ONLY THE NAMES ARE CHANGED

Abandoned on the Sidelines

Memoirs 6 — Absent father and narcissistic mother

My mother was well into her second pregnancy and, as with the first, her health was an issue. Pregnancy didn’t agree with her physical or mental well-being. Yet, the appearance of Dad back into the house did animate her and she did her best to please my father in every way that she could, given the tight quarters and the general lack of privacy.

My mother was learning all she had to do was to praise and stroke Dad’s ego if she was to keep his attention, and keep his fidelity. Sex was the key and sex was the answer. ‘Give him what he wants and when he wants it and then give more,’ was her strategy.

The more she gave him, the more he gave her in return, even if it was only physical. And in the process, she discovered she needed the sex as much as he did. It was the act sex which made her feel loved, needed, and worshiped.

I passed my first birthday with our family together. My father was almost back to full strength with his arm, and he had returned to helping his father on the latest construction site. The talk of returning to work on the ranch somehow had lost its intensity as the summer months passed.

In August, Dad finally found out Mom was due to deliver the baby in December. He also knew pregnancies generally lasted nine months. Something didn’t fit in the picture. He had noticed Mom wasn’t as big as she was the last time when nearing time for delivery.

By his calculations, assuming she got pregnant no later than the first week of January before he left, she should be having the baby in September, or at the latest, in early October. December wasn’t remotely possible.

“Bev, when did you say the baby was due?”

“The doctor said, sometime in early December.”

“That can’t be right. Perhaps you need to see a different doctor.”

“It’s right, Lou, the doctor is right.”

“If it’s true then I’m not the father! What the fuck is going on? Who is the father, Bev?

My mother had been expecting this scene was going to happen and that it would be bad. For my father, the story he was told about non-consensual sex — rape— hardly registered. What he heard was she had sex with another man, and had conceived a child with him.

Rightly or wrongly, for the truth has a way of hiding in decades of denial that had been taken to their graves, his older brother had been cast as the villain. My father refused to touch my mother once he learned of her betrayal.

As my father learned of her becoming pregnant with another man’s child, other things were happening in the world outside of the family. The news of the Canadian army recruiting soldiers because of the likelihood of war in Korea began to fill the newspapers and radio newscasts.

At the end of August, 1950, my father enlisted. He needed to escape and get away from both his wife and family.

The uniform changed things in the family. Seeing Lou in a soldier’s uniform shifted the mood of the family back into a positive space. Once again, my father was seen as a hero.

With basic training completed, he took some further training as a bombardier. He wanted to work the big guns.

My father left us once again. I was one year old and I wouldn’t see him for a year, a long time in the early formative years of a child. Having already be separated for almost six months during my first year of life, the bonding of father and son was minimal. And that, would have its psychological cost for both of us in the years to follow.

In November, 1950, my father left Canada en route to Japan and then to South Korea for a final round of training before his unit would engage in action.

On December 6th, 1950, my brother D was born. My father was wounded in Korea early in his time in the field, one of the first Canadians to be injured. Wounded, he spent time in Japan at a hospital during his recovery before being returned home to Canada in August, 1951.

The event of his reunion with my mother, my baby brother, and myself was captured in a photo published in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper. Though he was back in Canada, he remained a member of the Armed Forces until 1953 when he was honourably discharged.

In July, 1954, my first sister was born. My first vivid memories come about a few days before my sister’s birth, just weeks before my birthday.

My parents had driven from the city to visit my Uncle K and Aunt L who had children of their own younger than I was. My aunt and uncle lived in the countryside. At the end of the visit, while I was being distracted by “ma Tante,” my parents drove off.

I was not old enough to realise that I was staying with my aunt and uncle while my mother was going to the hospital to have a baby. I stood in front of the house crying in panic at being abandoned as the car drove off.

My parents had left and I panicked. Why? What had I done to make them want to leave me?

Next

Previously

Carrie, Block Wife, Benighted, Britt H., Benjamin Workman, Robert, James Grigg, Diana Meresc, Ridge, Margie Willis, Adrian CDTPPW, Luis Rosa, Patrick OConnell, Maddy Mirza, Jorden House-Hay, and Adrienne Beaumont