SO, I guess as the holiday season approaches, these memories are on my mind again and I thought I'd share.
Ok, so my childhood was fairly average up until the age of 13 on Christmas Eve, 1997.
But let me get back to that.
Up until then, my mom and dad raised me the best they could, albeit my dad was a bit irresponsible.
He often had trouble holding down jobs for long periods of time, made really stupid decisions with money, had a bit of a drinking problem, as well as quite a temper from time to time. But he was also really fun and sorta like one of the kids.
A few times riding home from a family event he would drive one car, my mom the other and would ‘race” her home. My mom was furious about that of course, especially when one time he had my older brother of 14 at the time drive the car home.
And not too mention his love for lighting off M80's and M90s on the 4th of July and bringing my brother and I to nearby Indian reservations to buy illegal fireworks; or his fun ‘pranks’ of driving too close to the edge of a cliff on a winding road while only my brother and I were in the car.
Yes, my mom was a bit unsettled when hearing about that as well.
So, Christmas Eve. We just got home from a family dinner at my dad’s fathers house, where his two step brothers and their wives and young sons were also at.
I thought all was ok, but apparently not because my dad called us all into the living room for a ‘family meeting.’ Ha! I laugh because it ended up to be more of a screaming match.
He was drunk starting off. And apparently my mom had told him of some altercation between my oldest brother and one of his stepbrothers. Well, it came to light that night that ‘he hated them both and wanted to kill them.’ Apparently he and they had always disliked each other and then his father divorced his mom and a few years later remarried to the mother of these two boys to whom he didn’t get along with too well to say the least.
So, I forget the argument that happened between my brother and my ‘dad’ stepbrother, but I remember that he was being an *** towards my brother for no reason and seemed to want to instigate a fight. My brother was17 at the time and smartly declined and left the room to go hang in the basement with the rest of the ‘kids.’ So of course my mom shared this info with my ‘dad’ on the drive home. I keep putting quotes around the name dad because it came to light that night that he was in fact my step father. He wasn’t even legally our step-father for that matter because he had never actually legally adopted my brothers and I. He had married my mom in the early1980’s and we had simply taken on his last name. I was so young (barely three) and I didn’t remember this. Apparently. Only my oldest brother had remembered this and didn’t share this with my other brother. Though my mom claims that we knew, but I think since it was never brought up again, how can she have expected us to know? She said she wanted us to see him as our real father, so I’m sure that’s why it was never talked about. My oldest brother once told me around this time that she told him not to tell us.
So, this information about my father came about in the screaming match- my mom’s crying, my other brother are sitting there silent as my dad screams at my oldest brother, who says he wished he didn’t live there and my ‘dad’ says why doesn’t he go live with “(name of my biological father.” My mom really is balling now at that revelation, MY other brother and I are shocked. My oldest brother asks who that is and my ‘dad’ says that he’s our real father.
Shortly thereafter the ‘meeting’ was adjourned and we all sort of left to our rooms.
I forget the details of the coming months, but by summer the next year, my parents’ marriage was on the rocks. My step-father (as I now thought of him) would often follow my mom in his car and accuse her of cheating on him. He stole money from their joint bank account and replaced it with monopoly money. He even disconnected the phone line from the cable box a few times when he would leave in the evenings so we couldn’t receive any calls. My mom shared all this with us, though in retrospect she probably shouldn’t have. But she was scared and I don’t think was thinking straight. He would belittle us and constantly ask us questions about our mom, always around the corner, ‘checking’ on us. This one this my mom had a bruise on her arm and she said she had walked into a doorknob . . . . .
Another time I walked into the kitchen to find them having a ‘discussion’ when he was screaming while unloading the dishwasher and I witnessed him throw multiply plates to go smashing onto the floor. I used to start locking the door while taking a shower as well because he often would come into the bathroom ‘looking for something’ and when I got upset he would simply respond with, “I’ve seen it all before.”
So at the end of the summer, I was SHOCKED to have my mom come to me and tell me that she and my stepfather were going to try and ‘work it out’ after everything he had put us through. I couldn’t believe it! My mom encouraged me to go say kiss him goodnight. I was boiling inside! To this day I regret doing so, I shouldn’t’ be just walked down the hall and went to my room, slamming the door. My bedroom was adjacent theirs in that house. So, by the beginning of the next year, and mid-8th grade, we (my mom, my two brothers and I) were moved out into a smaller rental house while my mom and my stepdads divorce was still pending.
He would call multiple times every day to try and talk to her; he would just show up out of the blue many times with ‘surprise visits. It go to the point where my brothers and I would close the curtains and pretend we weren’t home.
One time I came home from school to find that him rummaging through my mom’s dresser drawers in her bedroom after he had apparently gotten in through a door that wasn’t locked properly.
During this time me eldest brother said he used to sleep with a baseball bat under his pillow. It’s no surprise he started drinking then either. During this time I would think back to the times when I would spend the days with my ‘dad’ as a young girl, going to the drive through and having ice cream cones and this one time as we were about to cross the street and I was holding his hand, I pulled him back and saved him from getting plowed down by a high speed truck. I used to wish I had let his hand go instead.

So, after a while this activity of his calmed down by two years later we no longer lived in fear.
But I was happy as hell to move out of state along with my family when I graduated high school and never looking back.

(see my other new thread: Escapism)