Mean Face

I remember that I heard yelling. I looked out my upstairs bedroom window, and I saw my stepmom and my Dad standing outside the garage. She was yelling louder than I had ever heard, and my stepmom was particularly loud, so that was really saying something. I looked at my older sister, "What's happening?" I asked. She just shrugged. I was scared to go downstairs. Dad looked confused. I could tell he was drunk, when was he not? He had that glaze over his eyes. I could hear them come inside through the back door downstairs. Against my tremendous anxieties, I went downstairs. My stepmom was still yelling, but now I could see she was sobbing too. "I can't take this anymore," she cried. Dad was just leaning against the counter casually, only offering his perfected denial and condescendence as comfort to her, asking, "What's wrong honey?" over and over again. I couldn't help but respect his consistent, unforgiving denial, but I also hated him for it. At this point, my older sister, as well as my older brother, were all in the room. We were all standing around the kitchen silently, and I could feel our collective anxiety and sadness. My stepmom, completely distraught and exhausted, blurts out to us all, " Kids, you're dad is drunk and he's sick and I can't keep doing this!" Her sobs were the only noise in the room. Dad just looked at her with the perfect look of absolute confusion and shock, as if she were spouting the most outlandish plea he had ever heard. We all sat there silently for a few minutes just listening to my stepmom's sobs and apologies to us, "I'm so sorry kids, I just can't do it anymore." Dad just kept asking for some kind of explanation, " Now honey, what can I help you with? What's the problem?" This is what started us off with tears. My sister was the first to join my stepmom with her tears. I watched as her initially quiet tears turned into gut-wrenching sobs. I saw her face break, and I felt my heart break simultaneously. Dad switched his focus to her asking similarly, "What's wrong honey? Why are you crying?" That only made her cry harder. Next was my brother. I had never seen my big brother cry. All of my life I had seen him have seizures that undoubtedly took some emotional capabilities from his brain. Because of that, I never saw his sadness. I was convinced he never really experienced it. I saw the tears fall from underneath his glasses, and I felt my eyes water in response. His cries turned to sobs much quicker than my sister's. The pain in his face hurt me more than Dad's drinking ever had. Instinctively, Dad's attention turned to my brother, but his questioning was harsher now, " Oh come on now, what's wrong with you now? Why are you crying?" My brother just sobbed harder having to take off his glasses. Immediately, my own tears started to fall, and I could feel the sobs pushing themselves out involuntarily. There we all stood, now everyone crying except Dad. All of us just crying together and mourning our drunken father and husband. I could tell that all of our distress alerted something in Dad's head to try and stop the commotion, so as to keep his sickness safe from serious speculation. Dad tried to make his rounds, going around in circles to each of us trying to hug us and console us from his addiction. When Dad got to my stepmom, she refused his comfort and left the room, and I'm not sure where she escaped to. So it was left to us. Just three children crying in our own spaces of the kitchen. I can't remember how everything ended that night. Maybe Dad went to fall asleep in his chair, and maybe we all slowly wandered back to our own rooms. Our cries lulled us to sleep that night while the alcohol lulled Dad to sleep.

I have a lot of memories like that. In some cases, the climax of my Dad's drinking was more destructive and in some less. The memories usually always follow the pattern of having very vivid imagery and exact recollections of how the incident started, as well as recalling the worst parts of them, but they always end fuzzy with no resolution. There's never a crisp, clear image of how I coped afterward to make myself feel better. For some incidents I was much too young to remember exactly what had happened, or perhaps, out of survival, I blocked out those times. However, even at an age so young that there would be no way for me to know what being drunk was, to even understand what it meant to drink alcohol, or even to know what alcohol was, I still knew something wasn't right. My parents got divorced when I was about seven or eight years old. Custody of my siblings and I was split between my parents, so I still saw my Dad often enough to experience some of the worst of his alcoholism. When my Dad was drunk, which was almost always, he became very angry. The best thing to do was to be quiet and not draw attention to yourself, and that's how I dealt with his addiction as I grew up. When he did pose you with a question or direct his attention toward you, the next step would be to ensure that you give him the answers and reactions that he wants so as to not encourage his anger. He was capable of being extremely hurtful, spiteful, and painfully condescending. I always knew when he was in the mood to pick on everyone and ruin our time together because he had this hateful face. It was the harshest permanent scowl that gave anyone who saw it genuine anxiety. When I saw that face, before I knew or could understand he was an alcoholic, I knew the night was going to take a turn for the worst. My Mom told me one day when I was much older something that I don't personally remember. I was very young, and my Mom said that we had just gotten back from seeing our Dad. My siblings and I were a bit quiet after the visit, so my Mom had asked me how it went. I responded, "Well, Dad had his mean face on again." My Mom told me that after hearing that she was heartbroken because that meant that even though I was little, I knew what was going on. I continued to see that mean face well past high school. It still filled me with that same child-born anxiety every time.

