Late Night Maudlin Street- Snapshots from the War

It went off like a car bomb, it was the silence of a hollow house followed by an explosion of voices, my sister and my mother, i was home on break and left my room to find my sister hovering over our mother, she was sitting at the kitchen table in her yellow robe, the one i had dubbed the Big Bird robe years earlier, my sister was standing over her shaking her finger in her face, irate and wild eyed, screaming "you fucking bitch, all you've ever done is fuck up my life, i fucking hate you", my mother sat there quietly saying she did nothing of the sort, her mouth set and eyes tired, sis went at her even more and at that point i grabbed her and picked her up and carried her down the hall, set her on her bed, she was crying and ranting and i told her i understood her anger but that i was going to go out soon and i needed to know that she would be cool and not do anything stupid. My sister is 6 years older than me and we could never be considered what you'd call close but i stood there and talked to her tried to calm her down, got her a glass of water and some aspirin and by the time i got back in the room she was curled up under her covers and staring blankly at the television, i handed her the water and the pills and walked back to the kitchen to check on my mother, she was in the same chair and her eyes were red and misty, i asked her if she was okay which is about the only thing civil thing i'd said to her in awhile when i said anything to her at all, she said yes and slowly rose and walked toward her bedroom, she looked older than she was, looked lost and unprepared for the hell that she'd unleashed, i took a deep breath and heard the door to her room lock, then i grabbed my stuff and left...

There was a hallway that led to the basement and the garage, i caught her there and demanded answers, she was wearing the same robe and i often wondered if she ever burned the damn thing cuz it seemed like nothing but a talisman for bad luck, i wanted answers and she wasn't willing to give them, if there was one person who could rattle my mother it was me, i was her boy, her pride and joy, if there was one thing she needed to do at this time it was to try and talk to her children but she had completely shut us off, told us it had nothing to do with us which was about the stupidest fucking thing i had ever heard, our parents were splitting up and it had nothing to do with us? are you that fucking ignorant? i was standing in the door so she couldn't get back into the house, i calmly and coolly told her that i didn't ask for her, that i had no say in who my mother was but that i certainly did get the shit end of the stick, that if i could change it i would but seeing as how i couldn't i would do my best to pretend she didn't exist, to ignore her and cut her out of my life, she did the best to hold her shit together but i could see the tears coming, she didn't say a thing and i turned and walked off, walked into my room and began punching holes in the wall out of frustration and anger, i then proceeded to not say a word to her until i went back to school, years later i realize how much those words hurt, years later i came to understand that as a parent those are the last things you want your child to say to you, at the time i didn't care, she had torn our family apart and i wanted her to suffer, i wanted her to feel as fucking sad and heartbroken as i was, i wanted her to feel the pain i saw on my father's face...

One night my dad and i and two friends were sitting at the kitchen table drinking, my father rarely drank and through all this did his best to remain a model of civility, lobbied for me to keep up a relationship with my mother, but my old man looked sad, was questioning everything that had happened in his life in the past 26 plus years, my parents took turns using the common areas of the house, other than that it was damn near the War of the Roses as far as territory went, so on this night he was home and my friends and i never made it out, we sat at the kitchen table drinking and talking and laughing, it was good to see my dad laugh and smile and tell stories, it was good to hear him chuckle at the fucked-up shit we'd get into, my friends had nothing but respect for my old man cuz he treated us like adults even when we did our damnedest to prove him wrong, needless to say the hours slipped by and my mom came home and she walked in and smiled and said what's going on and my father looked at her and said, "i'm having a fucking drink with my son and his friends is that alright with you?", it was the only time my i ever saw my dad get shitty, my mother immediately went stone faced and rushed to her room, my father excused himself and went to the bathroom, my friends sat there slightly stunned not knowing what to say, i got up and took my dad's drink to the sink and dumped some out, added some water and set it back down, he came out of the bathroom and looked us all right in the eye, he said "i'm sorry about that guys, i was completely in the wrong and let the booze get the best of me and it shouldn't have happened, i'll try to apologize to her tomorrow but i feel bad you guys had to see that", my friends, of course were like don't sweat it Mr. M. shit happens and stood up to leave and shake his hand, my father took his drink and dumped it out and walked slowly to his room...

These are my snapshots from that war, they're not pretty but back then things weren't pretty, it was fucked up and confusing and though i try to remember something good from that period i'm at a loss, i think we all did things we weren't proud of, wished we would've handled things better but when you're that close to it it's hard to see but as time passes you learn to deal with your mistakes, admit when you made them and try to heal the wounds that you inflicted and with any luck repair some of the damage done.