My family life growing up was incredibly chaotic. Part of that chaos was because of the instability of my parents. I’ve spoken a lot about Pam, my mother, and how her mental illness and narcissism (which was not mental illness) greatly impacted me. I have spoken a lot about how Pam harmed me and my father, Dave, who died when I was 20, was more willing to stand up for me, especially when I desperately needed someone to stand up for me. For example, when a family member was accused of touching me inappropriately my father was the only one who told me I never had to apologize and always believed me.
This has created discussion in my family about how I sometimes discuss my father with “rose-colored glasses” – something they see as disingenuous since we used to fight like cats and dogs and I actively stated how much I hated my father on the regular growing up. But, the thing is, I’ve never lied about the problems I’ve had with my father. I’ve spoken about how we used to fight. I am a lot like him in many ways and we clashed all the time because of that. I would yell and scream at him, and feel I was justified in doing so. Sometimes I was, and sometimes not so much.
But now I want to talk about the problems my father had because there was validity in my anger at him. I was an angry disabled child. Mostly because I was mistreated. My father supported me in some ways but ableism proliferates in society and both of my parents were ableist about what they would let me do and how they would allow me to act. My father didn’t care I was a child. I was expected to always act like a small adult when it came to my disability and my mobility equipment once I got them. No childish foolishness was allowed or I was in deep trouble.
My father grew up in the old Polish neighborhood of Toledo, Lagrinka. I was always led to believe that Polish was his first language at home and that is what they spoke growing up. My father also refused to teach us a lick of Polish, except when he would use random words or expressions. At one point, he taught me how to count to five but that was it. He never spoke of it but I am under the impression he was physically beaten by his father. Beaten for being fat and various other things. I don’t feel like his younger sister got the same treatment and he was held accountable for a lot. This led to a very difficult relationship with my dziadek (grandfather), Tony. Dzia dzia died when I was a baby so all I know of the relationship is whispers from Pam and my dad. I just know their relationship was not good.
I have two older brothers from my dad’s first marriage before I was born. My eldest brother told me some interesting things I did not know about my father. According to him, he was in jail for beating his mother. There are a few things about this. My brothers’ mother is a known liar, who cheated on my dad multiple times and harassed him about it not that that justifies any abuse. I never saw my father ever lay a hand on Pam. He would violently shake and scream but never touched her. If anybody was going to be hit it would be Pam and I didn’t understand how he could control his temper with her but hit his ex-wife.
My brother also told me alcohol was involved a lot. My father was apparently an alcoholic. I never saw my father touch alcohol in my life, so this was a shock, but maybe he didn’t touch it because he used to beat people when he was drunk? Finding this out about my dad as an adult was a shock.
I don’t know if my brother is telling the truth, though. He’s my brother but we don’t know each other well enough to trust each other. But I believe him on some level. Why would he lie? Why would my dad have gone to jail? My brother talks about visiting my father in jail. He was a teenager. I’ve tried to look for the jail records but have not been able to find them. It makes me wonder what happened between J, the ex-wife, and Pam, my mother, to make him able to not hit Pam. Maybe the alcohol was largely responsible, but if my dad did hit J that is not okay and I am very upset and angry. I don’t like J, but nobody deserve to be hit by another person like that.
J’s relationship with my dad dissolved and neither of them got custody of their children. It was the 60s and mothers usually got custody, but Jackie didn’t. My two brothers lived with their maternal grandparents in Delaware, Ohio. My dad stayed nearby and got them on weekends and holidays. J got remarried and moved to Texas. There are disputes between J and my dad about what happened next, but everybody but my two older brothers believed my dad’s story. My oldest brother’s ex-wife also believed my dad’s side and urged my brother to get back in contact with my dad.
My dad always maintained, and I largely believe him, that J kidnapped my brothers. She had summer visitation with them and instead of sending them home for my dad to pick up at the airport, she packed them up, got them on a plane, and moved them to Japan. My dad and even J’s parents had no idea where my brothers were. J moved to Japan with her military husband. She told my brothers that my dad said he didn’t want them anymore. They were like 12 and 14 at the time and really took it to heart believing my dad did not want them.
I don’t believe my dad ever said this. The way he treated my brother and I – he could be a jerk but in the end, today, I believe he loved us. The way he talked about my older brothers was the same. He was destroyed by what she did and never spoke about his children with anyone until my eldest brother reached out after getting married and having his first kid.
By this time I was almost 5. It was weird learning that you have multiple older brothers and also that I was an uncle (aunt at the time). I will always be grateful that I was raised with my niece, Courtney. That was the true benefit of my brother temporarily coming back into our lives. Sadly, he abandoned his children, and does not have a relationship with either my niece or my nephew. It’s a really sad cycle that I am glad that I broke with my own son, Robert.
This is why Pam would tell me that my dad did not know how to show he loved us. This made me angry. I was also angry because Polish-US families at the time believed that girls should be seen but not heard. My Aunt Betty, dad’s little sister, would regularly lecture me about being a proper little lady and to listen to my brothers and father because they were in charge. My dad also believed it was the job of Pam to raise me, so until I was a teenager I spent far less time with him. Eventually, he became my chauffeur, driving me around to theater stuff, school stuff, etc. That is when I really got to know my dad, but by then it was too late for me to really care about forming a deep bond with him.
