My father once drove down the same one way street the wrong way three times in one night. He had been drinking. I'm not sure I understood the concept of alcoholism at the time, but I knew my father drank a lot. A cop actually pulled him over, twice, but the officer let my father go because of us, the children who were in the car with him, and because my father promised to pull over somewhere to sleep it off.
My father has been sober, I think, since I was 19. I say I think because I wasn't around when he made his most permanent attempts at sobriety. My younger sisters report he may have occasionally lapsed, but I like to assume he's been sober for the last 16 years. I don't know how long he was an alcoholic, or why he started drinking, but I do know his mother used to have me spy and report back. Even at 5 years old, I figured it was best to lie to her about the yelling and the beer.
Before we stopped speaking, one of the last times I saw my father was when he spent a week at my house while attending a training course. He was working towards an auto retailer's license. He already ran an auction house where he also rented U-hauls and sold items on eBay. He wanted, however, to sell cars as well. He's never had fewer than three irons in the fire at a time. I can't even remember all the businesses he started over the years. I remember the financial services one for which I made the logo, the thrift store just a short walk away from the Outer Banks beaches. I heard rumors of one involving dump trucks.
While my father was staying at my house I tried to spend time with him, but every conversation turned to the past. He wanted me to say, "I wouldn't be where I am today if it weren't for you."
I couldn't do that. I've forgiven him for his drinking. He was never physically abusive and we never went without the basic needs of food and shelter, but there was always something fearful in my childhood. I was always waiting for the next shoe to drop, for the next bad moment to happen.
I did say, "I was always impressed with how you and Mom handled the divorce. We never had to choose or go to court. I appreciated that."
That wasn't enough.
All relationships ebb and flow. My father and I were mostly on good terms until I turned 30. There had always been moments, specific painful moments, of one of us hanging up on the other, long periods without me visiting while I tried to make ends meet, but somehow we always came back together, at least by phone, because we are family.
At what point does biology cease to be an obligation in a relationship?
If my husband never returned my phone calls and frequently bossed me around I'd be told he was verbally abusive and that I should leave him or get counseling. But when the person treating you in that manner is related to you by blood, you're held to a higher level of response.
Why?
It's been almost three years since I spoke to my father. I made the decision in October of 2007 that I wasn't going to call him until he returned a phone call to me.
I'm still waiting.
I've been more at peace during the last three years than during any of the previous 13. I've surrounded myself with terrific in-laws, a wonderful extended family, and friends who become more like family every year.
And yet, I still feel the same guilt my father could make me feel when I didn't go with him to the store so he could pick up another case of beer.
I don't want to play martyr. I just want to live a life that is more often about joy than anger. I want to not cringe when the phone rings. I feel a relationship should be a two-way street. I want someone to meet me on my side, just once.
Jessie Carty's writing has appeared in publications such as The Main Street Rag, Iodine Poetry Journal and The Houston Literary Review. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, At the A & P Meridiem (Pudding House 2009) and The Wait of Atom (Folded Word 2009) as well as a full length poetry collection, Paper House (Folded Word 2010). Jessie is a freelance writer and writing coach. She is also the photographer and editor for Referential Magazine. She can be found around the web, especially at http://jessiecarty.com where she blogs about everything from housework to the act of blogging itself.
Archived at http://girlswithinsurance.com/index.php/prose/non-fiction/219-jc-0510-one and shortlinked at http://frsh.in/bd
