Come(back)

Edmonton started great.  New clothes.  New haircut.  A new way of doing things. 

When we arrived, Mom and Dale took us to their little house, where we each had our own room.  There were already toys in mine, and things for my sister in her room.  We had a backyard and a garage - all of these things that we had really only seen on TV before.  But more than just stuff, my Mom seemed happy.  Going back to work really was a great thing for my Mom; she seemed excited about life, having money, and being a part of something.  I always knew that she loved us, but like anyone, being a Mom wasn’t enough for her.  My Mom really loved that job, and it made things possible that we were never able to do before.  Somehow, Dale also seemed happier; he wasn’t drunk every day, and he wasn’t taking random swings at my Mom.  

We started doing things like a family would.  We went to the West Edmonton Mall, which at the time was the biggest mall in the world, with a wave pool and an amusement park inside.  I was pretty scared of everything and cried the entire time I got put onto a roller coaster, but it wasn’t like before, when I would be ridiculed and belittled for being scared.  Everything was calmer.  Civil.  Dare I say, normal?  

Growing up the way I had, I didn’t know what it was like to have that “normal” upbringing.  The way things usually were, we would have full bellies one week, and then empty cupboards and groaning stomachs the next.  We were constantly waiting for something bad to happen.  Our lives consisted of spinning the wheel of misery and wondering what calamity it would land on next.  We were left anticipating when the next punch would be thrown, if we would have to move in the middle of the night, or whether or not Mom would wake us up in the middle of the night to start cleaning all the pots and pans or rearrange the cupboards on a whim.  But somehow in Edmonton, things were calm and cool.  At least to start off with.

Things were good for a while.  So good that after a few weeks, my Mom asked us if we wanted to come back to live with her and Dale again.  You gotta remember, I was 8 years old, and I didn’t know what the fuck was going on.  This whole thing was confusing as well.  I had just spent months away from my Mom because basically she had become overwhelmed, couldn’t handle raising her kids anymore, and she was chasing Dale and begging him to be with her again.  Now, she was doing the same with us.  I didn’t know what to do or what to think.  It had been absolute chaos with my Dad, but we were eating all the time and it was somewhat stable.  Right now with my Mom, there was food in the fridge, things were calm, and things felt right.  I was scared that the old Mom and old Dale would pop up out of nowhere, but for those first few weeks, everything was amazing.  So, when she asked me, 

“Joe-Joe - do you want to come back and live with Mommy again?”

I was kind of elated.  I had missed my Mom so much, and everything seemed great here!  At the same time, I had really come to love my Dad too.  I hadn’t seen him much as I was growing up, but that time together in Prince George changed how I saw him.  He wasn’t this absentee Dad that my Mom always talked about - he was a provider and a big strong guy who I felt would protect me from anything.  That was important to me.  

I was gutted though and I didn’t know what to say about this idea of coming back to live with my Mom full time.  What if things went back to the way they were before?  Could my little heart take the beating it was going to receive?  If you haven’t been abandoned, you can never understand how it affects you.  Even now as I type this, forty years later, that sadness strikes me like a bolt of lightning when I think about it. These kinds of things aren’t supposed to happen to a kid, but my Mom abandoned me and my sister, and my heart told me that if she did it once, she was going to do it again.  

As I search through the seemingly endless file system of my brain, I can’t recall why I said yes.  I was so angry with her for leaving me the way she did.  I was also kind of elated that I no longer had to worry the way I had in the past - about where my next meal was coming from or if I was going to have to witness Dale beating the shit out of her.  But somehow, for some strange reason, I decided that I would stay with her and Dale.  And my sister decided the same thing.  

I can’t remember how it went down or what the impetus was for those decisions.  It was just one moment we were there for a visit, and then we were living there and getting ready to go to school in the Fall.  

And once that decision was made, that was when the thin veil of normalcy fell down and the old Mom and Dale came back.

With a vengeance.