Blood is Not Thicker Than Water. (non-fiction)

 

My father is on the far left, then there is my brother Sean, his wife. In the middle is my mother and on the right by brother, Francis. Not in this picture is my sister, Hannah. Having my mother and father in the same room for the first time in decades was nerve-wracking.

 

 Upon orders from my lovely wife, a few days ago I dutifully climb up in the attic to look for a box of Christmas decorations. We’ve recently began downsizing a lot of possessions, namely reducing the number of plastic storage boxes containing differently themed Christmas ornaments from four to two.

You have to understand our attic is almost overflowing with those fancy plastic storage containers that would probably survive both a nuclear war and the next ice age.

The problem being is that after twenty-one years in our house, neither my wife nor I know what is in ninety-percent of those containers. I’ll spare you the details about our lack of organization along with having two kids who for various reasons decided to move stuff around.

I did locate that box of decorations, but it was another, much smaller container filled with forgotten pictures that brought back some uncomfortable memories.

Turns out a bunch of them were taken at my son’s first birthday party in October of 1996. Nearly all of them had relatives of mine that have long since passed away. One of those pictures was of my mother and father. And for reasons I can’t explain a memory surfaced of some shit they put me through around 1976.

Many times I have described my parents’ relationship as “Chernobyl-like.” Both of them had serious mental issues, way too many to elaborate on but it was my mom’s alcoholism that was often the biggest monkey wrench in my siblings and my childhood.

This memory begins in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where my mom had taken up residence with her boyfriend, a guy I’ll call “Danny.” He was a certified loser who was probably suffering from many of the same mental issues as my mom. I honestly can't remember the story on where Danny and my mom met but it was probably in one of the many country bars that ran between Conway and Georgetown, South Carolina.

Their favorite pastime was to get angry drunk, and fight with my mom then loading up my siblings and me and running off to another city and/or guy. For better or worse that guy was sometimes my dad and while I don’t think much of him as a father, he’d did take us all back when my mom had no where else to turn.

Baton Rouge was the latest haven where Danny and my mom were supposed to build a new life. Danny worked as a cabinet builder and my mom was a secretary when she wasn’t working as a convenience store clerk. And of course after a several months in Baton Rouge, they got drunk and fought bad enough that one of the neighbors called the cops.

And once the cops carted Danny off to jail, mom loaded us up in the car with the intention of driving to Wichita Falls, Texas. We had lived there with my dad until mom and him had a fight where she then ran down to Louisiana to shack up with Danny. If you think this is confusing you're a sane person.

How we got to Wichita Falls involves way too much detail and to be honest, I don’t remember most of it. The one thing I can say for certain is that my dad left South Carolina to work construction in Texas. He went out there during one of my parents’ multitude of breaks.

But when we arrived my parents rented a three-bedroom apartment in a complex of about ten other similar buildings. As apartment complexes go it was nice, big pool, playground for little kids and for me lots of sidewalks for me to ride my skateboard. I was around ten years-old at the time and skateboarding was the one thing that gave me peace. Some uncertain amount of time later, mom and dad fight which has her running to Danny who was now living in Baton Rouge.

I don’t remember a thing about the drive back to Wichita Falls except that we arrived around 2:00am and that my mom was more than a little drunk.

After pulling into the complex parking lot my mom tells me to knock on the apartment door and get my father so he could carry my younger siblings inside. No problem, except after beating on the front door for several minutes a man NOT my father opens it.

This could have been a really bad scenario except the guy was really cool. I soon learn that after mom took us to live with Danny my father had moved to a smaller apartment in the complex. This guy didn’t know where but it was in the same complex, just a couple of buildings over.

I go tell mom and she, of course, has me knocking on doors in the middle of the freaking night-in Texas. So ten years-old me is methodically knocking on every first-floor apartment door looking for my father. Somehow, I had picked the right building after beating on God-knows how many doors I find the one where my dad is living.

There was no happy family reunion. But mom and dad did shack back up and a few days later we moved into another apartment complex across town. This semi-stability did last around a year before for a reason I have forgotten mom, my siblings, and me left dad again and moved back to South Carolina. No, this time Danny wasn’t part of the equation.

Several more nuclear family meltdowns later I end up living with my maternal grandparents while my siblings stayed with our mom and her new boyfriend. My refusal to live with my mother did prompt her to become more stable and settle down in the upstate of South Carolina. My siblings still had some tough times ahead but they survive.

As the years pass a lot changes. My parents finally divorced, Danny got convicted of writing way too many bad checks and is thrown in prison. My father remarries suspiciously quick after the divorce and mom, I think, marries a guy named Earl. Her story about Earl changed many times. But because my mom was forced to settle down my siblings were able to achieve something of a life. 

As for me, it takes years for me to come to terms with what my parents put me through. Along with trying to catch up educationally given the amount of school I missed. To this day, having to perform the most simple math in my head causes anxiety.

But I graduated from high school, join the army and try to avoid all the mistakes and behaviors my parents couldn’t change. But I just couldn’t bring myself to forgive and forget the past and what they put me through. My siblings could because, I guess, they were so much younger and weren’t as aware how badly our parents were fucking up.

I was home on leave from the army one time and my grandfather pulled me aside to comment on how cold I was treating my mother. Granddad was serious old school and while he had some idea of what occurred, he still believed I should forgive her.

Because I worshiped my granddad, I told him I would work on it. And that was good enough for him.

My mom passed away in 2007. I did not shed a tear. My father is still alive. We don’t talk.