Dads

He had held me as a baby. He had brought me home from the hospital. I was adopted, but I was his family. He held me with love. Some men build you up and others crash you down. He was a builder. He helped push my mother to new horizons. His words were "You can, you can." Sometimes I cry that he was not the man who grew up with me. I wonder what I might have done with a cheerleader of a father by my side, Instead of hearing everything I needed to change and fix, I would have had someone standing behind me. If he stood behind his wife he would have stood behind his daughter. He had pride in his family. His household conducted conversations between adults, not the huge confrontations I grew up with. Once he died the love in the house seemed to fade.

My mother did not remarry till years later. The dysfunction did not occur because of him. Years before they married I had somewhat moved into a friend's house. I was only there for about six months but I wish I could have stayed forever. Once I was back home I was back in the war zone. It was not just my perception. When I had gone to boarding school my grandmother had come to live at our house and had left because of all the conflict and arguing, Nobody wanted to be there but my sister, my mother, and my new father. I am not sure he totally knew what he was getting into.

Before the wedding, I was pretty much absent, and the other females in the family were sweet angels. Perfect, well-brought-up women.

Personally, I did not really care who my mother married, I was not seeking another father. The bus stop was a block from our house. I had enough money to ride the bus and that was all that mattered to me.

Shortly after the wedding, the family moved. My sister and I had the upstairs to ourselves. My sister soon found that our new father had a worse temper than my mother. She did not as readily fight back. Where our first father stood behind his wife, my mother was now supposed to stand behind her husband. He had his own children, but they did not live with us. They told us horror stories about his temper. Great I thought, as soon as I move out he will fit right in. He was nice to me when he first moved in, I was just not interested. Especially after he had refused to let me go to the Soviet Union with my school. I felt like it was not his place to decide, but my mother was scared of him. How much money would my one trip have brought to Russia, a few dance concerts, some meals, and our residence?

How hard would it have been for her to let me go, with my school and friends? If I had been old enough to get a job I would have just gone.

Finally, I had reached age 18. The legal age of emancipation. The age when children can legally decide for themselves.

It is a sad fact that children have to be emancipated. Once I moved out I met others who could hardly wait until they were eighteen. Some of their situations had been worse than just verbal abuse. I kept wanting a Brady Bunch family, or to be raised by a man who would have told me that I could. Instead of feeling that big girls don't cry. I would have expressed my pain and been held, I would have had a father standing behind me. It always seemed when I needed someone to stand behind me there was no one there. I did not want someone to beat up somebody for me, or to talk to some therepist, who didn' t even know me. I just wanted a nice word and to be held and supported as I cryed.

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