Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: Father (as in paternal parent, not God) (04/10/08)
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TITLE: My Two Dads | Previous Challenge Entry
By sue moreland
04/17/08 -
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Every morning my dad would whistle to the songs on the radio while he shaved. He started his days happy and eager to begin the day. But by evening he would snap at everything and seem sullen and angry. Dinner time was when he brought up a list of our wrongs for the day. When he began his lecture my sister and I knew we would be gulping tears into our milk as we drank away our tears. Crying wasn’t allowed.
It wasn’t until I was in high school that I realized why my dad seemed to be two different people. He was a closet drinker. I had never actually seen him drink more than a beer or two from time to time, but I became aware that he had stashes of hard liquor hidden in various places around our farm. And alcohol never made him happy. It seemed to bring out all the frustration and anger from a life he was trying to repress.
He tried to stop drinking many times. There were lots of promises of how different things would be. Our family even moved to another state so he could leave his drinking friends and hopefully his habit . But, he just found new friends and more reasons to drink. Even after I was married and had children of my own we never knew what to expect when we went to visit. Sometimes he was happy to see us and other times he was that angry man that scared my children. So it was hard for us to visit often.
Then a miracle happened. I don’t know what brought it about but somehow my father was able to bury or confront the demons in his life and he no longer needed to drink. He just decided one day that he no longer needed to drink. He put all of it behind him. It was as if he was born again.
Our relationship did not immediately heal, but as time went on the scars have disappeared. My dad now remains that happy man all day long. The anger or burden he once carried is gone. Trust has grown and along with it we have grown closer as well. There was never a verbal “I’m sorry”, but there was such a transformation that it wasn’t needed. Even though unspoken it was said.
Today I live a six hour drive away from my father, but we are as close as the telephone. In fact, every morning at exactly 5 AM we are on the phone together. Everyday he tells me he loves me and often he tells me what a wonderful person he thinks I have become. I share my faith with him and share all the busyness of my life. He shares some of his feelings with me and tells me stories from his youth. Today he is the person I would choose to be my father and I feel fortunate to have finally come to know the man he is. The man I only saw glimpses of as a child is a loving caring person who never meet a stranger and has the gift of giving comfort to those in need. He understands forgiveness and the foolishness of holding on to anger and the hurtful things in life. His regret is that he did not see it sooner. My happiness is that we made it to where we are today.
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If you re-visit this some day, consider writing it as a story of one incident in your family life, with dialogue, so that we can get to know your father better.
Good title, and good writing.