1943

The cuts and bruises from Mac's beating of Florene had healed slowly. There was no hiding from her friends the debasing level to which the marriage had quickly crumbled. Though it was probably whispered about in circles unfamiliar to Florene, the beating and drug addiction was not something one discussed aloud. Nor did young women in the 1940's go to their pastor or a counselor readily. There were some things it was taboo to speak of. Regardless, Florene was not the type to "air her dirty laundry" in public. Still there was the haunting subliminal accusation that she had caused his addiction because she was somehow inadequate.

Mac was nowhere to be found. Predator that he was, he slithered under some dark rock and hid until his young wife's divorce was final. No apology. No plea for understanding. There was nothing left, and Mac knew it.

Physical bruises had diminished and her stitches had been removed for weeks when Florene was given back her secretarial position. She had been a hard worker. Of course they would be happy to have her in their employ again. Emotional battering does not fade so quickly; and, because it did not look so dark and bloody, was not treated. Life goes on. Head up! Shoulders back!

Packing up her belongings from the little home she shared with Mac brought waves of nauseating hopelessness and loss. Each curtain had been created with hopeful hands; each dish was to be laid upon a blessed and happy table. Children were supposed to run about gleefully in the yard and down the halls. What had she done wrong?

There was a room for rent not far from the office where Florene worked. It would be a short walk to the bus stop. One warm Saturday her friends and their husbands helped the young divorcee rearrange her life there. Cheerful and giggling, the young women waved an oblivious good-bye that day, and Florene closed herself into solitude. In those days and nights of pressing need, the young divorcee had a friend. She prayed. He listened. Then she could retreat into a fitful sleep.

On a winter evening in 1943, Florene had stayed late finishing some paperwork at the office. She missed her usual bus and had to wait several minutes for another. The early darkness of the winter day cloaked a stranger who meandered about near the bus stop watching this young woman sitting there alone and vulnerable. Unaware of his presence, Florene was not alarmed but thinking only of the events of the day and the other miscellany that chases thoughts in and out of the way. The stranger boarded the bus at the same time she did, then pressed up close behind her so that her nostrils were filled with his stale nicotine-soaked breath and splashes of musky aftershave wafting from his body. Peripherally, she caught a glance at him as she turned to walk the crowded aisle and took a seat. The man passed her then and did not ogle her or give her reason to fear; but, a palpable dread accompanied him so that Florene gripped the bus rail and prayed.

When the driver announced her stop a few minutes later, Florene was relieved to be free of the uneasiness she was experiencing. Quickly, she gathered her purse and rushed to the doors of the bus that had been swung open for her departure. But when the woman glanced behind her, there he was, lighting a cigarette and watching her walk away. Clutching her purse to her chest and breathing a prayer for protection, Florene began walking quickly, stoically, away from the stranger. His legs were longer and with ease he caught almost up to her so that his odors tried to wrap themselves around her from behind as the ominous sound of his footfall pounded in her ears. She was terrified and could not decide what to do.

"Lord, help me! Please. I need help!" Her whispered desperation.

By then, the boarding house was in sight. Safety was only a few feet away. "Run!" An inner command. "Run!"


Without looking back, Florene wrapped her coat tightly around her, pulled her purse closer into her, and commanded her high-heeled shoes to make it to her door now! Propelled by fear and fueled by her instincts to survive, she made it to the door, dug frantically for her key as her chest was heaving, and never looked back to see if she was followed. The door fumbled open and she fell through it, out of breath and sweating. Slamming the door shut as fast as she could, Florene fell against it and dead-bolted the lock. Her body relaxed against the comfort of the secured door as she began to catch her breath. Purse and coat slipped from her and fell to the floor as the realization of what almost happened to her began to stir her understanding. The deep breath she took transformed itself into a bottomless and shocking sob. Loneliness and rejection heaved from her body as she slid down the door to sit on the cold hardwood floor. From a cavern hidden in some soulish retreat of her psyche came hopelessness to engulf her. She could not cry enough to ease her sinking despair. The relief of tears had vanished and Florene was awash in endless grief.

Her friend, however, was there. He heard her crying out and caught her tears. "Please help me, Jesus! Please...." she sobbed.

The fount of Florene's tears finally ceased its flow and the deafening quiet of her room surrounded her. In the silence, seemingly from within the solitude, came a soothing imperative.

"Be still and know that I am God."

1941

Florene was in the middle of the living room floor, holding herself and crying. There was blood all over her and bruises were already starting to form from the fury of the fists that had punched her mercilessly, leaving her in a heap, curled up into herself to avoid further attack. Tears flowed abashedly from her swollen eyes, her sobs subdued by her terror of the man who walked over her trembling form as if she were rubbish, fumbled for his hat and coat from the rack beside the door, and left, the slamming of the door crushing his wife's heart and any hope for their brief marriage.

Carrying a bouquet of bright flowers and wearing a lovely white street-length dress, Florene Olive Berrier had married the dashing dark-haired pharmacist six months earlier. Her eyes sparkled with all the hope wrapped up in their repeated vows and the little gold ring he had placed on her finger. Maypearl, Texas, and the little farmhouse where she had grown up now seemed remote as she and Mac settled into their little home in Fort Worth. Though she only attended college for two years, Florene's home economic courses served her well. She was a natural when it came to decorating and party planning. It was important that everything be just right, for her artistic eye was offended when she perceived something to be out of place. Flora, Florene's mother, had been careful to teach her children to sew; and, the young bride was accomplished enough at the skill to create her own drapes, tablecloths, napkins, and bedding.

Mac was a friend of Florene's brother-in-law, and it was he who had introduced the couple. Mac was taken by Florene's beauty and naivete. At the time, she was modeling hats and gloves at a downtown department store to supplement her secretarial work, and the young man was immediately attracted to her statuesque body, her exceptionally long legs and slim ankles. He, of course, was the debonair college graduate who had landed a great job in a downtown drug store, and his natural charisma and practiced charm were too much for the fair young lady from the farm to resist for long. Mac proposed to Florene after only a few months courtship, and, she, deeply flattered and very much infatuated, said yes. Because neither of them could afford a large wedding, they were married in a small church two months later by a Baptist minister with only relatives and close friends in attendance. The newlyweds had no honeymoon but went immediately to their little two bedroom home located near the pharmacy.

