Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child
Who would expect these teenage like kids, my parents, to know anything about parenting? They must have been part of a generation who got married, had kids and just hoped for the best, not really having any idea on how to build relationships or bring up a kid. Maybe things have gotten much better. At least these days people get married when they are older and hopefully are a little more discerning.
Patterns repeat themselves and continue to do so until the cycle is broken. My father only knew a strict dad and so he was strict too. Being in the military didn’t do anything to heighten his sensitivities, either. So it was, “Do as I say not as I do”, and, “If I tell you to jump, don’t ask why, ask how high.” Or, “If you do that again I’ll knock your block off.” Or better yet, “I’ll kill you.” How about, “I’ll knock you into next week.” Yes, these were the words that reverberate through the memories of my childhood.
Since the age of two, I was spanked and punished for doing things that my father was sure I did intentionally. One time when I was two and Karen was three, Mom had just got us all dressed up in our little smock dresses to go out. Well, I wasn’t quite toilet trained and I had an accident in my pants. My father was sure I waited for the moment I was all prepared to relieve myself and so gave me a beating to teach me a lesson.
The physical abuse started around this time.
Both my grandmother and my god father found my father’s treatment of me deplorable. My god father, Eric Kenny and his wife, Joey were close friends of my parents. We grew up knowing their kids, Dixon, Deirdre and Naomi. They wanted to adopt me by the time I was four. But my parents wouldn’t give me up.
I grew up to be totally convinced that I was adopted. They didn’t love me. How could real parents treat their kid this way? I don’t remember my father having a conversation with me, but he was quick to back hand me if I said or did anything that didn’t meet his approval. They wouldn’t treat their real kid that way. Karen was their real kid.
By the time I was twelve, I grew to hate him in proportions not right for that tender age. I had learned to refuse him the satisfaction of my tears. I promised myself that when I grew up, I would kill him. I wasn’t strong enough yet, but I fantasized that when I was older, I would somehow be that much stronger and I’d just knock him off. Revenge would be sweet and righteous. I had no way of winning now because his force was mighty. He may be more powerful, but my will was greater.
When I was 15, my birthday present was no more beatings, with the strap on my hands or bottom or just flailing, nor with the wooden spoon or with his back hand swing.
I never did get around to writing my father off, but I swore I would never feign a happy childhood with either of my parents. They would live with the knowledge that I carried a heavy emotional burden during my childhood and I was miserable.
After I left home at 17, I passed through about 10 or so years, resenting my parents and how they treated me as a child. I had tried to forgive my father, but the words were empty. I couldn’t get it into my heart. However, after years of pleading the suffering victim, I got sick of hearing myself go on. Then something happened.
I started to see the problem was within me. The only way I could truly forgive my dad, and my mom for not defending me, was to relinquish the victim mentality and take responsibility for my life. I was the only one suffering the hurt. They had gone on with their lives and probably never thought about it. I saw I was wasting all that energy on self pity and I was done with it. I was able to truly forgive them both and in the doing of it I discovered, “I forgave the prisoner and set the prisoner free and the prisoner was me.”
Once this shift took place, I could understand that my parents were really kids when they had us, trying their best and wanting the best for us. They just didn’t know how to do it. I began to see them in context of their lives and not just mine.
My mother was brought up in a hotel in New York and hated it. Her mother was a glamorous, bright, feminine but unmotherly, socialite who worked as a hotel social director, and her father was a hotel manager. She quite hated it. Fortunately, she spent some of her childhood living in Ottawa with four uncles and an aunt. There, she was spoiled, adored and indulged in. So Mom learned to be the centre of attention and never, completely, learned how to be a doting mother.
My father had a short father who certainly suffered from the small man complex. ‘Herbie’ favoured my father’s older brother, John, who was the ‘white haired boy’.
Thus my father never felt accepted by his dad and some of the stories he would tell would raise the hair on your neck. For example, Dad, an ardent animal lover, had to shoot his own dog because the dog was suspected of having rabies. Another time he had the chance to go to Florida with his best friend. His father punished him for some forgotten mishap and wouldn’t let him go. My Dad certainly suffered from the influence of his father who had committed transgressions against him and left him with unresolved frustrations, insecurities and a nasty persecution complex mixed in with feelings of inferiority.
My Dad’s mother adored him though. This would explain Dad’s attachment to older women later on in his life.
Don’t get me wrong. Mom and Dad were a great couple. They loved to laugh and party and people loved to have them around. They were attractive, fun and charming. Its just that the kids of these kids were just an appendage to them, orbiting their busy lives. Children were to be seen and not heard.
