As I look out the window, watching the sun play tag with the grass, I think back to when life was simple. Or was it?
My father drank till the day he died, he died alone, penniless, and with no clue, as to how he affected our lives.
Dads drinking affected my brother, I believe the worst.
Dad was so hard on him. He would get so angry at him, for no other reason, just because he was there.
I remember so little from those days,
Its as if one day I just woke up and became a grown up.
Sometimes I really wonder if I really ever was a child.
I know in my head,
Somewhere all those memories will explode like a time bomb,
And blow away the person I have become,
Or maybe they will just slowly trickle in, kind of like a leaky valve on an old tire.
I do remember a few things,
From then,
Some good
Some bad.
The bad memories, are sort of fuzzy like they belong to someone else, or are part of a story I once read; they don’t really exist for me as my life.

We were all sitting down for supper, a regular leave it to beaver moment.
Mom had made spaghetti, with yummy garlic bread to dip in her delicious sauce. I think I was about 10 at the time,
Not really sure as I said my memories are like a faded and yellowed picture, stuck in an old family album, hidden away until they are needed to embarrass someone.
We sat there a tableau of innocence.
Mom served Dad first.
Then, hell broke loose,
Leave it to beaver, became the exorcist.

I sat there in my chair, in detached wonder watching my parents become raving lunatics.
The war began, from what I can remember,
Because my mom had given my Dad, his spaghetti but forgot to give him a slice of garlic bread, in those days all it took was something simple and stupid to ignite my Dads anger.
He started, yelling at mom,
His bulbous drinker’s nose becoming redder and redder,
As he got madder and madder.
I stared at my dads nose trying to block out the angry voices, wondering if it would just suddenly blow up,
Would the yelling stop then?
Would pieces of his nose slide into his spaghetti?
Like chunks of meatballs.

I found myself laughing at the thought of Dads nose in everyone’s spaghetti, and I couldn’t stop laughing.
My brother, who was 8, looked over at me, and he to began to laugh. Our laughing just enraged my dad even more, and he threw his plate of spaghetti at my mom,
I laughed even harder.

It was as if I couldn’t stop laughing.
I knew nothing was funny, but I couldn’t make myself stop.
Then it was as if time stopped,
I looked over at mom, as the spaghetti slid down her shirt,
Then at dad as he started coming toward me, and I stopped laughing.

I watched my Dad come towards me, with the anger so deeply etched within his face,
His eyes were glazed and as red as his nose, and I ran,
I left my mom and brother to face whatever would happen next, I ran and hid under my bed, a pillow over my head, so I wouldn’t hear anymore
Looking back,
I still feel guilty for running away, but I was only 10.
There are good memories but, they fade quickly as the bad ones, and I find myself in cased within that bottle. With my Father.
For his decisions, his anger, his destructiveness, bound us all together, within that time in a bottle.
My Brother deals with his time, by never being happy with what he has, he is always trying to change everyone, to make them what he would like them to be, because of this he has been married 3 times, and the likelihood of his current marriage crashing. Will be because he still can’t pull himself out of that bottle.

Me,
I find ways to destroy things that are good by not following through,
By letting myself get lost with in my unorganized thoughts and life.
I am working on pulling myself out of that bottle, taking each day one at a time.
You see Alcoholism, is a disease that eats away not at just the person, who drinks, but also the family, we too share that time with our father, lost within the confines of our insecurities, innocence, and unconscious memories.
One thing I have learned, from my fathers illness, is that no matter what, I have it within me to climb out, to not be afraid of who I am, good or bad I am my father’s daughter. Without him and my mother, and the Lord above, I would not be here.