TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

Suzie still remembered the day that her mother left her father. It was a cold rainy morning, and she was looking forward to sleeping in. Instead, her mother woke her up early that day. It was the first weekend of the holidays in September. Her father had just gone to work when their mom woke them and told them to pack a bag each.

Their mother told them to just pack the basics, things they really needed, and that they would come back for the rest. She explained that they were leaving their father, but would still see him. That's the day Suzie started to hate her father because he didn't follow them or fight for them. Suzie and her brother went with her mom that day, and she never saw her father again for 10 years. He never called or visited, so she did the same, keeping silent.

On her 30th birthday, Suzie was sad; her husband had not been attentive or even given her a gift. He hadn't been attentive in years; maybe that is why she had a lover. Brian was attentive to her; he bought her gifts and always pampered her.

Her husband, Jerry, had started to come home later and didn't come somedays. She wondered if he was having an affair of his own, or if he suspected that she was. She was careful to delete her messages and not go to public places with Brian.

That day, Jerry came home early. He had lipstick on his collar. 

Suzie was incensed,‘Is this where you have been all these months? Screwing around?'

Jerry looked at her, his eyes narrowed, 'You would know all about that.'

She paled and stammered, 'I don't know what you are talking about.'

He scoffed, 'You think you are so smart? I know all about your trysts. Why should you care who I spend time with?'

She answered, 'But I love you.'

He said, 'Don't talk about love. All you do is look for excuses. Blame everyone for what goes wrong except yourself. You did this to us.'

He began to pack a bag, and she grabbed his leg, begging, 'please don't leave me. I'm so sorry.' He ignored her and kept packing up his clothes until his side of the closet was empty. She cried, 'Please, Jerry, I will do anything, please don't leave me.'

He picked up his car keys.

She cried, 'Oh no, Jerry, I know I'm broken, and I thought you didn't love me anymore. But I love you so much, I will end it.'

He walked out the door.

Suzie had a talk with her big brother that night, and they were reminiscing about their childhood. He mentioned something that made her start rethinking everything. Mike narrated an episode when they were 5 and 8, where their mother had asked him to delete some messages from her phone because she couldn't figure out how it worked. He felt that they were incriminating messages, and maybe that's why their father was upset all the time. 

Suzie started to look back on past events. Her father used to Complain about their mother and how she used to cheat on him. They thought he just imagined it. But after what Mike told her, she thought maybe it was true. She thought about if her mother seemed suspicious when she came home. Did mother come late, was she sober, what had she been doing, who had she been with? And for the first time, she considered the past from two perspectives; one of her mother and father.

Suzie started to look at their father differently and sympathize with him. She knew the pain of imagining your partner had been cheating on you day after day. Maybe he wasn't just A delusional alcoholic but more a man who had been betrayed and pushed Beyond his limits. She started thinking of all the nights with the drunken fights. 

Every time she heard raised voices, her fear was now replaced with a new awareness of the agony and pain, the insecurity, and the desperation in her fathers' voice. She remembered how scared they were every time her parents fought, the sound of the slamming doors, the raised voices in the night. She also remembered hiding with her mother, barricaded in a room while her dad tried to break the door open. The nights were tense, and you could feel the heavyweight of violence in the air.

As she remembered, tears slipped down her eyes. And she wondered if she had purposely only seen one side of things then and if maybe she should have felt a little sympathy for a man pushed beyond his limits and with no way of proving the infidelity of his wife and no way of coping with it. 

Suzie compared those painful memories to the more recent memories of her and Jerry. The pregnant silence filled with all the things they couldn't say, and all the accusations they dared not speak. The way they looked at each other but never saw what was there. The way they never touched even though they slept in the same bed. They did not raise voices or slam doors like her parents had, but they used silence as a weapon to cut. They had contempt to keep them distant even in the same place. And of course, the pride that kept remorse at bay, each felt the other deserved the pain since it was retaliation for past wrongs. And so the cycle continued, and they grew further apart every day.

She thought maybe she had wronged her father after all these years, and perhaps it was time for her to reach out so they could start to rebuild a new relationship. Maybe he deserved a second chance. She needed to repair both broken relationships in her life, but she would start with the first one who started this brokenness pattern. So she picked up the phone and called him up. Daddy, would you like to meet for lunch today?