“YOU G$&@$? KIDS ARE THE WORST $@!:;)$&@ THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO ME”
This statement was one of my fathers favorites. Colorful expletives, horrible names and physical beatings were a daily occurrence for my siblings and I growing up.
My first traumatic memory was in the big house in South Minneapolis, I’m not sure what year it was, we moved in my kindergarten year, so it was before that. I had done some “horrible deed” that my father determined was nearly a capital offense. The punishment was banishment.
The big house was a duplex with “druggies” upstairs. I got the bed in the bay window, basically a foam pad shoved into a window opening. I don’t remember much of that house now. Between my fathers cigarette smoke and the constant inflow of marijuana smoke from upstairs, I was either being made strong or it was a sure thing what my future held.
This is where I started in the “Jonny jump-up” and grew up until my “all day kindergarten” class at Greely elementary a couple blocks away. We lived on 24th and 12th, on the Southside of Minneapolis, the house we lived in was torn down many years ago. It was a horrible place in a horrible neighborhood.
Our basement was right out of a horror movie, big stone walls, musty and dark, junk filled every turn and every damp corner. IT WAS A SCARY PLACE.
My punishment must fit the crime, and at less than 6yo, banishment into the basement was the only solution to my rehabilitation. As the lights were turned off at the switch located above me, I watched the trap door being lowered over my head until the last flicker of light was extinguished and the horror of every noise, every imagination and every nightmare played out in my young mind at full intensity. I remember screaming, crying and begging for help. My mind began to play out how I would be devoured in this dark hole. I curled up on the steps and literally screamed until I was horse, until I could scream no longer…. this was my father’s cue that I was fully reformed and my banishment was fulfilled.
We moved to 35th and Sheridan on the north side, a big, nice home. Two fireplaces, finished basement, two stories, separate bedrooms for boys and girls. We had a play area upstairs and the big bedroom was just for us three boys. My two sisters had the pretty bedroom next to us. I got my own bed, the upper bunk, my little brother got the lower and my older brother was in a single bed by the window. Life was “good” and I was finishing k-grade in Penn elementary. I was making friends when I could but usually I was at home “working” on my fathers projects. Going the the store to buys smokes and Pepsi for dad was my most common job in the evening. Two packs of smokes for the next day and an 8-pack of returnable bottles that my father would share with us on occasion. He didn’t mind sharing the Pepsi after it went flat, but to me it was liquid heaven.
The year was 1976, I was now 9 years old. My siblings and I had worked all day cleaning the house, top to bottom! We had expectations of our efforts to be rewarded by letting us invite our friends over for a “BICENTENNIAL PARTY”…. this would be a rare experience, to have friends over? It was unheard of, at least not in the house…. that’s not allowed! Maybe outside but never in the house. As I hid under the dining room table to covertly capture the surprise and delight that would surely flow from my father as the obvious labors over the coarse of our day were to be revealed as the man I called dad traversed the interior of our home.
Yes this was it! Here he comes! The door swung open, the footsteps approached, the hacking cough…. “clomp, clomp, clomp”…. he couldn’t see me, I was hidden well, table over the top, between the wall and the radiator. I heard the plastic wrap from the new pack of smokes… “crackle, pop” watching with joy and pride… The plastic cigarette wrapper and the foil top hit the floor…. moments apart…. landing like cluster bombs in my mind. Smashing into pieces the days labor…. the dusting of pictures, the cleaning of windows, the scrubbing of floors all became ashes of a war zone. The clean floor, dashed into pieces with the plastic wrapper of a cigarette pack.
Something changed for me that day, never to return, I no longer wanted to clean the house, I no longer wanted to invite friends into my home, my fathers actions had “triggered” a new perspective, and even today, it brings back memory’s of deep sadness, 43 years later!
I really enjoyed growing up in that house, but like most things in life, time changes…. in 6th grade, things really got bad, but that’s another day, a different blog post.
The balance of marriage, family, extended family and friends is delicate at best and can be destroyed in seconds. It’s not one that comes easy for me. In the great words of the country song “life’s a dance, you learn as you go….”
I think back to my childhood and I remember the trauma of my youth….. But I can’t stay there…. I’m a dad, a stepdad, a husband, a friend, a business owner, a man! I need to find a way to rise above my past, to step into the rolls of my life. My boys deserve more than the sum of my past. My bride deserves more than my brokenness. But how? How can I be this man that God has called me to be? “I” can not! But with Jesus, I can do God’s will, I can be more than the sum of my past, I can be a man! A man after God’s own heart, I’m not perfect and my wife has an abundance of forgiveness, she was blessed with being able to see beyond my hard exterior and keeps forgiving me every day, sometimes more… but she never quits on me.
Life gives lumps, hard trials but Jesus gave more than we can ever imagine and that’s the hope I’m living in. That’s how I get up and do what he has for me. Greater are His plans and blessings than anything I can do alone. His grace is sufficient.