Dinnertime and the Cycle of Abuse

My father was an abusive man. A verbally abusive man. My mother and my sister were his most frequent targets. As the good child, one without ADHD or impulse issues, I knew to keep my head down and stay out of the way.

When there wasn’t abuse, there was a steady stream of criticisms and mild tirades. This was just how my father communicated.  

“You ain’t gonna amount to nothin’,” are words I heard virtually every day of my childhood. They were meant to motivate and almost always directed at my sister. 

My mother could either do nothing right or was absolutely saint-like. He called her “Momma,” and Momma was expected to fulfill all of her housewife duties exactly as he wanted them. Oh, and without having to tell her how he wanted them. Mind reading was part of her wifely duties. If he had to tell her, well, we’d all better watch out. 

Dinner had to be exactly what he wanted, how he wanted it and when he wanted it.  It damn sure needed to be ready when he got home from his job at the grocery store, where he worked as a butcher. Not only did she prepare every dinner (except those rare nights that involved grilling, since that was his area), my mother had to anticipate every single thing he would need in order to eat that dinner and have it on the table — hopefully before he sat down.

I held my breath as I sat down to dinner every night for fear that the wrong move would unleash an explosion and begin a rage-filled tirade about how my father was sick and tired of this and that, how he worked so hard for us and how come no one can do anything right. How long would these rants go on? I have no idea, but it seemed like forever. As kids, we weren’t allowed to talk back, and we wouldn’t have dared to say anything anyway during a tirade. His rages filled us all with fear and often brought us to tears, but we weren’t supposed to show them in front of him either and certainly not after he was done letting it all loose.

After the explosion, we weren’t allowed to be mad or sad. He wouldn’t let us, which sounds absolutely ridiculous, but it’s true. 

“Oh come on now, it wasn’t that bad. Let’s forget all about it,” he’d plead. 

If we didn’t snap back right away, he might even crack a joke or make a funny face or do something silly — anything to get us to forget it. He was great with gags and magic tricks and stunts involving his body. A real hoot, as they say in East Texas where my dad is from.

After he tore my mother down, it was time to build her back up.

“Awww, Momma, you’re the best woman in the entire world. I don’t know why you put up with me. I don’t know what I did to deserve you.” 

This routine worked on my mother her entire marriage. 

Not me. I remember countless nights crying under the covers in my bed and wishing my mother would find the courage to leave him. 

She never would, and I’ve spent my entire life holding it against her. We can talk about whether that anger and resentment has been placed on the wrong person. Logically, I know who should be the one who deserves it, but my father was “sick.” As the “sane” adult in our household, I held my mother to a higher standard. 

My father wasn’t all bad. I could tell you stories, and you would think it must have been so fun growing up with him. He was an overgrown child, and thanks to him, we had genuine adventures. My favorite memories from childhood involved us sneaking onto the golf course near our house and wading through the creek that wound through it to collect golf balls. The neighborhood boys would go with us, and we’d make a game out of who could find the most balls. Finding a colored ball — neon yellow, pink or orange — was something special. An all-gold ball was a real prize. Cash was doled out. We loved it.

No one knew our father was abusive outside of us. He kept it all reined in front of the outside world. Sure, he might have occasionally lost his temper a little bit in front of the neighborhood boys while he built us a treehouse complete with orange shag carpet and a full-size, above-ground swimming pool made out of plywood and plastic that was absolute magic for the day or two before it sprang a leak, but they never saw real abuse. They wished their dad could be just like him. Later, when my dad took up golf and then channeled all of his ambitions into my athletically gifted sister and sent her off to play tournaments (me too, although I was never nearly as good as she was), I’m sure there were parents who watched from a distance and caught a glimpse of the overbearing father who was always knew better than the coaches, but no one said a word.

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'He was a two-faced abusive monster.

'My brother and sis-in-law were good friends with them for years. My brother said he was controlling, manipulative, and mentally abusive for years but no one knew how bad until recently.

'He would demand she have dinner on the table ready when he got home. No one ate until he took the first bite.

'If she was preparing dinner and he would call and say he wanted something else, she had to start over.

'Once he was late coming home so she let the kids start eating. When he got home and saw them eating without him- he threw all the food on the floor and made her start dinner all over again.'

This is a post circulating on social media about Michael Haight, a father of five from a small town in Utah who murdered his wife, his mother in law and all of his children, ranging in ages from 4 to 17, before he turned a gun on himself Jan. 4. His wife had filed for divorce two weeks earlier.

The stories about preparing dinner hit home hard. They reminded me of my childhood. Author Gabrielle Blair writes about how in the tight-knit community this family lived in, there had to be many adults — adult men specifically — who knew about the abuse happening in this family and did nothing. Haight’s oldest child had even reported abuse several years ago, but an investigation found no wrongdoing. 

This is the shame of this situation: Why so many do nothing in the face of overwhelming evidence that abuse is happening. I don’t have answers, only that it seems like most people are afraid to say or do anything that takes them outside of their own comfort zone, their own little protective bubble. 

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My father died at the age of 58 from bladder cancer. We had a year to say our goodbyes, and I largely made peace with him. He got to make amends for some of the things in his life, although he never directly addressed how he treated any of us. On his deathbed, he told my sister she had “really hurt him” because one time she wouldn’t allow him to join her and some other golfers in her foursome. 

My mother loved him until the end — and even now. And he loved her too. I used to think he stayed alive as long as he could until he felt she would be taken care of, but it’s possible he just couldn’t hold on any longer.

There’s was a tortured, fucked up love, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But it was not my choice. I was a bystander. Was it love or the intense cycle of abuse that kept them together? Maybe both? We will never know. Now, 18 years after his death, my mother has forgotten the bad times and only speaks glowingly about him … “He was the only man I’ve ever loved.” Nothing I can say or do seems to change that. So I sit uncomfortably with acceptance and occasionally rail about him to her knowing it won’t change her viewpoint.

But the sins of the father don’t go away. The children of abusive parents — those who live to tell — are doomed to repeat the past unless we take deliberate action against it. At times, that means going against everything that feels comfortable and familiar, everything that feels like home. It’s not easy. It takes a colossal amount of work and introspection, and still, is it ever enough?

I can’t fully untangle the abuse that I’ve suffered, it’s so entrenched in my being and my body. I carry scars from it still to this day. And yet I work to rise above it, to be better because of and in spite of it, and most importantly try very hard not to pass on the hurt to those I love.