The Return of Dad

When my Dad came back to get us it was a noble deed (because he hadn’t really been involved in our lives much), but he didn’t know anything about what it meant to be a father.  He couldn’t cook, he didn’t clean, and his life was one long party that was supported by a workaholic nature that was rough on us and him.  Dad worked in the bush driving a skidder - a huge machine that was used to pull trees that had been cut down out of the forest.  To his credit, when we came back into his life, he was trying to change things and provide us with a more stable upbringing.  The problem was that he didn’t know what he was doing, so we became the guinea pigs in this new experiment of him trying to be a Dad, and we watched as he failed miserably at every turn.  

Dad was living in Prince George at the time; a fairly large northern city in British Columbia, supported by the logging industry.  Everwhere you’d go, you’d see dirty 4x4s caked with mud and hauling large diesel tanks in their beds.  Haul trucks pulling logs down old dirt roads, onto the highways, and through the main strip of PG were a common sight, and scruffy faced, hat wearing men with giant forearms from years spent controlling heavy duty machinery were just about everywhere you looked.  This was nothing new to me, but this was also a proper city, which was much different than the (mostly) small towns I was used to living in.  Dad got us an apartment, and he tried to set it up like we were a regular family.  

The difference with Dad (when compared to my Mom) is that there was always food in the fridge, the cupboards were always stocked, and there was no chance the heat or electricity were going to be shut off in the middle of the night.  Dad didn’t always pay his bills on time, but he never let us go hungry, and he always made sure that we had the necessities.  As I look back now, it’s strange to think of food as a luxury, but back then that is exactly what it felt like.  For the first time in a long time, I wasn’t scared that the next meal wouldn’t be there when I got up in the morning. 

This didn’t mean that my Dad knew how to parent.  My sister had always taken on the role of pseudo-Mother when my Mom and Dale had gone out on their binges.  She modeled what she learned from my Mom, ranting and screaming at me about everything I was doing wrong, and with Dad it wasn’t any different.   My sister also used to beat me when I wouldn’t do what she wanted, and as an 8 year old, I didn’t really know how to handle that.  And to my dismay, my Dad didn’t put a stop to it. I remember one of these episodes happening when some people were over at our apartment, and my Dad’s solution was to let us just duke it out.  The result was that my sister beat the holy shit out of me.  There wasn’t blood flying or broken bones, but I was slapped and smacked, pushed and hit, as my sister asserted her dominance over me once again.  My Dad laughed it off - thinking that he was teaching us valuable lessons about life and figuring things out on our own.  All it taught me was not to trust either one of them.  

Alcohol was also a hard part of this new life with Dad because he was a full-blown alcoholic who chased women and spent his money as quickly as he made it.  As much as he tried to create a more stable life for us, he didn’t know what he was doing and because he was always drunk, he couldn’t see how difficult it was for us to adjust to his way of doing things.  Dad would get black out drunk on a nightly basis, to the point that he gained the nickname “Table Top” because he would sit there and drink until he passed out at the table.  

We had always moved around so much with my Mom that it was nothing new for me to be going to a new school and make new friends.  I hadn’t really started playing sports yet, but somehow I always had someone to play with or hang out with - and if I didn’t, I was always happy to just do things on my own.  My sister had it much harder than me in that department.  She always yearned for friendships and to have people around her, which made fitting in at these new schools almost impossible.  I never really knew how much this affected my sister until later, when as an adult I would see her constantly chasing connections with people.  I see now how these environments and circumstances we were in affected us both as adults, just in very different ways.  My sister craved the attention of men, chased friendships and connections with women, and would blow up at people in a heartbeat over trivial shit.  For a long time, I didn’t know how to deal with people, and would let them walk all over me.  I think it was my coping mechanism as a kid - don’t be too bold or stand out too much, fly under the radar and try not to attract too much attention because that way nobody could hurt me.  Living with my Mom and Dale, as well as my sister…this was the only way to survive.  Otherwise I was getting yelled at or beaten.  My sister approached things in a different way.  When we were abandoned by my Mom, I really think that was the turning point where my sister decided that she would always be surrounded by people so that if someone left her again, she could switch to a new person.

Thinking about it now, it’s such a horrible upbringing for any kid to endure. But, I guess for us, this new way of life with my Dad was more stable than what we had been used to.  We ate everyday, we always had clothes on our backs, and even with the chaos of alcohol all around it was a mostly stable life.  My Dad didn’t know what he was doing, and I would catch the odd beating from my sister every once in a while, but it was about as close to “normal” as we had ever had.  

But the universe wasn’t done with seeing what I could handle…especially as my Mom and Dale came back into the picture.