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Daddy Dearest
My dad worked constantly and in swing shifts, and these constant swinging shifts constituted to his often erratic mood swings. Second and graveyard shifts made his moods completely off. At one time, I thought that my dad had lost his mind. He either developed anger issues as it relates to his lack of sleep, his tumultuous marriage to my mother, or his having children and other responsibilities. Whatever the case, I saw him as nothing less than evil during those times. In fact, for a time frame of at least two to three years of my early childhood, he literally made our lives a living hell on earth in the home. Those were the times that I even felt sorry for my own mother even though she was just as bad as my dad (if not worse).
First, my dad seemed to always be grumpy and angry for what appeared to be no reason at all. It seemed he was never in a good mood unless he had some days off. Otherwise, my siblings and I would complain to each other about how “mean” he was along with a host of other complaints in the way that children usually complain about adults.
As soon as my dad came home from work, it did not matter if we were already in bed and fast asleep. He would always find some reason to awaken all of us. During these late working shifts of his, the house was permeated with the fear he provoked within us. We were terrified of him. His moods determined how we reacted, and as hard as I tried to fake being asleep when he came home late from his second shift job, my heart often betrayed the silence as if always seemed to beat loudly outside of my chest signaling my dad to come and check on us in our rooms.
First of all, my dad would come into our rooms while we were sleeping despite us having to awaken early in the morning for school. I am talking random wake ups anywhere from 2 A.M. to 4 A.M. He would check our bookbags to see that homework had been completed for the next school day even though it was actually the next school day when he arrived home. If the homework was incomplete or not completed to his satisfaction, he would make us get out of bed and complete it.
I could have been in a deep sleep, and my dad would still wake me up – shattering the silent night with his shrilling call. I could literally feel myself shaking on the inside from having been awaken out of a deep sleep. Can anyone imagine how long it takes a child to actually complete homework that the child does not understand or is simply too tired to complete? Yet, he did not seem to care. All that mattered to him was that it was done even though we had to get up a just a few hours to go to school.
Second, my dad would have night rages as if waking us up for incomplete homework was not enough of a problem. If he thought that any room in the house was not cleaned to his satisfaction, he would wake us up with loud ranting and yelling about how we did not complete our chores during the time after we had arrived home from school. Sometimes he would make us get up and clean up even though we had to do minimal chores like making our beds and cleaning our rooms before leaving for school.
Once I remember how he raged for over an hour because someone left a dirty fork in the sink. He ranted and raged for my siblings and me to get up out of bed around 3 A.M. to go and wash just that one fork. In my mind, I knew something was more than wrong with him for something that seemed to be far too irrelevant. I also suspected that my mother was the person placing dirty lone forks and glasses in the sink past our bedtime. I am pretty certain of this.
My mother was not exempt from listening to these rants either. The entire house was filled with my dad’s rage. She would have to listen to him go on and on about how she was obviously not doing her job as a mother and so forth, but then she would always defer to us (the children) by saying that we did not listen to her when that was so far from the case the majority of the time. My mother was not truly attentive to us at all while my dad was at work. We stayed in our own rooms doing our own things, but we definitely completed our chores because we did not want to have to hear our dad’s complaints. Those late night rages were terrifying for the most part especially when he was screaming at the top of his lungs waking us out of our deep sleep in the middle of the morning.
Just take a moment to imagine what this insanity did to our (the children’s) bodies. We woke up with broken sleep because my dad was interrupting us with his petty rages. He was like a huge child throwing temper tantrums. I found it to be rather annoying, but I dare not say anything to set him off. He might become unhinged, and the few times he was becoming unhinged, it was like walking on eggshells around him.
Speaking of which, he always complained about our walking in the house. We had to walk in socks so as not to be heard. As children, we were not always the best at remaining quiet while he was attempting to sleep. The daylight hours were meant to be lived. I suppose the daytime noise made it more difficult for him and his mood swings more than abrupt in changes. So I guess, if he could not sleep, he was going to make sure to let us know how it felt.
I remember being so exhausted upon waking just hours later to get ready for school. Because I was so tired, I would sometimes literally fall asleep in class. If one of my teachers contacted my parents to say anything about it, I was told to stay awake in class. I will never forget the response I gave to my dad about it. In essence, I said, “Well, if you did not wake us up so much in the wee hours of the morning while we were sleeping, then maybe I would not fall asleep in class”. I remember his eyes searing somewhere deep into my soul, but instead of the corporal punishment I would get for backtalking, I was sent to my room. I believe my dad knew I was right. How could he not? After all, he was the one responsible for breaking our sleep cycle.
During my dad’s third shift nights, he would sometimes come home during his one hour lunch break to eat food that my mother had prepared for dinner. These check-ins were sporadic. So it always felt to me that he was sneaking up on us. This always left me on edge because I was never sure when he would come into our rooms ranting loudly about something we had done or not done.
The anxiety, sleep deprivation, and nightmares that I experienced were really tough to deal with, and it certainly did not help that I might have had some type of traumatic and frustrating experience earlier in the day at school with teachers and/or peers or later at home with my mother. In today’s modern terms, my dad just had no chill back then. It ceases to amaze me that even then he did not see a problem with his behavior.
In retrospect, though, it seemed like my dad was tormented, and he was a parent simply trying to provide for his family. I make no excuses for him, but I simply have tried to understand the times for him back then. The erratic shift hours rarely seemed to make sense to me. He was either home or he was not home. He was either present for what was happening or he was totally unaware of the changes that were taking place in our household. He was particularly in the dark to what my mother’s doings were, and she rather liked it that way.
Although my dad ranted in my mother’s presence and was not all that nice to her either, I always noticed how she stayed just on the peripheral of what was happening with my dad. It was as if she watched on the sidelines taking notes. A few times, I was aware of how she played both sides of the fence when it came to my dad. She gave the illusion to him that she was on his side while giving us [the children] the illusion that she was on our side. Meanwhile, my dad was daddy dearest basking in the limelight of shifting work nights.
Stay tuned for more to this story.
My Voice Unchained 