When you grow up in the country, when the nearest town has a population of 200, you have to learn how to keep yourself occupied. Such is the lament of the rural teen: there's nothing to do around here. But there was, in an admittedly un-flashy way. As a young adolescent, I busied myself with endearingly innocent activities. I remember the years between ages 10 and 13 in oddly dichotomous terms. Summers were spent dodging blue racers, aqua-kicking through seaweed, and making pie from wild berries picked near our house. My idyllic days were, I suspect, a respite from the uncomfortable evenings that preceded them.
These were the days of the first Bush's recession, and my father had lost his job as a commercial artist — or what graphic designers were called back in the day. To boost the family's income, my mother took a job at a bank while my father assembled a collection of small jobs: bartender, Shell station attendant, rent-a-guard, Wal-Mart sporting goods "associate," and so on. It is both awkward and accurate to say that we didn't have very much money. We ate a lot of Tuna Helper and frozen fried chicken.
My parents argued a lot, but other times they didn't say anything at all. Their battles were fought with hissed sighs, purposefully angry clanks of coffee mugs, forceful door slams. We didn't eat dinner together as much as we used to, in part because my father worked late or went to the bar down the road. I hated that bar and the slurring men who complimented my father on "the way I was turning out." At the same time, I greedily liked it when he'd return with a snack of chicken strips or cheese sticks for me.
My father used to take me swimming at the lake, and sometimes he'd sip a beer while I splashed around (again, keeping a vigilant eye out for water snakes). I don't remember when it happened, but he started bringing two, three, four with him, and soon thereafter he stopped watching my jumps and dives. I identified the attention-stealing culprit as the cheap Schaefer cans, and I was so jealous that I once "accidentally" knocked them into the deep water off the dock. Another time, to punish my father for falling asleep with his beer, I swam as far out as I could and pretended to drown. Certainly, he would have to wake up and realize the importance of his youngest child, I believed. But my little faked yelps didn't puncture his slumber, and all that came out of my botched guilt trip was one very tired and grumpy 12-year-old.
You could hear the sputtered roar of my father's rusty Bronco from a mile away. I hated that truck not only because it was embarrassingly clunky, but also because it rattled with empty cans dribbling out stale beer. I was frozen in the passenger seat whenever my father would drive down dusty gravel roads, veering close to the shoulder.
I spent a few years like this, learning to unlove my father. I developed a near-violent hatred of alcohol, because I saw it as the thief who took our relationship and ruined it. A man who broke into our house one summer night was fall-down drunk, and so I further associated drunkenness with fear and helplessness. I cried a lot. I mutated from a cheerful child into a dark-minded pre-adolescent. I begged and pleaded for my father to stop drinking, even accusing him of loving his beer more than he loved his family. And that's how it looked, of course.
To this day, I don't really know why my father stopped drinking. All I know is that one day, the six-pack he lifted out of the grocery bag was fake beer — the kind that has .05 percent alcohol content. "I'm going to give this a try," he said. He hasn't had a drink since then.
I do love my father and I'm not trying to vilify him by writing any of this. We are all imperfect, perhaps more broken than we are whole. As an adult, I'm now beginning to understand the situation from a more mature perspective; I'm able to look back at it and see myself not as myself but as a child. That makes some memories easier and others harder, but this shifted perspective has ultimately helped me understand our family, my father, and myself.
Soon: yet another long tale about why I do imbibe now and then, since you asked. Expect thrilling anecdotes like Being Carried Home By My Boyfriend After A Wine Tasting; I Think I Could Totally Take Mr. Corduroy In A Fight; and I Guess Since The Boss Offered Me Chardonnay, I'd Better Have Some If I Want To Keep My Job.
These were the days of the first Bush's recession, and my father had lost his job as a commercial artist — or what graphic designers were called back in the day. To boost the family's income, my mother took a job at a bank while my father assembled a collection of small jobs: bartender, Shell station attendant, rent-a-guard, Wal-Mart sporting goods "associate," and so on. It is both awkward and accurate to say that we didn't have very much money. We ate a lot of Tuna Helper and frozen fried chicken.
My parents argued a lot, but other times they didn't say anything at all. Their battles were fought with hissed sighs, purposefully angry clanks of coffee mugs, forceful door slams. We didn't eat dinner together as much as we used to, in part because my father worked late or went to the bar down the road. I hated that bar and the slurring men who complimented my father on "the way I was turning out." At the same time, I greedily liked it when he'd return with a snack of chicken strips or cheese sticks for me.
My father used to take me swimming at the lake, and sometimes he'd sip a beer while I splashed around (again, keeping a vigilant eye out for water snakes). I don't remember when it happened, but he started bringing two, three, four with him, and soon thereafter he stopped watching my jumps and dives. I identified the attention-stealing culprit as the cheap Schaefer cans, and I was so jealous that I once "accidentally" knocked them into the deep water off the dock. Another time, to punish my father for falling asleep with his beer, I swam as far out as I could and pretended to drown. Certainly, he would have to wake up and realize the importance of his youngest child, I believed. But my little faked yelps didn't puncture his slumber, and all that came out of my botched guilt trip was one very tired and grumpy 12-year-old.
You could hear the sputtered roar of my father's rusty Bronco from a mile away. I hated that truck not only because it was embarrassingly clunky, but also because it rattled with empty cans dribbling out stale beer. I was frozen in the passenger seat whenever my father would drive down dusty gravel roads, veering close to the shoulder.
I spent a few years like this, learning to unlove my father. I developed a near-violent hatred of alcohol, because I saw it as the thief who took our relationship and ruined it. A man who broke into our house one summer night was fall-down drunk, and so I further associated drunkenness with fear and helplessness. I cried a lot. I mutated from a cheerful child into a dark-minded pre-adolescent. I begged and pleaded for my father to stop drinking, even accusing him of loving his beer more than he loved his family. And that's how it looked, of course.
To this day, I don't really know why my father stopped drinking. All I know is that one day, the six-pack he lifted out of the grocery bag was fake beer — the kind that has .05 percent alcohol content. "I'm going to give this a try," he said. He hasn't had a drink since then.
I do love my father and I'm not trying to vilify him by writing any of this. We are all imperfect, perhaps more broken than we are whole. As an adult, I'm now beginning to understand the situation from a more mature perspective; I'm able to look back at it and see myself not as myself but as a child. That makes some memories easier and others harder, but this shifted perspective has ultimately helped me understand our family, my father, and myself.
Soon: yet another long tale about why I do imbibe now and then, since you asked. Expect thrilling anecdotes like Being Carried Home By My Boyfriend After A Wine Tasting; I Think I Could Totally Take Mr. Corduroy In A Fight; and I Guess Since The Boss Offered Me Chardonnay, I'd Better Have Some If I Want To Keep My Job.
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