My Mother was my Tormentor, My Father was Mr. Rogers

But was he?

After reading all the shit about my mother, workshop instructors and students asked, “What about your father?”

I shrugged. “He traveled a lot for work. I’m not sure he knew what to do with her.” I told them he was kind and friendly. A tall, broad-shouldered Mr. Rogers.

---

After I told my therapist about my scary mother, my disturbing religious beliefs, and my threadbare marriage, she said, “Tell me about your father.”

I shrugged and repeated what I’d told the others.

---

After I’d listed my mother’s cruelties during a four-day intensive into my husband’s and my attachment styles, our couples therapist asked, “Where was your father?”

I shrugged. Same answer.

---

When I thought of my father, I heard his soft smiling voice and West Texas accent. I saw the side-eye when he told a joke and laughed with my brother and me. He reassured me when I worried tornadoes would swirl out of every thunderstorm that rumbled over our Colorado mountains, bound for the Kansas prairie.

On a Saturday afternoon when I was about twelve, I saw him burst out of the master bedroom in a panic—a barefoot, six-foot-four giant in a white undershirt and jeans. He ran down the hall toward the kitchen and my mother came tearing out of the bedroom after him, her eyes black with rage. She caught him as he passed the front door, and leaped up onto his back. As he shook her off, terror in his eyes, she ripped his undershirt. She held on, so he spun around and let it rip clean off his body. Then he kept running.

I hid in the bathroom.

That’s what we all did—my brother, my father, and me—we stayed out of her way lest we’d somehow be implicated. If one of us was in trouble, we all thought, “Better them than me.”

My father was one of us. A genial, older brother. Sure, there were times he beat me with his belt but my mother made him do it. She was why I had to climb the steps onto the elementary school bus with raised red welts up and down the backs of my legs.

I was married, with three small children when my parents divorced, and my mother began calling me every day, demanding I take her side. I told my father over the phone that she was tormenting me. I whispered as though she could hear me.

You need to stand up to her,” he said kindly. “You can’t let her treat you like that.

“I don’t know how,” I said. “She still scares me. Will you please tell her?”

He laughed softly, kindly. “No, Darlin’, you’re an adult now. You can do this.”

Yes, I was an adult. But standing up to her still felt like flinging myself off a cliff.

---

It was only this year, decades after my parents’ divorce, that I internalized the reality that he’d been a shitty father. While writing my memoir, I came to the scene with the couples therapist. The writing forced me to immerse myself back in the moment.

“Wasn’t anyone concerned?” the therapist had asked.” Didn’t anyone protect you?” He seemed shaken and leaned forward in his seat. “Were there other adults in your life who protected you? Aunts, uncles, grandparents, neighbors?”

I began to sweat. I never considered that no one had protected me.. Not only had my father not protected me, he’d turned on me to save himself.

Had no one cared? Was I so worthless that my mother could abuse me and jerk my life around and nobody stepped in? My breath came hot and fast. The therapist’s office was stuffy with the heat on and Christmas lights blinking in the distance outside the window.

My mother had been the mean one, my father was the kind one. He left for his job every morning in a suit, cheerful and smelling of Dial soap. He often left town for several days, but when he came home, his eyes weary, he smiled. He hugged me. Told me he loved me. Called me Chickadee or Darlin’.

His violence was so infrequent that I wasn’t afraid of him. He only hit us because our mother made him do it.

But was that true?

Right after their divorce, my own marriage nearly fell apart. My father had moved with his new fiancé to San Diego, where I was living. When I phoned him in tears, he picked up. He listened. He came over with the fiancé. He was there for me.

But the time he gave me always included the fiancé.

I had known and liked her since I was a child. But I needed my father in my crisis. Just him. When I told him this, he said he was with her now. He said if I wanted a relationship with him, it would have to include her.

He set a boundary I was unable to set. By imposing those terms on me during such a fraught season, he inadvertently caused me to see new fiancé, and then new wife, as the enemy.

Just like when I was small, my father would not protect me from that ache.

---

All the male entities in my life had stayed silent in the face of my unrelenting grief.

God, my father, my husband. A trinity of betrayal.

My husband grew up and opened up, and changed.

God, I let go of.

My father? I’m still processing. I’ll get back to you.

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Lauren Hough

Dave by

Abigail Thomas

If You’re in Maine…

I’m teaching two in-person classes in September:

Blueprint for Writing a Novel

Discover Your Unique Writing Voice

Thank you for reading.

Keep your chin up and eyes open.

xoxo