One of the lessons that I incorporate into groups I have lead at work concerns how we cope with emotions and stop our feelings from ruthlessly dictating our actions. Merleau-Ponty (a favorite philosopher of mine) sets up a metaphor. Emotional outbursts happen when we encounter a fork in our life road that forces us to alter our plans. We don’t want to make the decision. We can cry, scream, and rage but we won’t progress til we make the tough choice. As a young person I had my own issues with disappointment and frustration with the world and myself. At times the the internal conflict became external and an actual fight as my anger turned to violence. I blew past patience and went straight to lashing out at others. Sadly, my brother David or sister DW took much of the heat of my childish anger.

Few things can test patience like parenting. Even I, a non-parent, see some of these challenges and cringe thinking about how it must be like beating one’s head against a wall at times. You love your kids (though you may not always like them) and their needs grow more and more complex and confusing as the years pass. Add to the mix that parents have lives of their own and things can escalate in a way that not even Job could bear patiently. Caregivers have to keep calm while figuring out the salient parts of a story and then dispense justice in a way that will stand the test of time as well as hold up to the magnified critique of the tiny worldview of your child. Things don’t always go well and sometimes anger and fear get the best of us.

My younger sister grew up in a noisy, chaotic home. Domestic situations took all my parents’ time as the farm slowly tanked financially. DW still was the apple of my father’s eye and managed to brighten his day even in the bleakest of times. The two of them shared a relationship that was different than the rest of the children and he would lavish her with special, doting attention. She shared a room with Anna, six years her senior. When DW was 10, Anna was 16 and trying to date and take on the world in her own, very teenaged way. One day, I noticed that DW was acting differently, and though we were not necessarily very close, it piqued my attention. Ever the nosy one and fairly adept at snooping, I began to follow her. Mid-afternoon I saw her make an unusual trip to our weather-beaten mailbox across the street. As soon as she returned and was out of sight I ran and looked inside. There was a envelope with recognizable childish handwriting on the front. I did not recognize the name of the man to whom it was addressed and I immediately opened it. It was handwritten and on wide ruled notebook paper. DW was telling this stranger about her taste in music and how she loves her music hard and loud. The text was thick and muddled with its juvenile expression of sexuality. She attempted to explain her feelings and physical body in a while that spoke to her unfamiliarity with both. DW was attempting to write some unknown man a highly flirtatious, if not actually erotic, letter.

I knew this material was explosive if my parents found out. My father was and is deeply religious and frowns on expression of sexuality and lust in all forms. Instead of taking it to her and talking about how risky it was, I tucked it into a notch in a tree in the copse where I had my treehouse. I did not know what to do. I knew that what she was attempting could be dangerous, but I even at that age, I did not trust my parents. I talked it over with David and he was little help and wanted to immediately tell the parents. I understood my sexuality at this point and had a clear idea who they would respond to my being outted, and I expected them to react similarly here. I forced myself into other activities soon buried the situation under other activities and went about my day and on into the evening. My father was out late doing farm tasks so I did not see him before I worriedly put myself to bed early.

I was brusquely woken by my mother. My Crayola blue and yellow alarm clock said it was after midnight. David was standing behind her, crying. She demanded to know what had happened to the letter. I hesitated, knowing what this could mean for DW but uncertain what I could do to help her. After a moment of wavering, I told her I had hidden it. She demanded I immediately go and get retrieve it. I ran outside and shimmied into my tree house in the dark in nothing more than my underwear. Grasping blindly through several dark crooks, I found the thick envelope with the letter. I returned and gave it handed it over to my mother, knowing full well that hell was going to come down on DW. I returned to bed and did my best to make myself sleep, eventually succeeding.

I awoke early and immediately remembered the activities of the night before, having slept fitfully. I ran down the stairs early and began looking for some hint to the night’s activities. In the bathroom, I found my father’s bathrobe in the trashcan. I pulled it out to discover a wide, ugly tear across the side. Dark blue threads crisscrossed a ugly rip about 8 inches long. My father never wore the robe, but I knew that DW did. I waited as patiently as I could to see her, finally getting her alone later in the morning. I lost any illusion of calm and begged her to tell me what had happened. She was hesitant. She did not want to tell me. She continued putting me off for hours till finally she caved to my relentless questions. Between sobs she filled me in the on events of the previous night.

David had stewed with the implication of the contents of the letter and having great trust in my parents to do the right thing, he eventually caved and told them. Once they had they letter and read its troubling sexual contents my father flew into a confused rage. He was out of his depth and had never experienced this before. His favorite child was expressing an identity he found troubling and very unfamiliar. Years of deeply borne religiosity only deepened the shock and disgust of overt sexuality, especially with regards to women. Even more so when that woman was his special daughter. My parents took DW into the cold, cluttered garage and he began yelling at her, shaking the letter and crying in a confused rage. He decided that she deserved physical punishment, his usual response and one that he had used on me so many times before but so rarely on DW. He found a stick and began to hit her, aiming for her backside but often as not missing and hitting her back. He angrily demanded she stand still and accept the punishment until she collapsed, catching the bathrobe on a jagged edge of the truck’s bumper. My mother screamed to intervene and finally stood in the way to stop him. He left the garage, still furious and disgusted. My mother sent DW to bed and threw the unsalvagable blue bathrobe in the trash. After sharing the story with me, DW carefully showed me some of bruises that dotted her back like large purple and yellow pox. She told me that there were more below her waistline and said that that mom would be “paying closer attention to her now.”

That night, my father changed. As an adult, I see that what DW needed was not to be beaten but rather actually parented. She was reaching out for attention and processing through the influences she was experiencing in a way that could have been quite dangerous, but was in the end, very natural. What was a learning opportunity of the most urgent sort became a lapse of the most heinous kind. My father was also processing through his own troubles and encountered an situation he did not know how to process, that of a budding sexuality in his most beloved daughter. Her behavior frightened him and he did not know what to do. He had to choose. He responded in fear and he masked his emotion with violence, hurting the child with whom he had the most special relationship. The ramifications went simply hurting her body as it also damaged their relationship and in turn ended my trust and confidence in him forever. He allowed his fear and anger to choose for him when reason and compassion were needed.

On a cold autumn night I learned again how flawed and human parents can be. For years afterward I regretted handing over that letter as it caused so much pain and trauma to someone I had never wanted to hurt. That day also taught me something about how I wanted to be known and experienced. I saw my own sexual revelation as inevitable and I knew that it too would prompt an even crueler and more horrifying response from my father. I wanted no part of that man to be reflected in me. Always quick to violence, I came to abhor it. Seeing and touching the deep purple and yellow welts on my sister’s back, I affirmed that I was not going to choose that path and hurt anyone, much less someone that I love. I still swear to never become the man that he was in that garage, and the first step is to not be the man that walked in.

p.