Disappear

I don’t know when it happened. Like depression, time is a stealthy enemy, you never see it coming and you surely don’t see it pass. Suddenly the shroud is upon you and there is nothing you can do to reverse the devastating effects. I don’t know when I disappeared, when I became obsolete, when I stopped being loved or even spoken to by others. One day I just no longer mattered.

I was a forceps baby, a practice that wasn’t uncommon in the 1960’s with birthing procedures. For whatever reason, the attending doctor in the little pink adobe hospital in Santa Fe, New Mexico decided that the whole procedure would be better facilitated by using metal clamps, grabbing a baby by the soft infant head, and yanking me into this world. Time starts.

All young children seek security and safety in many forms. For some it is a little stuffed animal, for others a blanket that they desperately cling to. Some children suck their thumbs or a pacifier of some kind. I placed my fingers in the form of a peace sign on either side of my teeth, this was my security, my blanket, my pacifier. My dad was not so accepting of this finger sucking habit. He started his campaign with painting my fingers with something that tasted horrible and would eventually cause nausea and vomiting. I don’t remember why that didn’t work completely, but I know it didn’t. Kids are resilient and I probably learned how to wipe it off somehow. I do remember his second corrective measure. If he saw his little kid with his fingers in his mouth, he would run over, yank them out and FLICK them with everything he had. He was a young and inexperienced father. Decorated Viet Nam vet, good provider.

My mom was an alcoholic, my dad was too but he died an alcoholic. My mom sought help and went into rehab when I was in fourth grade. Nine years old already? I helped her, we went to AA open meetings together and I hung out with her and her recovering friends. I presented her, her 1-year cake for her sobriety and she has been sober ever since. I really enjoyed this time with my mom and as she ages, she has little to no memories of this time together. You think all this history that I would have managed to evade this addiction…

I kind of came into my own in middle school. I had never been popular in elementary school, although I did have friends. My best friend and I started a band, and it grew into middle school, long hair, and heavy metal rock, we were popular in a weird way but all that didn’t matter, we were in determined pursuit of being rockstars. There was some interest, a few battles of the band victories, a recording session with a well-known producer, gigs set up at area schools and rec centers, not bad, considering our age at the time. At the time my family lived in Vancouver, Canada and it was a great place to grow up in, so inevitably it had to end. We were told in a formal family meeting setting that dad had an opportunity in Edmonton, Alberta that he had already accepted and that we were going to move there as soon as the school year ended. I remember, his new company flew us all to Edmonton, first class, picked us up in a limo and put us up in the nicest hotel in the city. I thought to myself that this must be what a rockstar experiences as I watched my dream wither on the cold and baron tundra of Edmonton, Alberta.

Already in high school, Jasper Place Composite High School. I always thought it was an odd and very long name for a school. The band tried for a while, part of my dad’s promises to keep us together was to fly me their twice and them to Edmonton once. It was all part of the con. The adult con, that so many kids go through without realizing, your dreams are important, and YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT IN LIFE, unless it interferes with their adult lives. I had never smoked, drank, or tried any drugs, it was something that the band was proud of. We were different. I quickly lost that after moving to a new city and a new school. I was good looking, smart and entertaining, girls liked me, and I liked them… a lot of them. I continued my pursuit of the arts and landed the lead in the school production of Grease. The show was so popular that it was extended by 8 performances. A new dream was born. I had settled into one girl, a girl with a lot of problems. Another family meeting. This time we are moving to Texas. My mom and dad had sympathy with the new girl, and she moved with us.

Moving from Canada to Texas was a culture shock and the heat was unbearable. I was graduated from high school, but the girlfriend was a year younger than me and enrolled in the Lewisville high school in Lewisville, Texas. I started working. I have always worked since I was 12. Paper routes, restaurants, hotels. I had to, my dad charged me for rent and meals. This was different, full-time work, without going to school. Bad jobs and bad cars. I took my experience from Canada and landed a job at the Anatole hotel in Dallas, Texas. I started to rise through the guest services ranks and bought a brand-new Camaro, it was in this car I received my DWI. I got home from work one day and my dad, mom, uncle, aunt, and a couple of random people were there to inform me that they sent my girlfriend back to Canada while I was at work. I loved her. At least, I thought I did.

I left, I drove to a liquor store, bought a bottle, and drove to Dallas to seek a friend, anyone that would sympathize with my horrible dilemma. A friend that worked with me gave me a key to his apartment, he was still working, and I headed in that direction. I started drinking on the way to his place and fate dealt me a blow. A minor accident, not even my fault but the cops were right there, and they saw my bottle in the car and I was arrested and spent a very unpleasant night in county jail.

Time to grow up. College was uneventful for the most part. I started as a drama major and ended up switching to business. There seemed to be no sense in pursuing dreams anymore. I met a woman 25 years older than I was and moved in with her. She had some means, and we started a couple of businesses together. Nothing that really amounted to anything, we ended up selling the estate house in North Texas and moved to Central Texas. We started a retail store in Salado, Texas, and a small café. The wife of a high-level manager for a big box retailer loved our little store and convinced her husband to join her one weekend. He recruited me to go into their management program and I accepted.

Rose through the ranks quickly and met the mother of my children at the first store I managed. It was illicit. Managers can’t have relations with employees, beyond that, she was married. I was under the impression that they were separated but it wouldn’t have mattered, I was fully enamored with her, I was in love. I was promoted to a different location as I learned that she was pregnant, I went to all the doctor visits and carried the sonogram picture in my wallet. She disappeared a week before the baby was due and I lost all contact. I was still with my senior woman, and she was still married. I had never even met her family, why would I? They hated me. I contacted the hospital, as a pretend relative and they informed me that she had given birth the day before. Diligence and DNA gave me a son.

Two more children with her. A daughter 10 months after my son, another questionable father situation and another son 11 years later that, same thing, I accept him as mine. She had been living with her parents. The kids came to my house, with my older companion on the weekends, she loved the kids and would do anything for them. Time has cloaked itself. Depression set in heavy. Changes were made. Older companion moved back to North Texas and mother and kids moved in.

A justice of the peace marriage happened several months after the moving in. I had never been married, and now at 50 years old I saw gold on my finger. No ceremony, no honeymoon, just marriage.

I quickly became the bad guy. I felt the kids needed structure and discipline, like I had when I was growing up. Their mother felt they needed very little to no discipline. The initial arguments were loud and it was me against the rest of them. I was shocked and scared. I realized that being alone and unloved was far worse than my ideology on child raising. I guess I just didn’t have the abilities to be part of a family. I stopped communicating, from a verbal perspective to avoid divorce and ultimate loneliness. They, in turn stopped communicating with me. It wasn’t a single moment; it wasn’t even definable as a period of time. My work went away. My family went away…I went away.

As I sit here, in my little sequestered space, I stare out of my cloudy window at the old pear tree that has been growing there all these years. The little tree is engulfed under the umbrella of a giant live oak and has never received proper light or moisture to be a great fruit tree. Each year it blooms and produces tiny little pears that shrivel, rot and fall to the ground. How deep are that little tree’s roots? How long has it lived? When did time deem this tree obsolete?

The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, New Mexico) 10 May 1965

Obituary:

Infant **** ******** passed peacefully in the arms of his loving mother, ****** ******** on May 10, 1965. He was born at 3:02 a.m. and met the eyes of Jesus at 3:03 a.m. the same day…