Our father was supposed to be the head of the family. After all, he was God's chosen representative.
Everything he said was right. He could never be wrong, by definition. If he was with us, nothing bad could ever befall us. When he was in the car, we could never have a car accident,
He was the father of all fathers. His own father had never spent much time teaching, or disciplining him, and so he wanted to not be so neglectful in bringing up any of his own children,"Spare the rod, and spoil the child," was his often quoted favourite verse in his well worn, well pencilled over, and very well read bible.
It was a bright sunny afternoon, my mum had gone away for the weekend to visit her own mother, in 'ushago'.This was a good four hours drive away from where we lived. She had left me home with my Dad. There was only him and me. I hated being alone with him, he didn't cook anything. Mum had pre-cooked all of the meals for the whole weekend for the both of us, and so all I had to do was to heat them up for the old boy, at meal times for him, and for me also, of course.
Even that seemed to be far too much for me to have to do though.Why should I have to do this for this bully and tyrant, whose favourite nickname for me was, "Hitler?".After all, he always described me as,"having a mind of a jelly, without any perception like an ant," too put it politely.
He had other nick names for me too, of course, and perhaps his favourite one was, "the toothless terror."This was because of the fact that I had lost some of my front teeth early on in my life.I also wonder how.
Anyway, on this sunny Sunday morning, the old man had gone off to church, as these goody too shoes type of people like to do. After all, he was a, "Christian," wasn't he?Never mattered that he punched his kids, twisted his wife's arm up her back, dislocating her shoulders many times.
He was a, "Christian."
He was the boss, the head of the house, God's representative here, doing God's work for him.
It was his job to belt the devil out of us all, his wife included.That Sunday morning, I had decided that enough was enough. I didn't want to stay in that horrible house for even one minute longer.
For some reason, I told him upfront that i wanted to leave.He looked at me, and he saw that I had been serious. He could perhaps see the frightening spectre of fear that was still in my eyes, or maybe it was from the tears. He had never noticed my tears before though, so I am still unsure as to what exactly it was that stopped him from thrushing me on that particular day.He never did belt me for this utterance, and for the first time in my life, he gave me a hug. Mind you though, he has never hugged me again since that day, and I am approaching sixty now. I guess once was enough. His true character, more or less, returned into hiding again after that, as did mine.
But I loved him all the same.
0 comments:
Post a Comment