Forgive or relive.
- Unknown
Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.
- Indira Gandhi
Like about two million other Americans, I’ve watched the (recently posted) seven-year-old video of Judge William Adams beating his daughter for downloading media off the Internet. I’ve spent a couple days trying to process and understand my reaction to it, which was a cross between anger, revulsion, and nausea. It took me some time to come to grips with my feelings; it was just a video, right? A horrific, difficult to watch video, to be certain…but why did watching it have such an deeply emotional impact on me?
Like most of us, I know a bit of the story behind the video. I watched Thomas Roberts interview Hillary and her mother on MSNBC yesterday; that helped to fill in some of the blanks, but I was quite surprised and disturbed by my reaction. I’m finally beginning to understand why and how I reacted as I did. My father did the same thing to me. No, it wasn’t as angry or as hateful, but I can still remember the terror and the fear I felt in the pit of my stomach when he undid his belt as he told me to drop my pants and undershorts and bend over. Grabbing a chair for support, I’d wait for the painful, terrifying feeling of his leather belt striking my bare butt with a sharp, violent snap. Sometimes he would hit me so hard it would take my breath away. I remember the pain, the burning, and the tears…even as I’ve long since forgotten the reasons for the beatings.
I grew up thinking that beating your children was normal; it’s what a parent did when a child screwed up or disobeyed instructions. Growing up where I did in northern Minnesota, it’s just what parents did. I never knew that there was another alternative, one that didn’t involve parents beating the children they loved. I never knew that there was another way to show love and enforce discipline. My father wasn’t very good at persuasion or discussion, but he was good at using fear to keep me, his rebellious and disputatious oldest child, in line.
My relationship with my father was a complicated one. That fact hardly makes me unique, of course. It was a different time and place. I grew up in the poorest county in Minnesota, a place where anger, frustration, and feelings of impotence and ineffectuality were commonplace. I suppose it stands to reason that some of those frustrations would have been taken out on children in no position to defend themselves.
I decided early on that I would never have children. It took me a long time to fully understand why; I suppose I’d pushed the memories of what happened to me so far back into my memory bank that I’d managed to forget them…or at least as close as I could come to forgetting. I thought there were just other things I wanted to do with my life. That was part of it, I suppose, but it was a smokescreen, a way for me to avoid having to recognize and accept that I couldn’t bear the thought of doing to a child of my own what my father did to me.
I was probably in my late 30s before I recognized that I could break the cycle, that I possessed the ability to make different decisions and chart a different path. I never had children in large part because I was scared to. The thing is that I know now that I would have made a helluva father. My experience could have been something I used as a cautionary tale, a way to negotiate a different course through adulthood and fatherhood. Instead, I shut down that possibility altogether. It just felt safer that way.
I didn’t want to write this, but I can’t imagine that I’m the only one having flashbacks after watching this video. Writing about it helps me to deal with things I haven’t thought about for a long, long time now. I couldn’t have known this when I was a child, because I didn’t know anything else, but beating your child is wrong. It’s child abuse, pure and simple. If the only way you can think of to discipline a child is through fear, intimidation, and violence, then you have no business being a parent. It’s true now…and it should have been true when I was a child.
I admire young Hillary for being able to rise above the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. My hope for her is that she can see her way clear to charting her recovery far sooner than I did.
My complicated (lack of a) relationship with my family stems from this starting point. It’s where I started, but I know now that it’s not where I’m destined to remain. I’ve moved on in an attempt to live my own life, and while there are still things I struggle with, I’ve managed to grow up and evolve into a reasonably mature adult. Whether this was because of or inspite of my childhood experience is something I’ll leave to intellects nimbler than my own. My father is- and was- not a bad person. He was simply parroting behavior that his own father modeled for him. You go with what you know, right? And if you never learned anything different….
Perhaps if my father had learned something different, or if he’d realized that he could break the cycle, things would be different for me now…but they’re not. My life is what it is; perhaps if I’d realized that I could break the cycle, my life would have turned out differently. Perhaps I’d have a family of my own. That being said, I’m responsible for the decisions I’ve made, and I hold no one but myself responsible.
There will always be a part of me that will wonder “What if….?” What would my life have evolved into if I’d been able to get past my own experience and have a family of my own? I’ll never know, of course, and for the most part I’ve made peace with that. Thankfully, I have Erin’s nieces and nephews, who have accepted me into their lives and who I’ve come to treasure. No, they’re not my own children, but through them I can vicariously share the joys of watching them grow and evolve. Through them, I can begin to see the parent I might have become…and that’s a pretty good place to be.
