but I jumped from bed to bed fast enough to make cheating virtually impossible anyway.  I fought.  A lot.  So much so that I can barely make a fist with my right hand and my knuckles and fingers look gnarled and twisted.  I cannot straighten my pinky finger and it throbs on cold days.

I look back on those days with an amused embarrassment cut liberally with a lot of loneliness and emotional pain.  But I totally get what Maria is saying too.  I did have a lot of maturity and awareness back then as well, as contradictory as that sounds.  Truth is I was always quite old for my age.  Part of it is makeup, I think, but most of it is definitely environment.  And no one person took up more space in my environment growing up than Dad.

I’ve alluded to Dad’s alcoholism before but booze is really the defining thing in Dad’s life.  He started drinking about the age of 14 and never looked back.  He is now 68, but in reality looks 15 years older.  He will die soon, and alcohol will likely be a mitigating factor.  It is only in the past year he has battled his addiction to alcohol, and he struggles mightily with it, especially since he will not resort to outside help.  Frankly, I am surprised he’s made it this long.

Next time you are at a movie theatre or a play, and there is a stock ‘drunk’ character look around you.  Most people will be laughing, but there will be a few who are stony or clearly forcing a chuckle.  Those are the ones who grew up or are married into a destructive environment with a drunk.  In reality it isn’t funny.  It’s painful and all-consuming and hard to describe to someone who’s never been there.

Dad was three people.  Sober Dad, Tipsy Dad and Drunk Dad.  Sober Dad rarely made an appearance.  If you caught him early enough in the morning, Sober Dad was quiet and thoughtful, usually reading the paper or doing a crossword puzzle or watching the news on TV.  Not much in the way of formal education, but whip-smart and well-informed about world issues.  He was intensely curious about all sorts of things, from mundane pointless trivia to more pertinent stuff, especially science and politics.  He was left-leaning centrist, pro-union railway man who voted NDP and detested the modern incarnation of big business and corporations.  He was a deeply critical thinker and took nothing at face value.  A keen mind, impatient with fools and hated hypocrites.  He was a dad in the way a lot of dads of his generation were.  Quiet and stoic, not sharing a lot of himself, but there when you needed him.

Tipsy Dad was the most common incarnation.  He wasn’t falling down drunk, but he clearly had a few and usually had a vacant, glassy look in his eyes.  This was how he was most of the day.  He would be louder, ruder, and his moods were usually all over the place.  He could have more positive traits like Sober Dad, but far more likely he would be boorish.  He had a tendency to bully us kids unmercifully when he was under pressure.  He would tease, poke fun, play mind games, wind us up and explode if we didn’t take his japes with the appropriate good humour. 

Drunk Dad in a lot of ways was better than Tipsy Dad, because he usually just brooded quietly and angrily, muttering to himself and shaking his head.  Once in a while though he would become violently angry and would go absolutely ballistic.  More than once he hit me.  Once he strangled the dog by the collar in front of me because I forgot to feed her.  I begged him to let her go and he did, but it was a gut-wrenchingly long time.  As a drunk, he was awful, spiteful, hate-filled, and ground down by a persistent perception of failure and worthlessness.  It was like living inside a pressure cooker that could explode any moment.  I often wondered why he drank so much, since it seemed to make him so constantly miserable.

Dad knew he drank too much but since he figured he was functioning – that is, he went to work everyday and made sure the bills were paid – it was okay.  Mom was on the verge of leaving him a lot of times, but did not want the stigma of having to go on welfare.  So she stayed.  So we all stayed.  And in staying, you learn to adapt to your environment.  You learn to read moods.   You learn to tiptoe through the minefield.  You keep your head down, your mouth shut and never say anything that’s going to wake the sleeping dragon.

The children of drunks have to grow up in a hurry, because they’ll never cope with the environment they’re in if they stay the same age and maturity level as their peers.  Once I became old enough to realize not all households were like mine, I stopped inviting friends over.  It was just easier that way.  I spoke and acted at home with the sole purpose of keeping the peace and maintaining an impossible balance.  It was like trying to build a house of cards during a hurricane.  It bled into virtually every other area of my life.

Often in my younger years, my appearance of maturity was in actuality a mask for a lack of maturity.  I was mimicking what I thought people wanted out of me.  No doubt a part of all that was real experience and real maturity, but the reality of it was it stunted me in far more important ways.  A real and balanced sense of maturity is still brewing and developing in me.  In all of us, I suppose.

Anyway, that got really far away from me, and a lot deeper than I expected or wanted to flesh out here.  I’ll return to it soon.  I’ll promise I’ll let you in on what’s going on soon.

-PW