hex_m_hell

CW: abuse dynamics, gun violence

I don't remember what was in his hand, as my dad sat there in front of me. Perhaps a toy he was fixing for me, or a tool he was showing me. Legs crossed, looking down, he sat in front of me focused and caring.

At 5 or 6, my parents were always too busy for me. We lived in my grandmother's old farmhouse in the middle of town, and there was always remodeling to do. I can't remember a time when there wasn't exposed wood in the kitchen.

I loved my dad. He worked the night shift, so he was often asleep when I was awake. At least, he did before the sound of the helicopters became too much for him.

This was special. I sat in the grass at his knee, mirroring him. The grass was short and tan, scythed by my mother, I believe, in the few days preceding. Her quick footsteps crunched the parched soil and dry blades.

“MOMMY NO! STOP!”

I jumped to my feet and held my hands out as I yelled.

My dad rolled back, hands up in protection. She had frozen with my voice, eyes wet with tears, rotten board held back with rusty nails, ready to strike.

I had lost that memory, but had hung onto my childhood dream of a monster stomping around outside as I hid in terror. After my dad told me about it, it started to come back. Bit by bit. Until it all flooded during the session where we talked about the shooting.

I stood up because I saw Marc pepper spraying pacifists. My dad was a pacifist, a conscientious objector during Vietnam and tortured by it. I hadn't realized the connection, nor the connection to other things. I think that was the day my dad left, shortly after, but the memory ends in the backyard with my dad scooting back and scrambling to his feet with his hands, up and palm out in self-defense.

That war had ended more than 10 years earlier. It was farther from my birth than from the time of the memory. I didn't convince him to join, to become a medic. I didn't assign him to be a tunnel rat. I didn't advise Reagan to cut forestry jobs and end my mother's chosen career path before it started.

I had no say in the social and economic forces that made life so much harder, so much more traumatizing. I was not involved in creating the situation that lead my parents to fight, that fight that broke my home, that lost our house, that inflicted this trauma. Yet the impact of these decisions were none-the-less laid on my tiny shoulders and yoked to my fragile neck.

By what right were these decisions made: the invasion of Vietnam, the decimation of natural resource protections, the dismantling of the social safety net? On what authority?

And what consequences will there be for those who make similar decisions now? Will we, bearers of our parents burdens, do the same for our children? Will we pass on the generational katamari albatross? Or will we hold these villains and shake them, shake them, frantic and screaming, until we loose their monstrous grasp?

I held his jacket and yelled in his face, “GIVE ME THE FUCKING PEPPER SPRAY AND I'LL LET YOU GO!” His eyes were full of terror as he tried to dive back into the crowd, but he couldn't break my grip without help.