Forget About It

finding the door to the house of love

I am published!

My personal essay, Forget About It, has been included in a collection of essays and poems about substance abuse and alcoholism entitled SUBSTANCE, Vol. 7 Spring 2024, produced by The Project for Recovery and Community Health (PERCH) and published by Yale University Press.

Prologue:

In 1986, back in the dark ages of the my early days of recovery, I had a sit-down with my sixty-year old father with the intention of making amends to him for any damage or harm I had caused him during my drinking years. The amends process was an important part of my recovery program, proof that I was willing to take responsibility for the damage done as a drunk, and I was eager to move forward on my sober path.

I had given a lot of thought to my behavior before our meeting and made a list of talking points, but, honestly, I wasn’t exactly sure how I had harmed my dad. Didn’t he harm me, not the other way around? He drank. He could drink a lot. I can tell you some stories.

Notes in hand we sat down together at the dining room table at my folks’ condo and within minutes I went off script and accused by dad of having never supported me or encouraged me to amount to anything in my life. Whoa! I called him a bastard. Yikes! We were both crying. It was a frigging disaster.

I reflect back to that fiasco almost forty years ago and realize that it was a big deal, a significant turning point from which we could build a more honest and trusting relationship. We entered the house of love. In spite of everything.

Forget About It

When you answer the knock at your door and open it to find your old father standing there with a latte in his hand, hunched and grinning his big long- toothed grin, asking to come in for a quick visit, explaining he can only stay for a minute – just invite him in.

Forget about the damage done.

Forget about that one time, so long ago, while sitting next to him at the kitchen table after your mom had gone upstairs to put the baby to bed and your sisters had left the table and headed out to the living room to jump up and down on the new sectional sofa and it was your turn to do the dishes and the table was littered with the dirty dinner plates and silverware, red ketchup drips, scattered salt and spilt milk.

Forget about how wonderful it was to have your father there next to you, yours all yours, for one second.

Forget that he was drunk.

Forget that you told him something really important, something that meant a lot to you, a tender girl of twelve.  You can’t even remember what you told him,  it was so long ago, but the moment was so sweet and rare, just you and your dad.

Forget how he pulled his horn-rimmed glasses off of his handsome face and gave you his version of a just-for-you-only look, leaned towards you and said “Whatever your heart desires.”

Forget that you knew immediately that your father was full of crap and that you would end up remembering that moment for the rest of your life because it hurt so much to see that your dad was full of shit and you couldn’t pretend otherwise anymore.

Forget that, as much as you really wanted to believe him, especially because he was saying it, you knew that he was lying. People don’t get to have whatever their heart desires.

You don’t get to have a father who doesn’t drink. You don’t get to have a dad who says normal things like, “You are my girl!  Gee!  That’s super! or “Yeah, honey!  I’m on your side.”  No.  You get to have a dad who says shit like, “Whatever your heart desires!”

Just forget about it as you sit down at your kitchen table and your dad for some reason between sips of latte starts to talk about the death of his father seventy years ago, how his father had a massive heart attack at forty-three and died, how the old man sitting at your table now went to pieces as a seventeen year old, and refused to go the funeral because he was so torn up, even though he was expected to go, because he was the oldest son, the strong one, the golden boy on whom all hopes were pinned.

Try to forget all of it as your dad sets down his latte on your kitchen table and starts to cry, the huge tears rolling down his wrinkled face and catching in his snow-white whiskers.

Forget about it as he continues on and shares how a kind, high school counselor called Mrs. B saw him go downhill, noticed his truancy, his drunkenness, his failing grades, his wild-ass behavior, the only one to see how crushed he was and suggest a possible solution, like maybe graduate high school early, enter college, maybe up in Washington state where his aunt and uncle lived.

Just forget it!

And as your dad with his sad blue eyes full of tears reaches out and takes your hand and out of nowhere hot tears start up in your eyes, and he goes on to tell you how he did move to Washington state and lived there with his aunt and uncle for a time before starting college and how the three of them would get shit-faced every night unable to tell up from down in their alcohol induced oblivion.

Forget all of it.

Forget the neglect, how nobody paid any attention to you, the fair-haired daughter, the bright girl so full of energy and promise.

Forget about the sea of alcohol that washed you overboard.

Forget about the drinking in college, alone in the dorm room at night with a case of Bud and a pack of Marlboros, sitting and staring out the window into the blackness, wanting to die. 

Forget the shattering hangovers that crippled you each morning as you boarded the city bus to your first real downtown job wearing the same black sweater day after day after day after day.

Forget the hideous men, the bewilderment, the darkness, the disillusionment, the hopelessness. 

Just forget about it.

Just forget about every damn thing because, suddenly, it’s all plain as day that you and your dad are exactly the same and that neither of you ever got what your heart desired. 

Until now.

And as you feel the choking anger in your throat release its wretched grip, and your father, still holding onto your hand, gets up to leave and you stop him and look into his tear-filled eyes through your tear-filled eyes and you feel the wretchedness of what was, give way to the truth of what is, remember everything.

And forgive it all.