Growing up in our house was incredibly volatile because my dad didn’t understand any other way of self regulation other than violence. He didn’t usually beat us, although I did get spanked by both my parents on the regular and he did once hit me with a belt, although Pam performatively insisted that if he did it again she would leave him. Funny because her physical abuse was much worse than his. I laughed because I was that child. I would urge him to do it again and harder because I was that child. I baited him to make him angrier, but I was a child so he should have ignored me. That’s what I do when my kid tries to bait me. My father could not handle his authority being challenged. Especially by a “little girl” like me.
When my dad was angry the entire house and sometimes the neighborhood knew. I was embarrassed to bring friends to the house in case my dad would yell. While he would not often put hands on us, he would slam drawers and doors. I remember trying to fall asleep many nights as a teenager as he would slam kitchen drawers and scream and mutter to himself. Screaming was also another thing that he did all the time. Pam also screamed. It was so bad that for years the only way I knew how to handle conflict was by screaming. It is still my default to want to scream, but I have worked very hard to break that cycle of abuse. I no longer have the urge to scream instinctively. Instead, my first instinct is to try to remain calm and not address situations in anger.
I am supremely proud of myself for breaking the cycle because it was incredibly hard to do. But knowing that I was not repeating the harm with Robert the way it happened to me has been a huge huge deal. This is the work we all have to do to get better. We must break these cycles. Our children desperately deserve better from us. Doing the work is imperative if we want the next generation to be better.
My dad’s anger raised his blood pressure. He had heart problems and it would make them worse when he would get so angry. I was the same way. My dad would shake violently in anger. I remember being an asshole and baiting him while he was angry. I know it took all his willpower not to hit me. I was so used to the chaos that I would dance within it. Our house was chaotic from the time I was little. My dad was laid off from his job as a tool and dye maker when I was going through my diagnosis for SMA.
He ended up going to community school (Owen’s Community College) where he got a degree in Accounting. He then got a job with the state of Ohio as a tax commissioner agent, which is someone who audits large corporations like Campbell Soup. My dad would travel the state and starting around the time I was maybe six or seven he would spend weekdays in Cleveland or Columbus part of the year and come home on the weekends. This created an environment where Pam was in charge and she could basically tell us anything about our dad. This was a formative time for my relationship with my father because him not being there meant he was absent from my life and I felt that.
We were living in a trailer park until I was nine, and everybody in the trailer park would know when my parents were fighting. I remember being really little and my brother and I shared a bedroom. I would cry and he would get in the bottom bunk with me and hold me. He told me we would always be there for each other and I believed him. That was before he realized I was disabled and my disability essentially made him hate me. Once we want to school he was no longer my best friend or my protector. He was another bully. This brother is my only full-blooded brother and he is two years older. I am very much the baby of the family.
My parents would scream at each other like that not only in our house but sometimes outside. One incident occurred maybe a year or two after we moved into town (we lived in a small conservative Ohio town – the trailer park was right outside town and we moved right inside town into a church parsonage we rented). I don’t remember why my parents were fighting, but they did so on the regular, especially between the ages of about 6 and 14 for me. My mother would scream she was leaving or my father would. One of them would get in the car and we would either let them leave or my brother would have a breakdown and begged them to stay.
This time, my brother got on the hood of our station wagon begging our mother not to go. My father stood outside and they continued to scream at each other not caring how embarrassed I was by the neighbors hearing what was going on. I can’t remember the neighbors standing around, but I can remember my brother begging my mom not to leave him and refusing to get off the car. I, meanwhile, would harass my father telling him how much I hated him and that I would go with my mother – funny because I don’t like being with her either, but my MO when I was younger was to make my dad hurt. He apparently had hurt me so I wanted him to suffer and I would try to make him do so.
I definitely did not understand the repercussions of the fight. But I knew my family was dysfunctional. My father was not usually violent to me, but I witnessed his violence and I learned that the way to communicate when you are upset is with yelling and slamming. I learned that you should process your anger physically and verbally. This is a horrible lesson to learn. It took years, decades, my child’s entire youth to really break these habits. My child deserved better and I fought hard to give him that. I just can’t imagine what would have happened if I didn’t.
My dad died in 2001. By that time he was much calmer. We could laugh and joke around. But I still would tell him I hated him. I told him I hated him and had a big fight the weekend before his first heart attack. Everybody pointed out how guilty I should feel about that and I was guilty. Not because I said it. Guilty because if he had died, I never really would’ve known whether he loved or cared about me in that moment. Because I did hate my father on some level because he never made it clear he really loved me until he was dying.
I have had decades to repair the relationship I had with my father in my head. I have had decades to process all of this and also be able to understand his own trauma leading him to make the decision he made. I also recognize I’m a much stronger person than my father. But, today I choose to see him as a whole person. A part of my father really loved me and protected me in the darkest of times. But my father was a broken flawed man who turned to violence because it was often all he knew. I hope he is finally at peace.
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