It became apparent almost immediately that Mac wore his charm and affability as he wore his hat and coat - when necessary. Florene's heart became confused by his contradictory behavior. Should she displease him in some way, her husband was quick to bark his annoyance, red-faced and unduly angry. Because Florene was unfamiliar with brute behavior, it was not her natural response to escalate the altercations. Cowed, she would escape into silence and wait for the storm to quiet. Mac was sometimes sorrowful afterward, but never asked for forgiveness, only for her understanding. Florene did not understand; the treatment was inexcusable. She did, however, forgive. Lucky Mac.

With each passing day and each ensuing argument, Florene's enthusiasm for her marriage and her budding love for her new husband waned. Afraid to say the wrong thing or look at Mac some way that set off his deep rage, Florene retreated into her own lonely world quickly. Her young husband came home later and later each evening and was surly and distant much of the time. Occasionally he would wear his charming self for a few days, and the young wife would let down her guard and question her sanity. Perhaps she'd been wrong about him. He justified his actions and words to such an extent that Florene often felt like a baited fish, lured by love to believe the illusion against the odds. Mac was good to his bride just long enough to let her hope again; then he would disrobe, leaving charisma and caring in a pile on the floor. How could she not think his actions were her fault? Her man did not treat others as he treated her. Somehow she deserved outrage, and she was too nonplussed and naive to know what she needed to do to make him happy.

Later and later each night, Florene found herself alone and waiting. Mac's dinner was always cold and she had begun to eat by herself. She dared not bring her friends or sisters into her confidence, for they would surely see what her husband saw -she was inadequate. Were she a better wife, Mac would want to be with her; so, for whatever reason, he avoided coming home.

Months dragged by and Florene, too intimidated to confront Mac about his late evening whereabouts for fear he would once again shout her down, became almost obsessively curious about her husband's activities. One evening, half a year into the marriage, Mac had not come home by nearly midnight. Worried and uneasy, Florene dressed and walked the short distance to the pharmacy. Her stomach in knots, she peered through the storefront window. All the lights were out except for the faint glow emanating from somewhere in the back. Florene felt ashamed of her espionage, but she was much too curious to scrap her mission. Was Mac in the back of the drug store? What was he doing?

Florene moved to the entrance of the drugstore and pressed her body close to the door. After glancing slowly in both directions, the young wife wrapped her hand around the chilly, gold knob, hoping it was unlocked. It did not give, and she let out her breath slowly in a long, noiseless stream. Quiet as a shadow and hugging the red dewy bricks on the outside of the building, the young wife made her way around to the back of the store where an ethereal cloud of light diffused in the late night fog as if it were smearing the line between heaven and hell. One small window had allowed a capricious stream of light to escape and illuminate Florene's path down the alley to its sill. Once there, undetected, trepidation seemed to choke her. Peering through the window could change the young woman's life forever; but, she could not see a future in living with things as they were.

The window framed a scene for which Florene was unprepared when she stood on tiptoe to spy on her young husband. Why had she not guessed his problem before? Mac was at a desk on which sat a small lamp lit by a single bulb. His head was down, resting on the crook of his left arm; his right arm hung limp beside him, fingertips reaching almost to the floor. Splayed across the table were a dozen pills which had rolled aimlessly from half a dozen uncapped, overturned bottles that must have tipped over as a result of some awkward motion of Mac's when his drug-slogged head hit the table. The enormity of her husband's addicton seeped slowly into her understanding. At first Florene felt flushed and almost electrocuted by the vision and its repercussions. Even her hair and fingernails tingled with shock and the powerful infusion of energy that accompanies a sudden, dreadful revelation. Mac was a drug addict. He had kept from her the very thing that fueled his life and drove his rages. Florene did not know her husband; no wonder he had felt like a stranger to her. "Oh, my God," she breathed. "Oh, my God!"

Just then, Mac looked up, bleary-eyed and suspicious. There was his wife's mermerized face framed in the window. Picture to picture they studied one another; she terrified, he suddenly enraged. Florene turned and ran at the exact instant she saw Mac rise and stagger from his seat. As fast as her feet could manage, she retraced her nighttime steps to her little house. Breathless, heart racing, sweat pouring out her deepest dread, she unlocked the door, latched the deadbolt behind her, raced to her bedroom and sat down hard onto the bed, shivering and completely alone in her nightmare.

"Maybe he didn't see me." But she had seen him! Her husband needed help! Florene was ashamed for him and of him; and, she could not even think what would come next. There was only this moment and it would most assuredly last forever.

A loud fumbling at the front door and the tinkling of dropped keys heralded a stoned and swearing Mac's arrival home. Florene sat very still, wringing her hands, afraid to move and afraid to stay. Ominously, stealthily, Mac came looking for his wife in their small home. Kitchen first, then down the hall to their bedroom. There she was - sitting smugly as if she did not know! As if she had not spied on him! Mac stumbled over to her; she dared not, could not, look up at him.

"So, where have you been?" he slurred.

Florene was catatonic. He had seen her! Hope slipped silently from her, vaporizing; she sat empty on the bed.

" I asked you where you have been!"


Still silence. He knew the answer.

The first hard slap across Florene's face was unexpected, and it knocked her from the bed. Unsteady from the force of his own swinging arm, Mac fell forward into the space where his wife had been sitting. Stunned and panicked, as a deer only wounded by the first round from the hunter's gun, Florene fumbled down the hall on all fours trying to reach some safe place. Unbalanced and wavering, Mac chased his prey into the living room where he pulled her up by the collar of her dress, turned her to face him, and slapped her once again, hard, across the face.

"Don't!" she cried. "Please don't!"

He could not help it. He was not Mac. Mac had been overtaken by the wicked alter ego born of his addiction. As he pummeled Florene to the ground with his hands and fists, some raging demon found great satisfaction and retribution in the conquest. She should not have spied on him! With each blow, Mac shrieked his justification at his "stupid, worthless, piece-of-shit" wife!

Spent and staggering, the young husband looked down on his new bride and for a moment seemed to see what he had just done. Florene looked up through the blood and sweat of her failed retreat and saw the confusion and panic that for just one moment passed across his consciousness. Mac was finished then. It was a small grace.

