LJ Idol Week 2: To Forgive and be Forgiven
This is the second entry for that writing contest i joined at therealljidol
To Forgive and be Forgiven
The first and last time my father told me he loved me, he was drunk.
I was fifteen years old wearing an oversized shirt and shorts. It was past bedtime, six in the morning on a Sunday. My father was sitting in our kitchen with my uncle, a silver pot of orange liquid open in front of them. Juice and Vodka is what they told me.
My mother was in bed. My sister was sleeping and my uncle and father were sitting in the kitchen drinking juice and vodka. I remember telling my father that it was time for bed. I remember him telling me to go to bed, that he would be there soon. I remember my uncle saying that he wanted a daughter like me. I remember flashes of all the things that happened in those twenty minutes that I tried to get my father to bed, but what stands out to me the most is the very end of the conversation.
My father was sitting with his head to one side, his thin hair falling over his face. His hands were shaking when he took mine and there was a look in his eyes, the glistening of unshed tears that made me want to run away. Father never cried.
“I miss my mother.” He told me. “Take me to her.”
My father hadn’t seen my grandmother in fifteen years, ever since he came to the US. I was fifteen. I was wearing an oversized shirt and shorts. My hair was hard and stringy from the hairspray the stylist had used that past morning. I was cold. I was small. But, I looked him in the eyes that night and said;
“Don’t worry dad. I’ll take you to grandma.”
“You should be proud of her.” My uncle said.
“I am.” My father answered turning back to me. “I love you.”
My mother used to say that a drunken man doesn’t lie. I know I believed my father that night as I carried him to bed. There was nothing that could stop me. Father loved me and I was going to get him to his mother.
“Good night dad.” I whispered after he was in bed.
He didn’t answer and that’s why I said it. The first and only time.
“I love you dad.”
-
I was eighteen years old, a child trying to work out things on my own when the phone calls started, the ones that changed things. The first one was my father telling me, as I sat on a rock outside of my dorm, that he was leaving my mother. That she didn’t love him anymore. That she didn’t love me.
I don’t know if I believed him, but as I sat there staring at the empty field, I cried. It wasn’t about what he said even though my mother accused him of that later. It was the way he said it, the devastation in his voice, the fear, the cry for help that reminded me of the child he must have been once. He was my father. He was supposed to be strong.
The second phone call I got was from my sister. It was a month later. She told me she was afraid to go home, afraid of dad because he asked her questions about mother and she was afraid to answer wrong. She told me that mother told her not to tell me what was going on at home. My sister told me about the fights, the yelling, the silence that seemed to suffocate. She told me how my father checked my mother’s phone, how he seemed so interested now to know her, to want to know where she was, what she did.
I remember being angry, angry to the point that I didn’t speak to my mother for a week. In my book that is angry enough. When I finally did call my mother, she told me that my father was saying things that scared her. She told me he wished he was dead, that someone would shoot him so that he wouldn’t have to deal with things anymore. She told me he went out at night for walks, that she was afraid sometimes that he would do something stupid and get himself killed. Mother asked me to talk to my father. She said it was my obligation, my duty because no one else would do it. She told me that I couldn’t count on my brothers or my sisters, that it was up to me to get him to see sense.
The fourth call was one I made.
It was nine in the morning. My father had break at work. When he answered the phone something was wrong. It was in the way he spoke, the lacing of words, something in the tone that seemed off. I was speaking to my father, but it was like he was someone else. We talked. I asked him how he was. He didn’t even bother, just went on about how my mother was a whore, how she cheated on him after all he’d done for her.
Sometimes I wish I’d hung up. I didn’t. I explained to him that things at home were exactly the same, that nothing had changed, that mother was doing everything the same way she had done it since I could remember. Father didn’t listen. It was like talking to a blank sheet of paper when it came to Mother. I learned to stop defending her, to listen to him, but never to agree with what he said. I got him to agree to a marriage counselor. He went. He gave up. I tried again.
-
My father was diagnosed with a form of a delusional disorder during the end of my fall semester that year. The night before he received that diagnosis I called the police on him. I was a six hour drive from home, sitting on my desk, wondering why it had to be me. Later my sister told me it was because she couldn’t do it; she was too nervous. My mother never said anything. But, I think it had to be me, because I was the only one dad would ever forgive for doing this to him.
