A Big Responsibility

Watch very carefully, Jenny. If you make a mistake Daddy could die.

Mommy is showing me the two insulin bottles. She is normally the one to "draw" his insulin each morning and leave it sitting next to his breakfast.

This summer she will be at work and I will be staying home with Daddy to work on the cars. It will be my job to draw his insulin in the mornings.

It's very important to tap the bubbles out of the syringe. If there are air bubbles in there and he injects them he could die.

Why is she telling me this (it turns out it's not even true)?

Why is she making such a big deal about this? Is she really worried he will die?

Or does she want me to kill him?

I would do it if she wanted me to. I'm not afraid. I wouldn't even feel bad.

What am I thinking? It's not normal to think about killing your Father is it?

I'm only 8. Other 8 year olds don't have to think about this stuff. I can't tell anyone how I feel.

No one.

Do I ask Mom if she wants me to kill him? Do I tell any of my friends that I think about killing my father? How about a teacher? Family?

No. Just file it away. Accept that you are different. That no one can understand.

Why would they give me this responsibility for my Father's life? I'm only 8.

Alone

I spent a good portion of my childhood in my bedroom. I never lacked for toys or books due to my Mom's willingness to overspend to feel better about our situation. What I lacked was anyone to talk to. My Mother and I didn't discuss my father's volatility other than whispers about what we would do to protect ourselves as each situation arose.

My father's blindness did make some things easier. He couldn't see the things she bought for me. He couldn't see that she had trimmed my hair despite his express orders not to let our hair be touched by scissors. The Old Wive's Tale about blind people having enhancement of their other senses is true, however. He could smell if someone had a piece of chocolate in the other room. He could hear a drawer opening. A footstep creeping.

I once had a therapist ask how my Mother and I could have been so brutalized by a blind person. She obviously had no idea about the control that an abuser exerts on your very being.

Sure, we could have dodged a fist, ran into another room but we still had to live with him. Avoid the punishment now and it would be that much more painful later.

My mother did try to get help. She called the police. In the '70's the police did not get involved in these types of things. She called her father who had no money to help her leave but did ask if she wanted him to, "come beat up Glenn". She turned to their church. When the Bishop told my father that God didn't want him to beat up his wife he forbid my mother to attend church any longer and didn't himself return until he found out he was dying. She turned to friends who were unable to help. My father was very insecure about her leaving him - he was afraid to be alone without anyone to help him with his illness or disability. He told my Mother many times that if she left him his parents would hire pricey lawyers and that she would never see me again. He was able to create enough fear, doubt, and guilt in her that she stayed.

So there was no choice for me but to take whatever punishments he decided to dole out. For me, many times, they were not physical. It was different - canceling my party the morning of my birthday because I went to the neighbors house without asking, requiring me to use the (scary) bathroom at the park across the street from our house because I had used too much TP, sending me to my room for entire days because I was in the way.

Ever since I was a little girl I have felt alienated from other humans. As if I don't really think the same way as them, that they had no way of understanding what it is like to be me. I felt different.

I lived in a 100 year old house filled with a large collection of fragile, inconvenient, and uncomfortable antiques. The other kids at school mostly lived in new housing developments with new furniture.

My father was blind and walked with a cane.

My father restored antique cars and had as many as a dozen in our specially built garage at any given time. He was always out in our driveway working on one of the cars.

On the weekends we usually either went to a horrible swap meet or auction out of town to look at car parts or, even worse, some weekends we had to dress up in clothing from the era of the particular car we were going to drive to a car show. The worst was when people would get so excited to see us all dressed up in the old car and wave excitedly. I was so embarrassed for their stupidness and I hated them.

My father was always being written up in one newspaper or another as a stellar example of what a blind person can achieve - a high school teacher, an old car collector, blah, blah, blah.

It seemed to me like anything that other people did, we had to do differently. Anything that other people owned, ours had to be different.

It's funny because as much as I hated all this differentness as a kid, it is something I prize in my adult life. I don't want to do the same things as everyone else. I don't want to look the same, have the same things. I want to express my individuality.

So maybe these "weird' things I could have accepted about my childhood if I had only had someone to talk to. Instead I have always felt as if I was an outsider. I like to be alone. It is easier to tolerate loneliness when you are not in the presence of others.

Such an Angry Young Man

My father was a bitter man.

Some people have described him as sadistic. But I disagree. I don't really believe he took actual pleasure from hurting others.

No, he was more about punishing others for not understanding what his life was like. It was just that his punishments were so cleverly angry.

After two years of significantly declining health, my father was diagnosed with Juvenille Diabetes at the age of 12. It seems amazing to many that it took so long to diagnose something so obvious but as my Grandmother always said, "They just didn't check those things back then".

Once he was diagnosed he spent over 2 months in the hospital, away from school and other children. After my Grandmother died I found a box containing a scrapbook she had made from his time in the hospital. It contained every single one of the menus from his stay in the hospital along with other trivial "mementos" of his time in the hospital. It also contained numerous letters from his classmates wishing him well. It seemed apparent that he was a "school project". You know, "Let's all practice our writing skills and send letters to the poor little sick boy".

Now I am simply projecting here, however I do share many aspects of my Father's temperament and I can assure you that I would have felt annoyed by the smothering love and constant fretting of my Mother and humiliated and angry to be the class project. Maybe he felt like this, maybe he didn't. Maybe I can understand this because this is how I felt after my Father's death.

As a result of the delay in early treatment and the general progression of the disease, my Father began to lose his eyesight when I was four. It was a slow process however by the time I started Kindergarten he had lost all of his vision except for the ability to perceive movement and shadows.

His anger over this disability was the source of such great bitterness that he was compelled to punish any person who he felt did not "know what it was like" to be blind.

During the time he was losing his sight his parents came from California for a springtime visit. They were attempting to be helpful around the house and had been helping my Mom take down the storm windows on the house. One of the windows was left laying on the porch when they went inside for lunch. Upon discovering this, my Father went full tilt. He ranted endlessly about how dangerous it was to leave something lying around like that where a blind person could not only step on it and fall but also cut their feet (diabetics have poor circulation and injuries to the foot can easily turn gangrenous).

Now one could easily understand his frustration up to this point. It was a hazardous situation and he was worried about what would happen to him once he was totally blind.

But his anger and bitterness wouldn't allow him to drop it. He decided as "punishment" that his parents must put on blindfolds and walk around the block using the white canes of blind people. My Grandparents obeyed out of fear of his anger. When they returned his anger had still not dissipated and he ordered them out of our home and insisted that they return to California early.

My Grandparents did leave the house but were forced to check into a hotel in Des Moines because the flights were too expensive to change. My Mother brought me to the hotel where they were staying to say a brief goodbye to them. They all admonished me not to tell my Dad that they were in a hotel. They had no need to worry.

I knew that the ability to lie, keep secrets, and be one step ahead of my Father was the key to my s