1925

1925 was the year that "Dinah" and "Sweet Georgia Brown" were hit songs. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington released their first recordings. Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby and Hitler wrote Mein Kampf. Charles Jenkins produced the first working television set and Nelie Taylor Ross of Wyoming became America's first woman governor. Forty thousand KKKers marched in Washington, D.C., and Earl Wise invented the first potato chip. But history did not record the event that took place in a small house in a small town to a small boy in Ohio. It would change forever the child's history and the subsequent lives of those with whom he would come into contact for the next eighty-one years.

The boy's name was Jim. At six years of age, he was the youngest of five children. There were two older brothers and two older sisters. Jim came along well behind the others and was doted upon by his mother, a large, soft woman whose body felt like a down-stuffed pillow and who wore her thick reddish hair in a braided crown about her head. A.J., or Pop, was also a very large man who sold various goods door-to-door or city-to-city. He was absent from home well before he left for good.

Jim was on crutches that day in 1925. A bone disease had eaten into his right tibia just above the ankle and surgery had repaired the damaged bone. The wound, however, was large and left Jim to fend on crutches for many months. His mother, Celestia, was standing at the ironing board steaming starched shirts for A.J.'s out-of-town trip. The kitchen was hot and sticky in that late Ohio summer. The boy had spent much of the day on the back steps trying to catch any breeze that might stray toward him in pity as it watched the sweat pour down his chubby little face. He had few playmates; his mother was his closest ally.

On the counter in the kitchen, noodles were drying in a chaotic pattern as if they had simply been cut then dropped there in a heap. Dirty pots and pans were piled high in the sink and the odor of yesterday's food tainted the pungent, humid air. Celestia was bent over her task, stopping frequently to pass the back of her hand across her brow to keep sweat from pouring in droplets onto Pop's shirt. It seemed he was always gone, and when he was home he had no interest in her anymore. Her arms were flaccid as was her belly from bearing children and from her hours of sitting and knitting on the porch. A.J. found her to be uninteresting, unattractive and unlovable. His wife did not know what to do about this failing relationship. No use thinking about it all the time. No different from the neighbors. Things just change after a while.

Smelling as though he had bathed in cheap cologne and wearing an undershirt, dark dress pants, black thin nylon socks and shiny black wing-tipped shoes, A.J. strode too quickly into the kitchen demanding a white starched shirt. Celestia moved toward a kitchen chair where she had hung a fresh shirt across the chairback. Grasping it gingerly by the shoulders, she held it up for Pop so that he could easily reach his arms into the sleeves. Brusquely, he threw the shirt closed across his chest, jerking himself free of her as quickly as possible. Without saying a word, A.J. left the kitchen as swiftly as he had entered, carrying with him the other pieces of ironed clothing his wife had meticulously, if not lovingly, made ready for his suitcase.

The back door clanged shut and the tap-tap of Jim's crutches could be heard as he slowly made his way to Celestia's kitchen. "Did Pop come in here?" Jim actually smelled the overpowering sweetness of the men's cologne mixed with the odor of his dad's perspiration. It became the essence of man to Jim - cleaned up, ready for action, going out of town, living the high life, exciting, exotic, grown-up man smell. Jim sometimes slept with Pop's pillow when Pop was out of town just to breathe in the comfort of his fading odor and to lay with his face where his dad's face had been.

Without looking up, Celestia barely spoke. "Yes. Yes, he did."

"He hasn't left, yet, has he? I want to see him," said Jim, rushing toward the front door.

"He hasn't gone, yet. Calm down."

Taking a glass from the cupboard, Jim poured himself some tap water and sat down at the kitchen table waiting until Pop came in to say good-bye. Jim heard the squeak of patent leather and smelled the cloud of cologne again before he actually saw his dad standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He loved looking at Pop all decked out with the hat, suit and tie. Jim confused A.J.'s sense of self-importance with actual eminence and was proud to look at this big man standing there poised before him. He and his mom never got a kiss good-bye, so he was not expecting that. But, there was a look on Pop's face that Jim had never seen before. Pop just kept looking at Mom and him like he had something hard to say. Jim thought he was in trouble, maybe. Beside Pop on the floor were two large suitcases that Celestia kept looking over at. Jim had never seen them before; clearly, neither had his mom. With great deliberation and without changing the determined expression on his face, Pop reached into his pocket, pulled out a dollar bill, laid it on the ironing board in front of Celestia and said: "I'm not coming back." With that, A.J. turned on his heel, picked up his bags, and walked out the door for good.

Jim rose in a daze from the kitchen chair, put his crutches in his little armpits and slowly, slowly, one tap-tap at a time, made his way to the front screen door that had just banged shut his childhood. He stood there looking through the wire screening, watching, as if in slow motion, his Pop load up his car and drive away. Pop never looked back; never saw his youngest son, tears streaming down his pudgy face, slowly lift his little boy hand and wave a tentative good-bye.

1985

Rain beat down in torrents, slanted acutely by the fierce north Texas winds. The stubborn battering of our window panes and bombarding of our hip roof by the springtime storm had played like a band out of rhythm with itself throughout the night and into late afternoon of this March day in 1985. Relentlessly, the storm pounded on as though it did not understand its own evanescence. The season birthed the upheaval; but seasons do not last.

Past the place of tears in me, a dark well of grief was making its clandestine appearance. My father's pedophilia was a thought still unspeakable - ineffable. Yet my heart had the knowledge my mouth could not speak. Loss, undefined and treacherous, seeped into the murky waters, mixing with my mourning. My father was still living, yet he had died to me. My life, like a series of photographs, came, sometimes invited, sometimes not, into my conscious thoughts, every day redefining my childhood, reshaping my current existence. I lost the good memories of my father. When those pictures floated through my mind, album-like, they were besmirched with darkness and were ruined. I could no longer see them clearly. Stripped from me was the image of my "daddy." Though this season of my life would slowly move into another, the damage left in the wake of the storm was irreparable. "Daddy" was forever lost.

Perched in a tree outside the bay window in my dining room that stormy day was a mother sparrow. The young sycamore tree to which she clung had only just sprouted its first spring foliage. Scattered beneath the trunk of this bird's refuge lay leaves brutalized and beaten by the battering wind and rain. The carefully constructed nest of the little mother bird hung precariously unguarded, her safety and security ripped away by the howling wind and driving rain. Mesmerized by her courage, I watched her little body stiffen against the onslaught in her determination to cover her children and bring them through the storm safely. More than once, the wind nearly lifted her from her perch; the deluge of droplets pelletted her body mercilessly. Yet she sat. Persevered. Pushed by purpose not to abandon her babies, she did not take flight to find safety for herself, but heeded the call to a higher cause.