My father wasn’t locked up. He was just put on medication, told to see a therapist and things seemed to settle from there. At home he was the loving husband, buying Mother gifts, exaggerating his laments when she said she was tired. I saw it for myself when I went home for Christmas break. He bought my mother flowers, wrote her love letters. In my mother’s eyes he was a liar. In mine he was a hypocrite. While my mom received the gifts, I received the phone calls.
Father told me how he didn’t believe my mother, how he knew she was cheating on him still. He told me that she was a liar. That he was going to find someone better. He told me things that I should have never heard. Once he even told me about a pretty woman with blonde hair who gave him her number.
I came to hate my father to the point where I had to leave the room if he came in, where a hug from him repulsed me rather than comforted me. The eyes that used to remind me of the little boy he had been, became empty, hollow eyes; stupid.
At the end of my freshman year I came home and my mother told me it was time to forgive my father. That first month back was the hardest. Everything my father said was wrong in my eyes. I disagreed with him just to disagree. And I told my mother that I knew what my responsibilities were. I knew he was my father and I owed him respect, but I wasn’t ready.
-
“He loves you.”
The last month of my summer break my mother told me those words. We were in the kitchen of a new apartment. I had coffee. She had tea.
I asked her how she knew.
“I just do.” She said in all her infinite Mother wisdom. And then she left.
I stayed in that kitchen, playing with my coffee cup and wanting to find ways to disagree, to show my mother that she was wrong. The first argument on my list was that Father never told me he loved me. Until I remembered that he had.
I didn’t remember words because there were none, but there were events; flashes of things that I had forgotten were there. There was dad laughing at some stupid joke I’d made. There was dad smiling at me when I showed him the grade I’d gotten on my test. There was dad cheering for me when I told him I’d gotten a scholarship for college. There was dad telling me things no one else heard because he trusted me. There was dad listening to me and going to see a therapist because I asked him to. There was dad taking his medication without the need for anyone to hound him because he wanted to be a better husband, a better dad.
There was dad sitting in our small, white kitchen, at seven, on the morning of a Sunday, with tears in his eyes telling me he loved me.
I believe that was the moment I was ready to forgive and be forgiven.
-
I realized that even through the times that we hate, we can love. I heard things that I never want to hear again. I saw things I wish I had never seen, but through it all I had a father who loved me. Not in words, but in actions, the best way he could. I came to learn that three little words mean nothing if there are no actions to back them up, but that, sometimes, we need to hear those three little words.
If only just once.
To Forgive and be Forgiven
The first and last time my father told me he loved me, he was drunk.
I was fifteen years old wearing an oversized shirt and shorts. It was past bedtime, six in the morning on a Sunday. My father was sitting in our kitchen with my uncle, a silver pot of orange liquid open in front of them. Juice and Vodka is what they told me.
My mother was in bed. My sister was sleeping and my uncle and father were sitting in the kitchen drinking juice and vodka. I remember telling my father that it was time for bed. I remember him telling me to go to bed, that he would be there soon. I remember my uncle saying that he wanted a daughter like me. I remember flashes of all the things that happened in those twenty minutes that I tried to get my father to bed, but what stands out to me the most is the very end of the conversation.
My father was sitting with his head to one side, his thin hair falling over his face. His hands were shaking when he took mine and there was a look in his eyes, the glistening of unshed tears that made me want to run away. Father never cried.
“I miss my mother.” He told me. “Take me to her.”
My father hadn’t seen my grandmother in fifteen years, ever since he came to the US. I was fifteen. I was wearing an oversized shirt and shorts. My hair was hard and stringy from the hairspray the stylist had used that past morning. I was cold. I was small. But, I looked him in the eyes that night and said;
“Don’t worry dad. I’ll take you to grandma.”
“You should be proud of her.” My uncle said.
“I am.” My father answered turning back to me. “I love you.”
My mother used to say that a drunken man doesn’t lie. I know I believed my father that night as I carried him to bed. There was nothing that could stop me. Father loved me and I was going to get him to his mother.
“Good night dad.” I whispered after he was in bed.
He didn’t answer and that’s why I said it. The first and only time.
“I love you dad.”
-
I was eighteen years old, a child trying to work out things on my own when the phone calls started, the ones that changed things. The first one was my father telling me, as I sat on a rock outside of my dorm, that he was leaving my mother. That she didn’t love him anymore. That she didn’t love me.
I don’t know if I believed him, but as I sat there staring at the empty field, I cried. It wasn’t about what he said even though my mother accused him of that later. It was the way he said it, the devastation in his voice, the fear, the cry for help that reminded me of the child he must have been once. He was my father. He was supposed to be strong.
