Today I love

Today, I Love

Macy sits here lying at the park, staring at another pup from afar, curious and wondering if she will go play.  No leash and not a care in the world - Macy is a ball of pure love. 

How cute, I think. What a strange reality that some people grow up thinking dogs are less alive than humans.

Slave owners. It felt this way growing up - always confined, bored out of my mind in the summer time, stuck in some rental house that felt like a prison to me. Poverty mentality masqueraded as “strict parenting.” We had several dogs growing up, always left on chains outside to be alone, no attention or challenge to grow.

Cali was a place of freedom for me, and a nightmare.

My brother Aric and I used to get outside and explore the mountains of San Diego -  getting far away from whatever bullshit place we were forced to be every day. Joe on the couch, drunk probably, and Mom at work as a nurse working four 12's at the Naval Hospital.

I loved her so much I hated it. The pride I felt watching her get ready for work and the anger and sadness I felt as she drove away.

Please don’t go. Don’t leave me here with him, like that.

She always left, though. She had to, and there I was - forced to stay. Who else would hear the baby cry and take care of her, if not me? Aric was never around for it. He was somewhere. This is the part that’s a blur in my memory.

When Aric and I could get away together we’d escape to the outdoors. Our imaginations were big and wild and creative and free.

Dinosaur Valley. That was the place we used to explore. That’s what we called it anyway. 

Many summers were spent with the agony of boredom -  the kind that only comes when you’re dealing with neglect.

I can’t remember all of the days or most of the details, but I do remember love. I loved my brother and my mother dearly. I missed the times it was only us. 

My father was gone by now - leaving me with him. That’s how it felt..like he left me for her. That he left me with him. A child can only know so much and this is what I knew.

A Marine and Sergeant as a father, and a mother from Detroit, a trailer park cursing woman who became a nurse and a mother and was always a fiercely courageous woman. Joe was weak to me, and he brought with him a new reality - a new culture.

He left his wife and his sons -  boys none of us ever met, but all of us knew were there before we were. The darkness and shame that comes when alcohol and abuse and regret live inside a man makes for long summer days and a lifetime of grief for his children. I am not his child. I am my father’s daughter, and my mother’s, too. Joe is a man I once knew. 

I used to judge my mother for what she’d done. How dare she leave me here, with him, like this.

What did she know, at the time? She was a religious 18-year-old in Arkansas -Harrison to be exact - when she met my father. He was a policeman there, and he rode a motorcycle that excited her. She came from a controlled and cultish reality - a Jehovah's witness who had an abusive father and brother, and a mother who spent her time in the bars, letting my mother dance in the pool hall for quarters when she was young. What did she know? 

Their love affair and marriage was short-lived.  My father’s cheating seemed to forever close her - harden her. She was angry, and then bitter, after that. Bitterness that turned to sharp reactions. That’s who I remember her to be. 

Tip toe, tip toe. Be careful, Autumn. She is home from work and tired. Don’t ask for much. 

Durinda, Aric, and Autumn. It was just us for a good and little bit of time. 2 years maybe. It’s probably close to 2 months, but what do I know of my life back then? I was only 2, maybe 3, until she met Joe. A beaten and abused man from Puerto Rico, by way of the Bronx. She was a sucker for a man in a suit. The suit of service - a Marine, too, but he was nothing like my father. He was weak and ruled with an iron fist. Hospital corners and late night punishments that were more like a bully who tortured - taking his pain out on my brother and on me. Getting out of bed for a glass of water was a sin you never did twice. He’d ask us to stand in front of him, hold our arms out and not let our knees buckle. Get tired and see what happens. 

“Go ahead…try it” Joe would taunt. Try me. We’ll see how thirsty you really are. 

To get back at my dad for the sins of a man who has no clue which side was up, she ran to Joe.

I never got her back after that.