Throughout the long afternoon, I watched her. I, too, was performing my duties, pushed by purpose. I, too, felt deluged by my circumstances, barely hanging on to my life. The storm Daddy had created had come on so suddenly, with so little warning, and had flooded our lives with unthinkable detritus. I found myself unable to sort it; to jettison the flotsam and keep the gold. Day and night there was no escaping the unrelenting realization that my life - all of it - had been reconstructed; and, the new facsimile was vastly inferior to the old. I wanted to fly away to some safe place where the events of the past few weeks were only the nightmare they seemed.

The battle of the sparrow, soaked and shivering, became my battle as the day wore on. She had to make it! If she did not despair of living, though pummeled by the season's ominous outpouring, then, perhaps neither would I. I loved her, the little bird. I did not want her to die. As night fell, the storm eased. Before I went to bed, I flipped on the back porch light to check on her. Perched atop her family, the little mother seemed to relish the still air and parting clouds that revealed a few twinkling stars, assuring us that there was hope of sunshine on the morrow.

1983

Something must have gone terribly wrong with the spermicidal foam I had counted on for years to attack the little vermin before one of them could become too attached to a lonely, waiting egg in my clearly fertile womb. My husband had been the grateful recipient of a trip to Hong Kong on business and it was definitely my pleasure to accompany him. My parents generously volunteered to take care of our two daughters, Heather and Vanessa, while we were away.

It was a very...did I say very...long flight from Dallas, Texas, to Hong Kong, and in 1983 no one was safe from the smokers at the back of the plane. The sun never went down. Honestly, it was daylight all the way from Dallas to Tokyo. It is not my disposition to sleep when I am excited and cigarette smoke makes me nauseous. Probably a throwback from the long drives in the family car when my dad smoked with the windows rolled up and the air conditioning on. I threw up at a lot of gas stations and roadside parks. I once puked on my Christmas doll. My mother cleaned the doll up with gasoline which, it seems, sealed the rather disgusting odors of both gas and puke into her plastic skin for eternity.

When we arrived in Hong Kong from Tokyo, it had somehow become the middle of the night. However, my body clock was fatally destroyed by then; so, as my husband slept away, I sat by the window looking at the slumbering Pearl of the Orient, antsy for the morning light. The ebony, star-flung sky had slowly evolved into the early pinkish light of dawn when I decided it was time for Bill to get up and take an early morning run with me so that we could see Hong Kong awaken. After all, he had enjoyed a good four hours of sleep. Bill is a beautiful man with a wonderful heart (and great legs); so, he did not seem to hate me for ever so gently jumping on the bed to awaken him from near comatose sleep. My man did not even need coffee to help him find the energy to don Nike's, shorts, and tee-shirt and hit the dew-slicked streets of this wondrous Asian metropolis.

We stand out in Asia. Both of us are very tall and fair. Add running and sweaty to the mix and we were a virtual circus kicking it through downtown. Hong Kong waked up rather quickly, I thought. The sun had just made its way, golden-pink and voluminous, over the horizon, sending rays of sparkle and sheen onto the Pacific Ocean when the women stepped out onto their porches to set up their Buddha shrines. The air was permeated with the heavy sweet fragrance of incense sticks and oranges. School girls were already appearing on the streets, helping their mothers with the preparations for the day. Merchants were loading their carts with their goods, and the aroma of rice and chicken broth already wafted through the misty air from the clusterings of urban homes.

On the edge of the downtown area was a large park with swaying cypress trees that seemed to caress both the blue sky and the emerald grass at once. Beneath the spreading arms of the mighty cypresses, the graceful, slow motion "tai chi" movements of a group of elderly Chinese men and women were so precise they looked almost like tiny wind-up dolls all set in motion at once.

As we careened back toward the hotel, a school rose up on the horizon before us. We heard the giggles and laughter before we actually saw the beautiful Asian children with black hair shining and procelain skin flushed scurrying happily onto the playground. I felt almost as if I had been the one who had awakened each of them that morning and sent them packing off to school, or at least that they had arisen early to their day just to bring me the joy of seeing them aglow in the post-dawn sunshine.

There were, of course, the Stanley Market, the downtown jewelry district, the boat people and all the wonderful food to enjoy in Hong Kong. We also spent one night in Canton, China. I will never again see so many bicycles, so many perfect little doll-faced Chinese babies, or come eye to eye with such a diversity of entire roasted, baked, broiled and boiled wildlife that looked back at me, dead-eyed and mournful, from a plate in the center of the table. I am a pretty good sport, but I passed on the "hog's eye."

Hong Kong was enchanting and romantic, and we returned to Texas with suitcases full of cloisonne and rice bowls, tapestries and photographs, and a sperm that got away from the pack. Of course, he and the egg conspired together to keep their little secret from the rest of us for a few weeks. We all thought everything was perfectly safe. However, a month passed and it became clear to me that I needed to buy an early pregnancy test because I had a nagging suspicion and feared espionage. It could be asked why I decided to make my drugstore purchase on a night when my husband was out of town on business. It is not something I would recommend. Advanced technology is such an amazing time and sleep saver. In 1983, a woman had to wait to take an early pregnancy test until her first morning pee so that all those hormones could have time to swim around and group up and play for a while. Of course, I was not sleeping because I was waiting for a dampened stick to answer yes or no to my pregnancy question. When the clock ultimately slowly slid its little arms to shape 5:00 a.m., I burst out of bed like an extricated prisoner of war and ran to the bathroom. The truth of the conspiracy between egg and sperm was confirmed. I was "with child."

Holding the little plastic stick and looking at the evidence of the hormonal collusion, I pondered at once the miracle of the new person within me determined to come forth in about eight months and the shock of such a life-altering event sneaking up on us like this. I wandered in my motherly daze back into my bedroom and sat down on the side of the bed. I allowed the joy to seep into my consciousness. Our daughters were seven and nine years old at time. I had been done with nursing and baby beds, strollers and spit-up, high chairs and baby food for quite some time. However, unlike many mothers, I loved being pregnant and thrived on motherhood. This would not be so bad. Just had to rethink life a bit. Maybe it's a boy! That would be so great. Our girls will love this. It'll be like having a doll to play with! But what if they drop the baby? What will Bill say when he hears the news? I looked at the colored dot on the plastic indicator and welcomed our new little family member.

