There’s a moment in every hard story where something finally breaks not the person, but the pattern. For my family, that moment happened on a single night, and it took me sixteen years to get there.
Ten Kids, One House, And A Lot Of Silence
I grew up one of ten kids in a house on Lincoln Way West in Mishawaka, Indiana. My dad worked hard. He also drank hard, and when he came home that way, the whole house braced for it. I remember lying awake, listening to my brothers and sisters gathered around the staircase banister, crying, listening to what was happening downstairs between him and my mom.
Nobody talked about it in the daylight. That was the rule; nobody said it out loud; you didn’t bring it up. You just got up the next morning and went to school like nothing had happened the night before.
My dad would feel guilty for a few days afterward. He’d take us out on the boat, try to smooth things over, wait for my mom to start speaking to him again. Then it would happen all over again.
Sixteen Years Of Watching
I wasn’t the oldest, and I wasn’t the one who tried hardest to intervene over the years; my uncles tried, my oldest brother tried, even the police had been out to the house more than once. Nothing stuck. That’s the thing nobody tells you about a problem like that: it doesn’t respond to reason, and it doesn’t respond to one conversation. It responds to almost nothing, until suddenly it does.
I joined the Army in 1974. Went through Airborne training at Fort Bragg. And on leave, home for two weeks, I walked back into the same house, the same pattern: my dad coming home intoxicated, getting in my face.
Something in me that had been building for sixteen years came out in about twenty seconds. I never hit him. I didn’t need to. I put him on the ground and looked him in the face and told him it was over, that this was the last time.
What Changed After That
He never hit my mom again. And from then on, before he’d even walk fully through the door, he’d check to see who else was home before he opened his mouth.
I want to be careful here, because this isn’t a story about violence solving anything; it’s a story about a line finally being drawn by someone who’d had enough of watching. My dad had his own damage. He grew up on a houseboat on the White River in Arkansas, living off hickory nuts and catfish, raising himself in ways nobody should have to. That doesn’t excuse what he did to our family. But understanding where a person’s damage comes from and forgiving them are two different things, and I’ve made peace with holding both.
I loved my dad. I understood what he’d been carrying. And I also understood that somebody had to be the one to stop the pattern before it went on to hurt the next generation the same way.
Why I’m Telling You This
If you grew up in a house like mine, you already know the parts I didn’t have to spell out. If you didn’t, I hope this gives you a little more patience for the people in your life who did.
Change doesn’t usually come from a conversation. Sometimes it comes from one night, sixteen years in the making, where somebody finally says enough. This is one chapter of a much longer story. My memoir walks through the family history — the good, the hard, and everything in between from Ireland to Arkansas to right here in Indiana.
