-A Lie
I decided to focus on family, choosing to believe-and have faith-that everything else would fall into place. I wasn't comfortable-or good-at lying to her.
So, when Samantha surprised me one day by swallowing her pride and asking directly if a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I grew up in a family of seven, the second youngest of five children. I followed the well-worn path, with intermittent surges of individuality. Household chores were dutifully performed, school assignments lethargically completed, as I daydreamed my way through life.
I abandoned a long-term commitment to Scouting, quitting as a Life Scout—just one merit badge and a project short of earning Eagle status. Along the way, I had broken nearly every bylaw in the handbook. I somehow achieved decent grades while enduring the long-gone school years, riddled with adolescent angst and insecurity. In sports, I put forth a subpar effort, a late bloomer who didn't develop a competitive nature until well after high school.
Sundays were for church. My family attended Mass each week, though my memories of it consist mostly of the rhythm of it all—the standing, the kneeling, the sitting, the recitation of well-rehearsed phrases. The monotony was sometimes broken by a dropped hymnbook, a muffled burp, or an accidental fart that sent us kids into fits of animated convulsions as we tried to contain the nearly uncontrollable laughter. My father would try to stifle it with a sharp sideways glance, a warning that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. If we couldn't contain ourselves, he'd march us out of the chapel. I remember one time being led outside, given the choice of a thin, low-hanging branch, and treated to a mild switching. It wasn't meant to hurt—more of a performance, a reminder of who was in charge.
But as I got older and wilder, the punishments became more severe. Belts, hangers, Hot Wheels tracks, a section of garden hose—all were used at different times. Once, he used a short piece of PVC pipe. I can still recall the raised welts on the back of my thighs, a punishment for ignoring his warning not to get the freshly varnished front door wet.
[Decades later, during family gatherings, my brothers and I would resurrect those encounters—romanticized versions that never failed to amuse us, and our children.]
The last time it happened was in the tenth grade. I remember the year because I missed a scheduled biology field trip because of it. My mother had been upset with me the night before, convinced that I had defied her by sneaking out after being told I couldn't go out with friends. In reality, I had never left my room, but she must have stayed up half the night waiting for me to return from nowhere. When my father came home, she must have told him her version of events. The next morning, he confronted me in the kitchen. I don't remember what he said, only that before I could respond, I was reeling from a punch to the face.
My brother Mike heard the commotion and rushed in to my defense, yelling that I had been home all night.
It's not the violence that lingers in my memory. What I remember most is sitting beside my father in the car that morning, watching as the biology boat shrank into the distance. I turned and saw tears on his face. Until that moment, I had never seen my father cry.