I wanted desperately to tell someone. It was the time before cell phones and texting and I had no number for Bill; so, I would have to wait to hear from him. How many hours until that call? I glanced at the clock. I did a double-take. It said 4:15 a.m. How was it possible that the clock could lose an hour? I retrieved my wristwatch from the dresser. Sure enough, 4:15 a.m. I was certain it was 5 a.m. when I got up! Who am I going to share this great, impossible, miraculous news with at 4:15 a.m.? The newspaper person was not even up yet! E.P.T. stick still in hand, I walked around my darkened home pregnant with an announcement I could not give birth to until at least dawn.

Then I remembered Daddy. He was always up early. Quelling the urge to call right then, I sat on the couch in the living room and counted down the minutes until 4:30. That seemed to my addled sense of decorum to be so much less rude than calling at the ridiculous hour of 4:15! And Daddy loved little children. I wonder if it is a boy. I really want a little boy. But, if it's a girl, that will be wonderful, too - I mean, I just want a healthy baby. I hope I have enough energy to do this again. After all, I am thirty-four years old. Will people think that's just too old? It's not really that old. Oh, well, I was old when I gave birth to Heather. I did not start having babies until I was twenty-six. The girls are going to freak out! What time is it now? 4:20! I still had ten more minutes.

Patience not being my most prominent virtue (in reality it is way down the list), I jumped up from the couch and headed for the telephone in the kitchen. Certain that the paperboy had to be up by now, I reckoned it to be okay to call Daddy. I dialed the number as my heart beat wildly. My mind was already rehearsing the announcement that would make my dad's heart beat faster, too.

Ring. Ring. I should have been embarrassed, calling so early. Ring. Ring. Oh, Daddy, please be up!

Click. "Hello?"

"Daddy, were you up?"

"Yes, Kay." Pause. Early morning swallow. Of course, I woke him. Clearing his throat, he asked,"Are you all right?"

"Yes. Guess what?"

"What?"

"I'm pregnant!"

Now he was awake, and maybe not sorry that he was!

"I took an early pregnancy test this morning and...." looking again at the colored dot.."it says I'm pregnant!"

"That's wonderful, Kay! Maybe it is our boy!"

"That's what I was thinking, too, Daddy! Looks like it'll be a Christmas baby!"

There were so many things my daddy did not say to his overly anxious, newly pregnant middle daughter before daylight that morning. He did not say that I woke him too early; why didn't I wait until the sun came up at least. Nor did he say, "You know the doctor said you should not do this again." He was, instead, joyful - ecstatic, actually - and animated and hopeful; he encouraged and blessed me. I loved my daddy.

1984

My aunt, Mother's oldest sister, had died of cancer. Near the end she required a colostomy. In caring for Aunt Rene, my mother had changed the colostomy bag on several occasions. Of course, it was a distasteful task and Mother had determined then that she would never have one. So it was somewhat surprising to me that she announced her decision in November to have colostomy surgery.

I went up to be with her two days after the procedure and she seemed to be doing very well. She wanted a permanent wave, though. "A what?"

"A permanent."

"Here in the hospital?"

"I feel so ugly," she sighed.

"Okay."

On my way to the beauty supply house I had to wonder what would make it this important to have her hair done. It is years later now and looking back brings events into focus like a wide-angle lens gives the larger picture. "Do you love me enough to go out and kill a bear to keep me safe or slay a giant to rescue me?" Every woman's question really, of her man. "Will you climb a mountain to find me; cross an ocean to see me? Be my prince?"

In her kingdom there was no prince, only a companion who had stopped romancing her years before. Perming my mother's short, gray, fine hair in her hospital room was to her heroic. The furtive nature of the whole experience made it all the more enjoyable. It was smelly and wet and a bona fide challenge to get permanent rods wound around the silvery wisps of hair without ruining her sterile hospital sheets. The smell of permanent solution was still hanging heavily in the air when Mother's doctor came in for his daily rounds. Sitting up in her bed, newly coiffed and wearing her pinkest lipstick, Mother admitted shyly that, yes, her daughter had curled her hair right there in the hospital. The doctor tsked and looked over at me like I had lost my mind. It had made my mother so happy, though; the glow on her cheeks as she cut her eyes over to look at me, her co-conspirator, made a smile creep slowly across my face. I shrugged my shoulders lightly as the doctor shook his head and turned back to Mother.

Mother went home a few days later feeling well. There was a new hope being built in her heart as her body slowly healed. Her energy was returning and the thoughts of her death were not so prevalent. My father planned a trip to New York City. Bought tickets and everything. It seemed a little soon after Mother's surgery, but he was determined to go. In the night before his departure, Mother suddenly spiked a very high temperature -104, actually. Accompanying the fever was tremendous abdominal pain. Daddy took her to the hospital and called me. I was, of course, two and a half hours away and I had an eighteen month old baby and two daughters in elementary school. But, I needed to come be with Mother in the hospital because Daddy had a plane to catch.

"Really? You're going to New York City with Mother in the emergency room at the hospital?"

"Yes. Yes, I am." This from her prince, her knight in shining armor; for better or worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, unless you've made plans to go to NYC.

I packed up myself and my baby son and drove the distance through small north Texas towns to the hospital. I knew Daddy was overhead somewhere going north, escaping the unknowns of the emergency room, leaving his bride to whatever the fates ordained. I just wanted to get to Ft.Worth to hold her hand. My mother should have been dead by the time I arrived. The fever and pain heralded the onslaught of a massive infection that had filled her abdominal cavity with a death-dealing rancid fluid. Fortunately, Mother was stubborn and needed to go to the bathroom, and she was somewhat delirious in her suffering. Nurses had not answered her call for help soon enough, so she got up to go to the bathroom alone. The combination of willfulness and delirium made her journey too arduous and confusing, so she fell, hard, onto the gray linoleum floor of her sterile hospital room. A serendipitous bursting of putrid bloody fluid from her fragile body spewed its deadly poison across the cold floor upon which lay her prone and vulnerable body. The fluid had been hiding, intending to kill her quietly before its heinous purpose could be discovered. My mother's falling had actually raised her from the dead.

