If my parents didn’t have a fight on a Saturday, it would happen on Sunday, right after church. But then, right after church, I was fair game too. Especially the Sunday I declared my support for birth control, after the priest’s sermon that day demonized it. While my courage to stand up for my beliefs was admirable, you’d think I would have learned by then to just keep my mouth shut.
But it didn’t really matter what the trigger was. There would be a nasty fight on one of the weekend mornings, and after church was as good a time as any. He was miserable first thing in the morning on most days. Add to that having to dress up and go to Mass, and that only worsened his temperament.
Whatever the fight, it would end up with them in the bathroom and me at my bedroom wall listening to make sure he didn’t kill her this time. After the battle, he would storm out of the house, get in the car, and tear out of the driveway. That left our house in relative quiet while he was gone, except for the sounds of sobs or blowing noses. It was the stillness after a storm, like when the skies have unleashed their worst and now, energy depleted, they have nothing left to hurl at you.
While he was gone, we had time to regroup. Dab eyes. Calm nerves. And continue making our main Sunday lunch meal. Meat. Potatoes. Home-made dessert and hand-whipped heavy cream. No canned whipped cream. No matter how he came back, he would expect that. And for sure, we didn’t want to give him any excuse to start again. Those kinds of weekend days would come a few years later.
But for the time being, he would return after he cooled off, extremely sorry, penitent, almost begging my Mother and us to forgive him. And offering all kinds of excuses.
There was the work stress. Our attitudes. The house we lived in, and how he would be so much happier if only we could have the kind of house he wanted to live in. Any or all of the above. And of course, he loved us and would never hurt us. So, please just understand his life was tough and please forgive him, and…
And it goes without saying that his apologies must be accepted…or else. Be happy that he was sorry. But you better not be upset with him for losing his temper. Whatever you felt, stuff it down. And again, don’t forget that somehow, in there, we were at least partly to blame. What can you expect out of a guy? Sometimes he just has to blow off steam to get it out of his system, right? And then he can go on.
I say these things now to show the irony and dysfunction. But back then, it never occurred to me to even think that. I believed he was doing his best, and sometimes, he just couldn’t help himself. Life was tough after all. And it was just such a relief if he came back and apologized, because that meant things were back to normal again. So we didn’t care.
It was the same cycle over and over and over again. Life would be okay. Then more and more tension and testiness would build. It was such a strong force you could almost reach out and touch it. It was like he needed to do this regularly.
Finally, he would just HAVE to explode in order to reset his mood. By the time he did, there was a part of you that was almost hoping for it to happen, just so he could get it over with already. Just hunker down, let him explode, and then get back to peace again. I’ve read that in abusive households, a partner will sometimes almost trigger the fight that they can feel building, just to get it over with, because the tension of waiting for it to happen just gets to be too much. Our house felt like that.
In any event, once he apologized, we knew things would be good for a while, and Dad would be a joy to be around. We would have our big Sunday dinner, and things would be all relaxed and happy as if the explosion had never occurred.
Sometimes after we finished eating, he would share things he learned at work — ironic things like “human relations” and how to properly interact with people. Or he would take us out for ice cream or a Sunday drive, or let us go outside to play with friends.
But there would be those other times where he either didn’t go out somewhere to cool off, or he would come back and still be upset. Those were the Sundays to stay out of his sight as much as possible. At least until he decided we’d been punished enough and he would summon us to stand before him as he lectured us on why he blew up and it was our fault. He’d sit in his green chair in the living room — his throne — and let us know just why we had “caused him” to lose his temper.
On the one hand, that was fine, because that meant the tide was turning and pretty soon we’d be back to “normal.” So he’d lecture us, we’d apologize, and promise to do better, and then things might finally improve.
However, the one thing that I noticed that bothered me even then, and which angers me now, is that when he “lined us up for the lecture,” he sometimes had my mother lined up there too, like she was one of us kids to be disciplined. I remember feeling like that seemed wrong. She wasn’t a kid; she wasn’t one of us. My kid’s sense of “fair, and right and wrong” just thought that was messed up. I expected her to be lined up with him. She was his supposed peer, one of the adults. Wasn’t she supposed to be on the other side of the conversation, with him, facing us, not standing there being yelled at WITH us?
Even as he kept drilling in to us, “Don’t grow up to be a stupid woman,” I was already starting to form my own mantra: “Don’t grow up to be my mother….”
Anyway, however the rest of the Sunday went, I just stayed focused on the fact that the next day was Monday. Whether he was working first or second shift, whether it was summer or the school year, at least we would all be going back to our respective routines, and there would be even a small part of a day when we wouldn’t have to see him.
Recently, reflecting on how I always stayed focused on that “end of the weekend” goal, I suddenly was consumed with terror. I thought about the COVID shutdown and realized what a sheer hell our house would have been had he been around all the time. There would be no reprieve, and with the stress of a shutdown, no doubt, more and more violence. I just shudder to even consider it.
While I was lucky to never experience that “catastrophe,” I thought about the many families out there during the pandemic who DID live that horror. And how much worse the violence must have been in so many houses. I so feel for them all.
I can only say that for us back then, thank GOD there was no pandemic. I don’t know how I would have held onto my sanity during those years. I am not sure I would have had enough “Moments of Respite” to save me.
On that note, next up — a Moment of Respite, then, what about the wider circle of extended family, school, and church?
Soul Mosaic 
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