There are days on the cultural calendar that are celebrated that are supposed to recognize people who are important to our lives. Fathers Day and Mothers Day are two such days. On those days people give their parents gifts, send them cards, perhaps prepare meals for them if they live close to their parents. People assume that just because someone is a parent then that person is worthy of praise and honor and recognition, but such is not always the case for some of us. Some of us were reared in families that bears the title “dysfunctional”. Some of us had fathers or mothers who were abusive. Some of us were given little or no love by our parents when we were children. Today, those of us who grew up in such circumstances find days such as these to be difficult ones.
My father was physically abusive to me. He beat me on a regular basis. I do not use the term “beat” lightly because I know that many practice corporal punishment with their children and feel it helps to teach them lessons in life and to know right from wrong. I do not agree with spanking children but that is because I did receive beatings, not spankings, from my father. He was a hard working man and a good provider but if I crossed a line that he felt I should not have crossed, then I knew what would happen next. He would pull out his belt out of his pants loops with a whirring sound and then begin hitting me. He would hold my arm with one hand and hit me using the other hand. He would hit me again and again and again until finally he ran out of energy. He would hit me anywhere the belt could hit. He would hit me until marks or bruises were left on my body. He would drop me onto the floor as I wailed from the beating and then just exit the room as if nothing had happened. He would never talk to me about what I may have done wrong but I just knew that I had crossed a line that I had better never cross again. The beatings began when I was just a small child and continued until I was nearly 17 years old. I hated him for years because of the physical abuse I suffered from him but thankfully received counseling when I became an adult and I learned to forgive him. I never seemed to learn to forget about the beatings, though. The pain still emerges in the most unexpected ways.
My wife likes sentimental country music. I do not but I do not complain when she listens to it in my presence. Today, she was playing this old tune, “Daddy’s Hands” which she thought was wonderful and suddenly the song brought back painful memories of how my daddy’s hands were only used to beat me with. He never hugged me or expressed love to me in any way until he was almost ready to die at the age of 86 and then he told me he loved me for the first and last time in my life.
My mother was not physically abusive but she was emotionally abusive. She blamed me for whatever I could be blamed for and berated me for never being good enough. If I crossed her one too many times, she would have an emotional breakdown and slam every cabinet door in the kitchen and then begin to clean out the cabinets, throwing pots and pan around the room until finally she came running toward me with whatever was handy. Luckily, I could outrun her and would escape outdoors to be locked out for the remainder of the day and threatened with a beating from my father when he got in from work. I lived with dread the rest of those hot summer days as I knew what would happen when he got home. Not a word would be said. I would simply be jerked up by the arm and hit until I could not stand up any longer and then left to recover on my own wherever I was placed to be.
I married early in life, at 21, and for years had trouble choosing appropriate cards to give my mother and father on those special days. I wanted one that just said, “You are my mother (or father) and I recognize that.” Too many cards were so sentimental, sticky sweet, exuding the glories of mom and dad and how they were almost saints. Their strong protection and love carried the card giver through the years and the giver was so thankful for them. I was just glad to be alive and simply wanted a simple card to show my thanks for giving me life. I usually found a funny card because sentiment would not work. To laugh is to help hide the pain, something I found easier to do in life than to confront the pain head-on.
So, when Mothers Day and Fathers Day roll around yearly, I try to ignore the many laudatory tributes to moms and dads. My parents are both deceased so I do not have to buy cards or gifts for them any longer. I know where they reside if I choose to find them but rarely go there because the memory of what they did when I was the child they should have loved overshadows any commitment I may have to visit their graves or put flowers upon them. I am the last of my family of origin, the survivor of all of them. I am alone in the world that I grew up in. It is better to be a dad to my own children than to think about how my parents failed me and left me forever imprinted with a pain that I cannot ever rid myself of.
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