My Dad's alcoholism is an important story of my life, but it is not the story of my Dad. My Dad grew up in an extremely small town in Texas. He was raised as a farmer's boy since he could walk. He worked on my Grandfathers farm all while growing up. Raising, tending to, and showing cattle, as well as hunting, fishing, and growing some crops. He started drinking when he was fourteen years old. Ever since the farmhand that my Grandfather hired gave him his first beer. He graduated from high school as valedictorian of his class of fewer than twenty students. My Dad then went to college and majored in agriculture and biology. He then went on to medical school and became an anesthesiologist. All the while still maintaining his alcoholism. He had a marriage when he was pretty young before he met my Mom, but he was already divorced from that marriage when he and my Mom first met. My parents met at the same hospital that they were working at while my Mom was doing her internship in nursing, and my Dad was doing his residency. My Mom has told me many times about how they first met. From her account, she was pushing a newborn carrier with six babies in it onto the elevator, and my Dad steps onto the elevator and says to her, "That's one hell of a six-pack!" It's quite ironic I know, his mind always seemed on the track of alcohol. However my Mom was instantly charmed, and they fell in love. My parents got married in a courthouse and first had my oldest brother together. Then they had my other brother, my sister, and lastly, they had me. My Dad always liked to say that when I was really little, I was glued to his side at all times, and I would never talk to anyone but him or my Mom, but of course, in his eyes, I would choose to be with him rather than my Mom. My Dad's drinking got progressively worse after I was born. He started having affairs, and my Mom knew about them. My Mom was crushed by his infidelity, but she stayed with him for us because all she ever cared about was staying home with us and taking care of us. Eventually, my Mom couldn't take it anymore, hence the divorce. At this point, my Dad's drinking was still fully in effect with no end in sight. Soon after their separation, my Dad married my stepmom. My stepmom has done several horrible, humiliating things to my mother, so it's fair to say she wasn't the best person. For a while, it seemed that my stepmom was dealing with my Dad's drinking fairly well, but her control over his addiction slowly deteriorated. As I grew older and started going to middle school, the incidents caused by his drinking grew to be more frequent. Although at that point it was different. It was different because each time he did something that affected us because of his drinking, he would sit us down the next day crying and apologizing. This was the beginning of his effort to get sober. He had a very long difficult path. He would do well for a while, and then he would fall off the wagon. The next day he would cry to us and apologize and ask for forgiveness as he tried again. His emotional pleas to us very negatively affected me. I know he only meant to be open about the difficulty of his journey, but those days of uncomfortably forced forgiveness have given me long-lasting emotional and intimacy issues. Eventually, my Dad's relapses became fewer and farther in between. He was becoming a better father and a better man because of it. There were, of course, some rough patches still in our relationship, and there are things that still need healing between us today. However, today my Dad is over three years sober, and our relationship has never been better. I still have some reservations about my father regardless of his drinking, but I am proud of what he's done. He fought his disease of addiction that he had lost to for over thirty years. A disease that very well could've killed him. He overcame and still fights the addiction that has had its grip on him for the majority of his life for his children and for himself. Despite all of the hurt, I will never stop being proud of him for that. I haven't seen that mean face in years.

My Dad is more than a recovering alcoholic. He is a loving son. His parents have both passed in the past two years. Before they passed away he called his own father almost every day and visited his parents almost every weekend to make sure they were taken care of. He is an amazing doctor. He has saved multiple lives in and outside of the operating room. He has healed countless patients of COVID during the pandemic using his own research and medicines. He does his part to help those in need. He has a long-time friend of over 15 years to a man who has struggled to survive on his own. He always gave that friend work, paid him generously, and sent him home with food for his family. My Dad is a lover of all kinds of athletic activities. He is an amazing skier, who taught himself at the age of sixteen by going down his first run which was a black diamond. He is a great golfer. He plays golf with my older brother any chance he gets because it is my brother's favorite sport. He taught me how to play tennis, how to play basketball, how to fish, and how to ripstick. I'll always remember when my Dad got his first house away from my mom. He would let us ripstick in the house so that we could use the walls to learn how to balance. He even knew how to ripstick too, and we would play for hours. My Dad would play Guitar Hero with us all day in his crappy house with his huge beanbag chair. On the days my dad would pick me up from school he would take me to get ice cream and to buy a new Webkinz stuffed animal. My Dad took me to the Texas Ranger Stadium to watch baseball games since I was a newborn. He taught me how to split sunflower seeds, he taught me the game of baseball that I love today, and he taught me that you never ever boo during a game, no matter what's going on. My Dad is an extremely supportive father. He pays for my college and for my living as I am in school to become an engineer. Because he believes I am the smartest person in the world. My Dad taught me that your brain is the most important part of your body, and to learn is the best gift you are given. He taught me that if you work hard enough you are capable of anything because he went from a farmer with the income of two teaching parents to a doctor. My Dad is one of the most charming and funny people I've ever known. His stories can make a whole room smile and laugh. Despite his adversities and his difficult journey with sobriety, my Dad is a good man, a loving father, and a person worth knowing. He is a person worth learning from and a person worth loving wholeheartedly. My Dad's story is one worth hearing firsthand from him. Because it's not just a tragic story of an alcoholic father trying to be better. It's a story of his incredible resilience and his insurmountable love for his children that brought him back. I will never forget that severely cold, mean face, but I will always look forward to seeing my Dad's even warmer smile every time he greets me.