11:34 a.m. | 2004-07-15
And When That Plate Hit The Floor...
I inhereted his temper.
When my father dies I'd like to be able to say more than that, but it hit me yesterday, just as the plate hit the ground, hamburger too, and I heard the screaming, that this is what I inhereted.
The new Corning Ware, my father's pride and joy plates. There's a small one in pieces on the patio now, in front of the grill. And a small piece of hamburger, a little cheese, and a few ants as well. More than that, though, there's tears in my eyes and my hands won't stop shaking.
I was walking in my nice clicky shoes through the kitchen (the kind that make you just sound like a girl) going to cut some onion for lunch when I hear a crash and then a "shit!" from outside. The second I heart that tone in his voice I start breathing deeper and my heart beats about twice as fast.
As if I'm afraid to hear him come in and go running after me he slams open the sliding glass door and comes stomping in mumbling in his most angry of tones about "why do I always have to be the one to do it all the time" (referring to carrying two plates at one time, but in a demeaning voice like I asked him to). He slams the glass door shut as he walks back outside, proceeds to step on a small piece of the plate and thrashes the second plate to the ground.
Now my father has never even threated me with his hand or any other part of him. No belts. No spankings. No nothing.
Yet when I hear that voice I cower like he's going to hunt me down and beat the shit out of me.
I suppose it's something I need to explain. When I was growing up I had what appeared to be an adjusted family. They looked normal. We looked normal. Nice house, nice cars, nice things, and I was in a private school. Yet I cried just about every day because I was scared.
My mother and my father would fight, not about normal things, but about baseless stupid things. And they would fight because I said something, generally. Like I told my mother once what my father had said on the way home from work. He always came back angry from work. He worked from 7:00 am (when he'd drop me off at before school care) to 6:00 pm (when he'd pick me up from after school care). Long days. And he was in charge of a lot in a lab that wasn't doing very well so he was always frustrated. Always angry.
He said something to me one night, just snapped at me. I think I asked him what we were having for dinner (I hadn't eaten since lunch at 12, I was hungry) and he snapped back at me, "well why the fuck don't you just make it yourself?"
No 'how was your day' or 'did you do anything fun in science today' or 'what are we studying in history.' None of that. So I learned to be scared of that voice. And when he gets too irritated, thing on top of thing, and especially when he doesn't eat, it comes out.
I postponed writing this because he had gotten better. He doesn't have a job now, and just mosies around the house doing as he pleases, very stress free. But now that his wedding is coming up and he feels pressured (keep in mind I'm the one planning the wedding, not him) he's going over the edge more and more.
And it scares me. I hate it when he has that look in his eye like whatever just happened is all my fault.
I mean come one. I'm a child of the 90's. We're all fucked up.
Signing Off--Lauren