The elevator bell dinged Mother's floor and I exited with my son in my arms. "Where'd he get those big blue eyes? They are the size of a half dollar!" Cute old man noticing cute little man. It made me smile. I had no idea that my mother had just tripped into her temporary salvation. When I breezed through the door to her private room, nurses had just finished cleaning up the sea of liquid and the doctor was on his way.

"Had you not fallen," the doctor began,"it might have taken us too long to discover the problem. I'm afraid you might have died. This was very serious. Is your husband here?"

"No, but my daughter is." The doctor looked at me quizzically.

"When will Mr. Strickling be coming?"

"He's in New York. Dropped me off at the hospital this morning."

From the look on the doctor's face it was clear he understood that she had no prince. The doctor wiped his face with his right hand, leaving it clasped around his chin as he contemplated an appropriate response. He put his left hand on Mother's shoulder, sighed, and assured her that he would take good care of her. With that, he turned to look at me, smiled resignedly, and walked quietly out of the room.

I stayed with Mother for two days, at her home at night and the hospital during the day. My daughters were in school, so my husband had found a friend to care for them until he came home in the evenings. Mother was feeling much better when I left. Massive doses of antibiotics were coursing throughout her body killing the deadly infection. I wanted to go home before I saw my father again. Children do not have perspective on the lives of their parents when they are small. In any case, rising inch by inch to the level of one's parents can be somewhat disillusioning. We never thought they were flawed. Of course, when we come full circle we have to admit that we never thought we were so flawed, either. When my father chose to leave my mother desperately ill in the hospital so he could go have fun, my heart chose to respect him a little less.

A few days later, he returned, rejuvenated from his escapade. Oh, and he had remembered to bring my mother a gift. Amethyst earrings from Saks in New York. They might have looked good on her as she lay in her casket had she not had the good sense to go to the bathroom. Thanks for thinking of her, Daddy.

1985

It was my thirty-seventh birthday party at my parents' home. August third. Seated about the table with us were my sisters and their families. Cobalt blue and white plates held steaming food, generic food, as it became so unimportant as to be invisible. The plates my mother had purchased in Germany when she went there with my father rather than be left in the U.S. alone. "Maybe we should just go our separate ways," Daddy had said. "I am taking the sales job in Germany." Uprooted in her sixties, she went. She loved the dinnerware set, though. Each piece had a picture of a serene cottage nestled amongst the foliage of pine-scented mountain firs. Mother had an eye for beauty.

As I recall it, now that time has made the birthday scene more hazy, drenched in an incandescence that softens the death sentence pronounced there, I am not as completely overcome as I once was. Cancer coursed through Mother's veins and clenched its fist about her liver and turned her saffron-colored. There was no sparkle left in her eyes; the joy had been siphoned from them one waking moment after another. Stick-thin and concave save for the tumor that protruded from her abdomen and threatened to consume her bit by bit, she managed to pick at the food before her though I do not recall her eating much of it.

August third is also the birthday of my first child. My best birthday present ever, delivered to me from my own body, warm, sweet and beautiful eleven years before. The meal this day was made more festive by the dual celebration. There was cake and ice cream and, of course, presents. In her naivety my mother handed me what would be my last gift from her. Hovering over the small package was a sense of import that its size belied. It came with a message that permeated the air with dread and turned our joy into mourning with the swiftness of a knife blade to the heart. I had not removed the first piece of tape from the little wrapped present before my mother said: "I wanted you all to know that this is my last meal. I am ready to die. I have prayed about this. Eating nauseates me anyway. So, I will probably be gone in the next few days."

No tears. No passion. No fear. Ailing even more in soul and spirit than in body, my mommy just wanted to go "home." My mind had to reorganize the words that punctuated the air, arranged in a meaning foreign to my experience. People want to live, not die. The brave fight; they don't quit. Mothers do not decide to leave their children even when their children have children. "You cannot do this, Mother," I said, not so dispassionately as she had made her death announcement.

Tears stung my eyes and blurred her face for a moment. I blinked her back into focus and saw the tired resignation that had in the past few months stolen from her the will to exist. Her whole purpose for living had been in question all that spring and into the summer. Married the wrong man once. Married the wrong man again. Should have married the Catholic man, but he did not come back from the war first. Been taken for granted all these years. My life was not what I thought it was. Didn't even know my own husband. Been a fool. Been rejected in bed. "You just lie there!" "Let's just live as companions." Didn't know what she had done with her life that even mattered. What had she even lived for?

"But, Mother, you have your daughters and grandchildren who love you and whose lives matter! We would not even be without you."

"I know. I know. But I have been so deceived."

"Yes, Mother. You have."

At the other end of the maudlin birthday table sat her deceiver. To say that looking at his face was difficult would be a bitter understatement.  Dying sweetly surrounded by loving husband and devoted children who rejoiced in a life well spent was not an option for my mother because of the stench of death that had accompanied our father home from jail in January. The odor seeped out from under doors and windows and spread its poison to the driveway before we even made our way to the front door. Mother wanted out of the oppressive atmosphere and could no longer walk away on her own two steady legs.

So we all cried together. What else was there to do? Mourning with her became in that moment as important as mourning for her would be in the weeks to come. We loved her and would walk through the valley of the shadow of death with her. She thought it would take three or four days. It took weeks.

Later that evening I opened the gift. Glistening in the box before me were the earrings from Saks NYC that my dad had brought back to her from his recent trip. I know she thought she was giving me something truly valuable. He told her they were amethysts, but they were glass. Wasn't that just like him? A reasonable facsimile.

1985

The phone rang at about two o'clock in the afternoon. My mother, my baby so,Will, and I had already eaten lunch although the food was cold by the time we finally decided that Daddy was not going to be joining us. Will and I had come for our weekly visit to see Mother and Daddy, and Daddy always loved that time with his grandson.

"That must be Daddy," I said as I reached for the phone. "Hello?"

"Let me speak to your mother."

"What's wrong, Daddy?"

"Let me speak to your mother."

"Are you okay?"

"I SAID LET ME SPEAK TO YOUR MOTHER!"

