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This story is heart-breaking and touching. It really puts things in perspective.

  This story via www.dooce.com via www.kottke.org

Others chimed in and said, “Yep, when you know, you just know, you can’t explain it.”

I get that. Love isn’t something that is easy to explain. However, when do you know when it is ready to get a divorce? When the divorce rate is at 46% then you have to ask, “Are you sure you knew?, because from what I can tell, most people don’t know, they only think they know.”

Not hatin’ on love, I’m Just Sayin

This was the house where my step-dad grew up. A small living room attached to a kitchen that was attached to three bedrooms which were connected to each other by doors. There were no hallways. A tiny kitchen and a small bathroom completed the home in Ryan, Oklahoma.

My grandparents raised rabbits and chickens. They had a large storm cellar filled with shelves of canned goods. It was dank and musty, but it was fun to play in. There was an old bed in the middle of the cellar. It had a white blanket on top and I would imagine what it would be like to be trapped in there for days.

I had grown up eating rabbit that my grandmother had sent home with us, but I never gave much thought as to where the rabbit came from.  One day when we were at my grandmother’s house dad said we had to butcher some rabbits. He got out an axe and a log and laid it near the rabbits cages on the fresh green grass. Dad was like a robot moving as if some unseen being controlled him. He did not seem to delight in this task and neither did I.

“Here, grab the rabbit by the ears and hold him tight” My dad said extending the rabbits head toward me. “Don’t let go. Hold him tight now, now hold his neck over the log.”

Fear and sadness gripped me tighter than I gripped the rabbits long soft ears. Dad pulled so tight on the rabbits legs that it could barely struggle but it shook and shook as if it were filled to capacity with electricity and was about to explode.

THWACK! The axe handle came down swiftly and on the first stroke the rabbit continued to shake. THWACK! THWACK! With that I felt that tension give way and the rabbit’s head was free in my hands. It’s wide eyes still open, blood on my hand.

Dad quickly strung the rabbit up in the tree and allowed the blood to drain from it’s body. He took a sharp knife and cut the skin away from it’s feet and then made a laceration between the legs in such a way that it allowed for the skin to be removed in one swift and clean jerk.

We repeated the process over and over until we had killed around 10 or so rabbits. We put the waste in buckets and carried the fresh rabbit meat into the kitchen where my sisters, mom and grandmother went to the task of cutting up the rabbits and then bagging them in salt water.

No one talked. The cramped kitchen seemed packed with not only bodies but a stifling misery. This was not how grandma’s house was depicted on TV. Little Red Riding hood would not have been skipping softly in anticipation if her grandma made her cut up dead rabbits.

My sisters and I sat in the backseat of the car as we left grandma’s house that day.  A quiet sadness hung in the air like a heavy fog and no one uttered a word.

Before this gruesome ritual I had enjoyed eating fried rabbit, but after this I lost my stomach for it. I think we all did. Eventually my grandparents went into a nursing home and we took all the rabbits and chickens to our house and raised them - but we never killed them for food. Eventually we gave them all away and I was desperately thankful.

My grandparents place had never been a place of warmth, love and happiness. There were moments of joy: grandma’s hot homemade biscuits, fresh scrambled eggs, bacon, and there were times when we’d eat cake and ice cream, but when I look back on the memories of that place they are always speckled with a patina of darkness. There was always this knowledge that we weren’t grandma’s first set of grandchildren and that somehow we were never really good enough for her. 3 mixed children, their son’s third wife who was twenty years younger than him, it wasn’t something she seemed all lollipops and candy canes about. As much as she tried, I never really felt like she loved us.  When I’d go up to see her I always felt stretched tight, pulled taught by hands of dread that gripped my head and feet. I’d wait breathless until we could leave and part of me envied those rabbits who no longer had to endure that terrible place.

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My step-dad would pound on the door, but it was locked tight. I would peek under the door to see if I could see his shoes, yep, he was still out there. We’d stay in the bathroom for what seemed like an eternity. My step-dad wasn’t trying to hurt us, he wanted to tickle us. The strange thing, however, was that there was this mixture of real fear mingled with the excitement and dread.

My first full memory in life is one in which I am riding in a car and leaving home. For some reason there is a part of me that knows that this trip is different, that we won’t ever be going back.

We stop in front of a house, get out of the car and I traipse up the lawn in my underwear struggling to hold on to my green blanket. Inside the house there is a man sitting on a brown tweed couch. He smiles a big toothy smile that is wrapped in a foo man chu. He scares me. I poke my head out from under the blanket from time to time, but I’m frightened and the blanket is the only thing that I had making me feel secure. At the time I didn’t realize that this man would be my new dad. This man, whose face I remember perfectly clear, immediately replaced my biological father.

Before this point in my life I have very few memories. There are flashes of a house and my Aunt Ordelia who watched us. I remember her sleeping on the couch, her large black body just piled up and snoring. I remember the hair oil, the way it smelled, but I don’t remember my real dad at all whatsoever. There are no images of him holding me, no snippets of his voice, no lingering sense of his presence. It is a black hole that no matter how far I venture into I still come up empty.

My mom met my new dad at Jack-in-the-Box. She was only 23 and he was the manager. “I didn’t like like him at all at first, I thought he was a womanizer.” I remember my mother saying. “He would always come in and kiss all the women and they would be fawning all over him…”

The interesting thing about my step-dad is his ability to be two different people. Like Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde he could flip a switch and become so very kind, but when he was upset he become something else altogether. He threatened once that if he found the kitchen counters dirty he would make us lick them clean. He never did, but I believed his threat.

Once I got whipped for letting the water run while I was washing dishes, without hesitation I got hit with the wire end of a fly-swatter, before I could even explain why the water was still running I felt the sharp sting of metal against my bare legs.

Sometimes, we would all get the silent treatment. The scraping sounds of forks on the plates was all that was heard at the dinner table. I hated these moments. Hated how unfair my dad could be and how unreasonable. I hated that my mother had to put up with it at times. it was like we could never be ourselves and that part of us was always hiding from him.

Over the years my step-dad and I have had a very rocky relationship. His quick temper and high-expectations made him nearly impossible to please. Now, we’ve overcome a lot of the past, I love him very much and we are close, but there are still doors shut tightly between us and I don’t know if I will ever be able to fully let him in.

“Somebody’s knocking should I let him in
Lord it’s the devil would you look at him
I’ve heard about him but I never dreamed
He’d have blue eyes and blue jeans”

At the end of the day my shoulders and body ached from the repetitive motion of rolling paint and using a brush. However, I enjoyed myself immensely.  It was so nice to be doing manual labor and seeing immediate results for my hard work. My full-time job doesn’t always work out that way. I work hard and sometimes the work I do just gets scrapped or when it is approved, it isn’t very rewarding. I find that painting is quite rewarding and I think that if I keep practicing then this might be what I do full time one day. I could hire a few people, purchase a big sprayer or two and then we’d be in business. The best part is that i can use my own house right now to continue trying out new things. Faux finishes, various textures, etc. I have some friends that paid a fortune to have their ceilings re-textured. It looked great, but it cost $4000. If people are paying that kind of money and getting the job done in a week then i may need to rethink my career goals.

So that is why you didn’t get a real post the last 4 days. I was working up a storm, getting things painted and then getting things done at my house. Cutting down tree limbs, painting some more in the garage and cleaning up the house.

Hope your weekend was great!

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