My kids are fascinated by the flamboyancy of my childhood home. The bright blue house at the corner of Grisley Street in Avonlea has always been something that people talk about, especially when encountering it for the first time. How the gate ended up a bright shade of yellow is something my 45 year old parents laugh about and never really get round to explaining. For the six year old twins, the ever fresh green grass; the burnt red bricks lining the wall and the rainbow array of flowerpots and the white garden chairs are a part of this intriguing display of buoyancy. And the external is really minimalist, not in the ordinary sense of the word, but just relative to the interior which is pretty intense. I mean even for someone like me that spent over fifteen years of my life there.
It’s a Friday and I am dropping the twins off at my parents’ house because I have a work trip to Namibia this evening. Emma can’t hold herself and screams for me to slow down so she can jump out and walk up the driveway and experience the views. I guess that’s what it is because she doesn’t really tell me why she needs to jump out but from the look of things; she’s just determined to catwalk the rest of the way to her grandmother’s front door. I laugh, and turn to Ethan because normally he’d be running after his sister and they’ll be competing to name some of the fruit trees and plants scattered across the large garden area. He is unusually quiet, almost teary-eyed. I auto skip from that colorful expression at my little girl’s modeling escapade to a terrified stare at my handsome little boy and ask him why he looks so sad. His words stab me, and I can’t hold back the tears. By this time his eyes have turned a blood shot red and every effort to stifle the tears leaves him shaking uncontrollably. I don’t think twice before I whisper that I believe him, and that he doesn’t have to be scared anymore because mummy is not going to leave him here today, or any other day until that monster is dealt with.
He is unusually quiet, almost teary-eyed. I quickly jump from that colorful expression at my little girl’s modelling escapade into to a terrified stare at my handsome little boy and ask him why he looks so sad. His words stab me, and I can’t hold back the tears.
I am angry at myself for not paying enough attention to my little boy when he tried to show me that he was emotionally hurt, physically violated and psychologically traumatized. He says he tried telling me. I know he did. What hurts the most is that I vividly remember that the last two visits my boy wasn’t too happy to go to my parent’s house. When they came back he wasn’t as enthusiast in narrating their experiences there as Emma was. I guess Emma spoke so bubbly for both of them I just assumed that Ethan felt like letting her do the narration. I am pissed off at myself because I have been so engulfed in my job that I haven’t bathed my own kids in three months. I guess I got too used to Bella taking over most of the chores because of my crazy work schedules. I am pissed off because I let my job come above my kids and it has hurt them in a way that they may never completely heal from. I am fuming because in the same way that my flamboyant parents’ house had been to my entire childhood a dark, scary, abusive and unhappy hole, I had allowed my son to be a victim of sexual violation. He is only six years old.
When they came back he wasn’t as enthusiast in narrating their experiences there as Emma was. I guess Emma spoke so bubbly for both of them I just assumed that Ethan felt like letting her do the narration.
I am a terrible mother, just like my mother always said I would be because of my arrogance and stubborn tendency to think of no one but myself. My own mother, the woman that everyone associated the colorful spirit of my childhood home with told me that I would never amount to a good mother. It never occurred to her that the man she married was a monster and changed me from a very expressive little girl to a scared little rat that preferred to be on her own, studying away the pain. I mean not anymore. When I moved out of our home at age sixteen my mother called me everything including that I was a slut and that I would come back to her begging for her to take me back in. I was young, abused, scared and unsure of what tomorrow looked like but I was done allowing my own father to hurt me. And just as she had predicted, I came to her begging for her to mind my kids on weekends and days when Bella was off and I had work engagements. I came back because my dad had changed. He was an active elder in a local church and had apologized to me for taking away from me something that I could never get back. I am angry because I had fixated my hurt on my dad so much that I never thought that my own mother too was a monster. That she would violate my son. I am pissed off because I have taken away from my kids a chance to grow up with their mother while I serve jail time for nearly scalding my mother to her death.
When I moved out of our home at age sixteen my mother called me everything including that I was a slut and that I will come back to her begging for her to take me back in. I was young, abused, scared and unsure of what tomorrow looked like but I was done allowing my own father to hurt me.
You see I grew up in a colorful home, and that’s just about the only thing that had colour in my childhood. The rest, it was a dark hole!!!
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