Bewildered, I handed the phone to Mother. "Daddy wants to speak to you."

Fear pinched the corners of  her eyes and her body stiffened. Mother looked at the cold black receiver as if it were some foreign object with which she was totally unfamiliar. Slowly she placed it to her ear but only breathed into it, stalling for one last second before hearing that her life story was about to be rewritten in a whole new context. "Hello."

Foreboding slowly draped a dark shadow across Mother's countenance as she listened to her husband's one phone call from jail.   In my memory it is more of an overall impression of a life deflating as she listened one word, one revelation, at a time to his shameful, horrifying news. First fear registered. I know because it was my first gut-wrenching reaction. What could Daddy be saying to Mother to cause her to turn so suddenly pale? Then her anger collided with her mounting premonition like the violent splashing of a mighty rushing waterfall as it beats down suddenly on the water below.

"I told you about this!" Steady - her voice was steady and dead.

All the blood in my body rushed to my head, clanging and pulsing like the sound of cymbals reverberating in my ears and making me deaf. Too many thoughts barrelled into each other, each clambering to be heard and none making sense. Bang! She was right about Daddy! Clang! Bang! He's in jail! It's his one phone call! And then the cymbals calling out the alarm just clapped together in one incessant roar as my heart pounded its fury into my ears, making my face turn scarlet and my hands go all clammy. I could barely hear my mother as she vowed to her husband that she would not pick him up from jail.

Mother slammed the receiver down and the noise of it restored me to the nightmare in progress. I was not breathing - or swallowing. Catatonic, I dared my eyes to look at my mother's face. She was looking out through the bay window in her kitchen, staring stony-eyed at the January garden that was stark and stripped, in this season, of its former signs of life. All the years and months and days of her life were now defined by a call from jail; the clarion announcing she had been a fool all these years, and now, in the winter of her life, there seemed to exist no sun or nourishment with which to recover all now lost.

Quietly, treading lightly on this quaking, tenuous moment, I asked: "Are you all right?" An infinitely ridiculous question, but it was all I could possibly make my mouth actually say.

"He was arrested in the park with the young man from the church...." It took her the length of the whole sentence to look my direction as if breaking her gaze with the garden would make time flow again, but this time toward an unthinkable, bottomless sadness. Becoming more fully aware of the ramifications of Daddy's transgression, Mother became more animated and indignant. "I told him about this! Remember, Kay? I warned him about this!"

She had warned him. I knew. I could not say it, though. I could not speak. The words I had heard were having a difficult time forming an idea in my head. They kept sliding off the surface of my brain.

Mother slowly lowered herself into a kitchen chair, bracing herself, hands on the table, as if she weighed several hundred pounds. "The police had seen him in the park with the boy before. So, today, when he pulled in, they watched him." Mother sighed so deeply then that I worried she would not draw in another breath. Words and ideas were colliding in her mind, too; for, to say the words meant to picture the act. The words gave birth to a scene so completely unregenerate as to be nearly unbearable. Her heart desperately wished that things unspoken could therefore be things not done.

"He and the boy were....were.." Her voice trailed off. She looked down at the floor.

"Mother, don't say it. You don't have to... I know what they were doing."

There were no tears. No watering the wound. Just profound, ineffable, silent grief. "I don't want to pick him up from jail," Mother said. " I don't ever want to see him again."

"I know, Mother." Inane response. Too stunned to think of more.

So, we both reached for the dirty lunch dishes. The whooshing of running water, the friendly clanking of plates, the clean smell of sudsy bubbles, all elements of a sudden need for ablution. With my son napping, we vacuumed, dusted, fluffed and mopped; straightened, re-straightened, windexed and bleached. We cleaned! We cleansed. We set straight what could be set straight.

Back to the matter at hand. A mess we could not fix. A man we were not capable of cleansing; a situation we could not set right if we tried for the rest of our lives. I wiped a wayward bang from my eyes with my bleach-scented hand and told my mother I would go get my father. "Mother, if he were our pet at the pound, someone would still have to pick him up. We cannot just leave him there. I don't have to bring him home, but I will go for him and take him somewhere."

I got my sleepy-eyed boy from the bedroom, changed his diaper, and got ready to head to the car. To my surprise, my mother was dressed and ready when I started toward the front door. Ever the lady, she had donned a fuchsia-colored shirt, pulled on a pair of dark pants, added earrings and lathered on pink lipstick. She always wore little heels - cleaned house like the mother in "Father Knows Best." Jaws set, heads up, hearts thumping, we followed our intuition to my automobile and somehow made the journey to jail.

About the drive there I remember nothing. Depended on emotional auto-pilot. Stomach cringing, mind swirling, will wavering, heart breaking, feet heavy and soul fearing, I led the way into the jail where our footsteps clunk-clunked too loudly on the shiny floors that led right up to the lawyer standing ready to greet us. Mother, as it turned out, had called him just before we left the house. Bless him. Had he not been right there, we both probably would have bolted and collapsed on the jailhouse steps.

Niceties may have been exchanged; some words of direction from the lawyer uttered. All is overshadowed in my memory by the sight of my broken, faltering father coming from his cell guided by two deputies, one on either side. Daddy's hands formed a vee in front of him, as he was still handcuffed. His head was down and his footfall heavy and slogging as if his shoes were filled with mud. When he neared us, shame threw Daddy's arms over his face and an involuntary wail exploded from his mouth emerging from some deep cavern of pain now discovered and afire. It was the sound of great, definitive sorrow; primal, gut-wrenching, unabashed.

"I loved him!" Daddy cried. "I loved him!"

And my mother stood there mocked. She had felt this journey into purgatory her duty to my father; he had with three words turned it into hell. "I loved him." And what of her?

1984

There was an old porch swing in the back yard of my parents' home. Sitting there gliding gently back and forth in the late spring when the only air stirred up was the gentle motion created by the creaking chains and the wooden seat, my mother and I talked of her death. It was not imminent at the time, but the need was strong in her then to prepare for it. Cancer was the enemy stalking her, shrouding her every joyous or mundane moment with impending doom. It was a cloud of certain bursting and she was aware of its first rumblings. Though the storm was still in the distance, she could smell the rain. And, there was something else...a notion about her husband, my father. Hard to speak of. A thought dammed up by the horror of actually saying the words aloud. It could not be that bad. So, I swung on obliviously enjoying the scent of the roses and the buzzing of the honey bees.

