A Writers Tale 5

Where would you expect a child’s responsibility for their parents to stop? Would it be making sure a parent eats? Making sure a parent takes medication? How about getting a parent to a doctors appointment? Kind of a turn around from what they would be expected to do for us isn’t it? For some of us it’s a reality. We do take care of our parents when they get older. We don’t always have the same patience that it seemed they had for us when we were little, but we do it. In the back of the mind there is always that thought. We want them to have a good end. We don’t want them to leave life saying “I regret.”
Now you tell me, where does a thirteen year old’s responsibilities stop? Would it be the same place? Making sure a parent eats, sleeps, takes medication, gets to the doctors appointment? What about talking to the doctor? Convincing them they are not listening to what is really happening? What happens when a parent turns manipulative, and ceases to think of what the child needs, but only of what they want to ease their own suffering?
My father was a good man. He took care of the family by going to work, providing what was needed. I don’t think I ever heard him complain. In the back of my mind I can still hear him, the way he sounded when he walked and talked. I knew that by thirteen my mother and father did not have the most romantic of relationships. It seemed to have faded into a polite partnership. My father was still a good man.
Then one day my father couldn’t work anymore. One night I remember seeing him throwing up blood in the garage as my mother took him to the hospital. It was very scary. He had to stop working. This undoubtedly made him feel useless, doing nothing but sitting at the house, not providing like he was used to. I understand this feeling quite well now. There is nothing worse than being useless to me. I think this caused more of a problem than the physical problems did. My mother went to work. I became a surrogate. I would come home and have to offer my father either his drugs, or his alcohol.
I remember going to the doctor with him. He already had drugs he was taking. In his mind he was in pain and he needed more. He was caught up in a terrible cycle. He told the doctor all the things the doctor needed to hear to give him what he wanted. Then I stepped in.
This doctor was probably a good man too. He was about forty, obviously experienced, and though I didn’t know it at the time, being Indian, had a cultural conflict with me being there, stepping in. I told him everything my father was already taking and asked why he needed these new drugs if he already had the old ones. The doctor didn’t listen to me, didn’t answer me, and stared at me as if I was what I really was, a thirteen year old girl child. My father seized on this and told me to be quiet. At this point was where I gave up. I could do nothing right. Forget it, you can do it on your own. We got home and I immediately vanished.
From this point on, month after month, my world grew a bit smaller every day. At a point in life where my life should have been expanding, I began to close in. By fourteen I knew every single part of every hill and pathway in Monrovia Nursery and even behind that into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. My father made shows of trying to commit suicide several times. He was desperate.
I have trouble at this point recalling friendships, relationships, likes, dislikes, wants, needs, anything except vanishing after school into the hills. The smell of green growing plants, warm sun, birds, juicy oranges and lemons off the trees, and splitting pecan after pecan right out of the shell. My world was my mind. The winter I was fourteen was not peaceful, but I don’t remember it particularly. I do remember writing. I began creating characters for stories. My favorite beyond them all was a tall, green eyed magical woman called simply the Sorceress. The Sorceress was originally a Unicorn. She had been created first, before any other and her mission was simple. She was to take care of all who came after her. She was the Protectress. She had amazing abilities. She could climb any mountain no matter how treacherous, she could call lightning and control storms. She could convince plants to grow at amazing rates. She connected with living things in a supernatural way. She knew of any single thing that was out of place or wrong within her world.
I wished I could be like that.