The second phone call I got was from my sister. It was a month later. She told me she was afraid to go home, afraid of dad because he asked her questions about mother and she was afraid to answer wrong. She told me that mother told her not to tell me what was going on at home. My sister told me about the fights, the yelling, the silence that seemed to suffocate. She told me how my father checked my mother’s phone, how he seemed so interested now to know her, to want to know where she was, what she did.
I remember being angry, angry to the point that I didn’t speak to my mother for a week. In my book that is angry enough. When I finally did call my mother, she told me that my father was saying things that scared her. She told me he wished he was dead, that someone would shoot him so that he wouldn’t have to deal with things anymore. She told me he went out at night for walks, that she was afraid sometimes that he would do something stupid and get himself killed. Mother asked me to talk to my father. She said it was my obligation, my duty because no one else would do it. She told me that I couldn’t count on my brothers or my sisters, that it was up to me to get him to see sense.
The fourth call was one I made.
It was nine in the morning. My father had break at work. When he answered the phone something was wrong. It was in the way he spoke, the lacing of words, something in the tone that seemed off. I was speaking to my father, but it was like he was someone else. We talked. I asked him how he was. He didn’t even bother, just went on about how my mother was a whore, how she cheated on him after all he’d done for her.
Sometimes I wish I’d hung up. I didn’t. I explained to him that things at home were exactly the same, that nothing had changed, that mother was doing everything the same way she had done it since I could remember. Father didn’t listen. It was like talking to a blank sheet of paper when it came to Mother. I learned to stop defending her, to listen to him, but never to agree with what he said. I got him to agree to a marriage counselor. He went. He gave up. I tried again.
-
My father was diagnosed with a form of a delusional disorder during the end of my fall semester that year. The night before he received that diagnosis I called the police on him. I was a six hour drive from home, sitting on my desk, wondering why it had to be me. Later my sister told me it was because she couldn’t do it; she was too nervous. My mother never said anything. But, I think it had to be me, because I was the only one dad would ever forgive for doing this to him.
My father wasn’t locked up. He was just put on medication, told to see a therapist and things seemed to settle from there. At home he was the loving husband, buying Mother gifts, exaggerating his laments when she said she was tired. I saw it for myself when I went home for Christmas break. He bought my mother flowers, wrote her love letters. In my mother’s eyes he was a liar. In mine he was a hypocrite. While my mom received the gifts, I received the phone calls.
Father told me how he didn’t believe my mother, how he knew she was cheating on him still. He told me that she was a liar. That he was going to find someone better. He told me things that I should have never heard. Once he even told me about a pretty woman with blonde hair who gave him her number.
I came to hate my father to the point where I had to leave the room if he came in, where a hug from him repulsed me rather than comforted me. The eyes that used to remind me of the little boy he had been, became empty, hollow eyes; stupid.
At the end of my freshman year I came home and my mother told me it was time to forgive my father. That first month back was the hardest. Everything my father said was wrong in my eyes. I disagreed with him just to disagree. And I told my mother that I knew what my responsibilities were. I knew he was my father and I owed him respect, but I wasn’t ready.
-
“He loves you.”
The last month of my summer break my mother told me those words. We were in the kitchen of a new apartment. I had coffee. She had tea.
I asked her how she knew.
“I just do.” She said in all her infinite Mother wisdom. And then she left.
I stayed in that kitchen, playing with my coffee cup and wanting to find ways to disagree, to show my mother that she was wrong. The first argument on my list was that Father never told me he loved me. Until I remembered that he had.
I didn’t remember words because there were none, but there were events; flashes of things that I had forgotten were there. There was dad laughing at some stupid joke I’d made. There was dad smiling at me when I showed him the grade I’d gotten on my test. There was dad cheering for me when I told him I’d gotten a scholarship for college. There was dad telling me things no one else heard because he trusted me. There was dad listening to me and going to see a therapist because I asked him to. There was dad taking his medication without the need for anyone to hound him because he wanted to be a better husband, a better dad.
There was dad sitting in our small, white kitchen, at seven, on the morning of a Sunday, with tears in his eyes telling me he loved me.
I believe that was the moment I was ready to forgive and be forgiven.
-
I realized that even through the times that we hate, we can love. I heard things that I never want to hear again. I saw things I wish I had never seen, but through it all I had a father who loved me. Not in words, but in actions, the best way he could. I came to learn that three little words mean nothing if there are no actions to back them up, but that, sometimes, we need to hear those three little words.
If only just once.