"The young man from church," my mother was saying, "who comes over to mow the yard?"

"Yes, Mother."

"Well, I saw him with Daddy on the couch Saturday evening...and...."

"And?"

"And Daddy had his shirt off and the young man was..." Mother stopped.

I planted my feet on the ground, halting the motion of the swing. I quit breathing. Actually, I think the whole world stood still to listen. I made her look at me. "The young man was what, Mother?"

"You know, fondling your father."

I took the kind of deep breath one takes before blowing out all the birthday candles from a cake and held onto life before this moment. With the exhaling would come the snuffing out of the perception of my family life up until now.

"Are you sure?"

All the lovely light oozed from Mother's beautiful hazel eyes as she was forced again to remember seeing the unseeable. The deep sadness there had precluded an answer.

The swing was motionless. No more gliding back and forth in gentle ease. We had left swing conversation behind. However, neither of us could actually move for a few minutes. I was trying to picture what my mother was trying to erase. Words became stuck somewhere in the gears of my brain and could not manifest. Our hands intertwined, braided for strength. At the end of an eternity of silence, there came a great, rushing, heavy sigh; all the life-breath escaping in one desperate eruption.

My life comes back to me in picture memories, sometimes when I least expect them. Consider this blog an album of those memories that will give me clarity concerning my father and my relationship to him both before and after his homosexual pedophilia was uncovered. Come with me on this journey if you will, as it is complex and I am recovering from its fallout.

Deuteronomy 5:8 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations who love me and keep my commandments."

The slight, glassy-eyed funeral director's black suit smelled of too many years of mortuary carnations and formaldehyde. He gave my sister and me a practiced frozen smile as he led us to a stark, well-lit back room to identify the body of our father.

 It was a Sunday morning, and Daddy had been dead just over twenty-four hours. I thought I would be shocked to see his still, lifeless body.  But, he was wrapped in a sterile white sheet and his left arm fell across his chest naturally, as though he were sleeping peacefully. His hand was deep purple from the intravenous needles.  All the warmth that had once surged through his ample body had escaped, replaced with the chill of the refrigerated vault where his flesh was being preserved until his cremation. I was eerily aware of being in an alternate universe where bodies are not inhabited and people always remembered as they looked when sleeping -thoughtless, motionless, maybe peaceful, maybe not.

"That's Daddy," we confirmed. It was and it wasn't, of course. The quiet form looked like Daddy, but his body was a vessel emptied of its purpose by years of use and now shelved. The crown of his head had always been bald, but once his hair had been brown. It was not evident that his  teeth were missing or that his eyes had been dark and dancing. All of his life he was large for his age. He loved to eat, he loved to cook, he loved cheesecake - he was a big man. When he was not asleep, he wore glasses - early on, wire rims and later, big dark plastic frames. If he thought it would make some kid laugh, he would contort his face, even taking out his teeth with his tongue, which he thought was hilarious. No one looking at him in this mortuary moment would guess that about this large corpse lying inert on the table.

The last time I had seen Daddy alive was three weeks earlier when he was still in the hospital. I knew when I left him that day and got back on the plane to go home to California that my next trip would be on different terms. I had said good-bye to him then. He had lifted a bluish, trembling hand and, as tears glistened in his eyes, he said: "I miss you, Kay." I know he did. I really know he did.

An obsequious, frail mortician attached a metal bracelet to Daddy's left wrist. Not decorative, of course. Just an indestructible ID tag to differentiate between Daddy's remains and some less specific ashes. My stomach involuntarily knotted with the thought. Dust to dust in incendiary violence, crackling, snapping, popping and Daddy is ashes - "cremains." Then we are to put Daddy in a decorative ceramic urn with some scene from a serene Chinese garden meticulously painted or maybe decaled on it. An entire life sealed in a jar, emotion vaporized, passion checked, worry dissipated, addictions vanquished, hope perhaps realized, perhaps not.

Back at the glossy, slick cherrywood salon table in the mortuary we signed away our father to his conflagration. For the grief counselor, a former minister with slicked back hair who wore an expensive suit and had splashed on too much cologne,  trying to upsell my sister and me on pre-need funeral arrangements for our beloved and us was all in a day's work - the ashes and freezers, embalming fluid and tears, and the bodies people loved now already decaying. Sitting there, we were aliens on their planet and primed for attack. Economic indicators are there to show the ups and downs of daily life.  We cannot buy what we cannot afford. But Death is always for sale - can't escape it. It is everyone's inevitability. Must be buried or burned. You never know when the Grim Reaper might come roaring out of time and snuff out a life, disease ridden or careening down Interstate-35. Everyone must be ready.  Need to make plans now so those who love you will still love you after they discover you did not make arrangements for or fund your own funeral.

It rose up in us with an ugly face, the knowing that the aura of death in the room was not the impetus for comfort and compassion but for profit. My sister grabbed the words as they spilled guilty and practiced from the former preacher's mouth. Stopped him short."What are you trying to sell us?"

"Uhmm, well, uh!" No practice for this question.

Then he somehow perceived himself to be our victim. Red-faced and combative, he packed up his belongings and traipsed from the room. We had, after all, not allowed him to finish his spiel, or even really get rolling with it. The man's behavior was moronic, but we still took on the culpability for his histrionics. Emotions are difficult to isolate when there are so many of them swirling overhead like cacophonous birds. Add sleep deprivation and the countless duties left undone by the deceased to the maelstrom and it is surprising we made it out of the mortuary unscathed.

We left Daddy there, asleep in the freezer and returned to his house to sort through the remnants of his life. That our father had enjoyed a secret life from the one he had presented to our family and the world had been revealed to us over twenty years earlier when he had first been arrested. What we did not know until we began the arduous task of reaping from among his belongings what was valuable from what was dross was that our father had vastly exceeded what we considered possible. Daddy had always been someone else - our father, too - but this other disturbing, injured, and devious individual driven by the uncontrolled neediness of a heart and soul consumed by a destructive darkness. It was an innocence-stealing blackness that seemed to make him as blind to the carnage he created as his victims were to his ultimate intentions. Daddy thought he "loved." Instead, with tentacles groping toward trusting, unsuspecting prey, he took with calculated pleasure what one should be free to give away.