Thread by @JohnstonSharon

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It wasn’t unusual to have police shine their flashlights on my sister and I while we were in bed. My parents were always fighting so I’m sure someone was alerting the authorities on a regular basis. My mother’s violent rage and screaming was incessant. Once when I was seven

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I was sitting at the kitchen table with her when out of nowhere my mother picked up one of her heavy glass ashtrays and stormed into the bathroom where my father was showering. She hurled the ashtray into the glass shower door, shattering it, then stormed out of the

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apartment saying nothing as she passed me. Broken glass was everywhere, covering my father’s bloody feet. I don’t know what preceded that but my mother has always been filled with tremendous resentment and anger towards everyone so the reason for her actions never really

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mattered. In very short order I stopped trying to figure out what happened and just accepted that it was the norm. Every day was like living in a war zone because of Joyce. Different versions of the ashtray occurrence was the tapestry of our lives. A bomb could be

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dropped at any moment and no one ever seemed to need a reason. Like I said, background music. When explosions are incessant you stop reacting. You just go numb I guess. Every memory of my mother is her either her being furious, on her way to being furious or

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someone trying their best not to make her furious. I tried to make my face blank so she couldn’t read anything into it that would provoke her in some way but in order to do that I had to force myself not to feel anything because if I did it

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would show on my face. So I buried everything just to survive. This often backfired regardless because she would project onto me what she assumed I was thinking and then she would punish me accordingly. My mother loved punishing people. It really was

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one of her favorite activities. She lived for it. “Oh? Is she angry again? I’m shocked.” My mother ruled our world with her fury. The best you could hope for was to be invisible so maybe you wouldn’t be subjected to her wrath. I don’t recall a day that she wasn’t angry, like a

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rabid dog on an old, unreliable leash that was always on the verge of breaking. An amped up, vicious, foaming at the mouth creature just waiting to attack. I wish someone would have just put her down and put all of us out of our misery. I often wished that my mother would

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have just put her down and put all of us out of our misery. I often wished that my mother would just die. Nothing about her was anything that I welcomed.

Our apartment behind Lankershim had a pool. My father and I were playing checkers out in the courtyard one afternoon.

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I was winning and I’m guessing this upset him because he picked up the checkerboard and hurled it into the pool. “This is bullshit,” he exclaimed. As he stormed off I retrieved the checkerboard and pieces from the water and set them on the patio table to dry in the hopes that

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maybe a future game would go better. I was seven. Looking back I realize that’s the time in a child’s life that a parent is supposed to let the child win occasionally, even if they aren’t actually winning, to build a bit of confidence. Here I was legitimately winning and it

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angered my father to the degree that he needed to act out. When we would play monopoly my father insisted on being the banker. He would tell me in advance that he was going to cheat so he could win and when he won he’d boast, “See? I told you I was going to cheat and that

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I would win but you played anyway!” He found that so amusing to the point of laughter. I remember thinking, “I’m seven! I don’t have anyone else to play monopoly with and so I’m stuck with an adult that behaves like a five year old, but has the power of a grown man in his

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thirties, so there’s nothing I can really do about you cheating, so of course you were going to win!” What 6’6” tall, three hundred pound, grown man with a self proclaimed 185 IQ has to cheat in order to beat a seven year old? My father taught us that

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cheating is not only acceptable but it’s expected and the only way you’re “a loser” is if you get caught.

My father’s emotional maturity level was that of a nine year old boy. Perpetually trapped in adolescence. It was at that age

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that he was playing with his three year old sister in her playpen when she hit her head. Soon after she began having difficulty sitting up, her motor skills were deteriorating and she just began to die. His parents blamed him for his sister’s death. I think it was only months

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till she passed. Imagine being nine years old and told by your parents that you’re a murderer. That’s what they said. “You murdered your sister.” In reality my father’s sister had Tay-Sachs disease. It’s a rare, inherited disorder that destroys nerve cells in the brain and

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spinal cord. Tay-Sachs disease is typically found in people with Eastern European Jewish ancestry. Both parents must be carriers of the Tay-Sachs gene for their offspring to inherit it. Symptoms will appear usually around six months and most children with the illness will die

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by the age of four. To date I don’t believe any child with the kind of Tay-Sachs disease she had has lived past the age of six, not that I’m aware of. I could be wrong because I’ve not done any detailed research on the disease but from my brief readings on it I think I’m

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safe concluding that what she had was fatal and regardless of the playpen incident the end result would have been the same. My father had nothing to do with his sister’s death. I’m not sure when he learned it wasn’t his fault but I recall many times him saying that his

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parents said this to him. I think he held onto that idea till he died at age seventy-eight. He never grew past being nine years old emotionally, as was evident in so much of his behavior. Almost everything my father did makes sense if you consider that a nine year

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old, very damaged boy was at the other end of it. It didn’t excuse his hideousness but it helped me reconcile it when I was at my most confused or furious. It just sucks that a very twisted up, angry nine year old boy became a very twisted up, angry, six foot, six inch tall,

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three hundred pound grown man w an IQ high enough to manipulate everyone else around him for sport. He lived for that. It seemed to quell his extreme insecurities, if only temporarily. He always felt better about himself if he could make someone dance like a puppet.
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