Get Over It!: Amen
Time: Thanksgiving 2003,4 or 5?
I don’t recall if it was before or directly at or just following the word “Amen” . And too, I don’t recall if I felt the rollercoaster slide in my stomach before or after the prayer’s end, only a sudden prickly fear and anxiety as my heart pounded inexplicably as I flinched at “Amen“.
It wasn’t a big flinch. I didn’t knock over a glass or drop my silverware as my heart thumped loudly in my ears and I felt afraid?
Yes.
Anxious? Yes
Perplexed too because there was something, something about holding hands at a dinner table and saying “Amen” that terrified me. Odder still, I was only afraid for my left hand. I wasn’t feeling at all protective for my right hand, only the left- but why?
It happened again and again anytime there was dinner +holding hands for grace = I’m terrified and want to flee, run. My heart would start racing, still does a bit and I had no idea why.
I don’t remember when I why I favored wearing rings on my left hand, my sister favoring rings on her right hand. Amnesia took all that away until one Thanksgiving dinner started to bring it back again upon the word “Amen”. In the interim and for years after I wondered why? why holding hands for grace scare(d/s) me?
Because one night my parents went to dinner at another couple’s home.
I know - sounds innocuous enough doesn’t it?
I’d quote my father but I can’t remember the whole schpiel and a schpiel it a was. We didn’t see it coming, my mother didn’t see it coming and even when she saw it, she wouldn’t.
So not an exact quote but damn close.
“We were at the -----’s and they have-” a custom, a practice. The intonation in his voice implied, stated even that this would be a pleasant, nice thing that my parents had experienced outside the home and wanted to bring into it and to the dinner table. This of course was a lie and his favorite kind.
At this couple’s house they’d recently dined at the practice was undoubtedly a nice thing, sometimes even probably filled with genuine warmth “they hold hands when they say grace”.
No one disagreed, no one protested, mother even looked pleased for her husband generally seemed to like making the girls cry at dinner and here he was introducing something pleasant. My sister and I each gave one parent a hand and at “Amen” we yelped for our father had crushed our hands. My sister and I both were in pain, one or both saying that “That hurt!”
“It’s love squeeze,” the lead asshole in charge said and would come to say with his blood shot eyes dancing, grinning for this was new game to play every night.
For the first weeks we protested that it hurt, that he was hurting us. We looked to our mother and she averted my eyes for sure and gradually grew blinder in the haughty countenance that was at times particular to her wherein if there were a cartoon bubble of thought above her head it would have read “I’m the good parent”.
My sister and I would shake out our hands to get the blood running again because he’d squeeze, grinding the bones together and sometimes he wouldn‘t let go for the longest time.
Even years later when we both had rings to wear to protect our hands a bit he’d still crush our hands. I remember seeing the imprint of a ring carved into his hand, it was that important to hurt us: he’d leave a brief mark on his own skin just to get that in. He did that every meal we ate at that table forward - except for holidays and when company would visit.
He had this look, amused malevolence for he truly enjoyed hurting people and two little girls are easy targets. Being a coward he only went for easy targets.
So every night he could he took our hands and hurt them as best he could for fear of jail and all that entailed tended to make him careful and mindful in his abuses. After about four or five years I decided along with my sister that we weren’t eating at the dinner table anymore. In response the parental units got together and decided, announced, that they’d be getting a chain and a lock for the refrigerator because
“If you don’t eat with us -you don’t eat!” he yelled and our mother agreed.
The locking up of food never happened as I countered that they’d have to get locks for all the cupboards as well, the deep freeze and how would they be explaining that? For instance how would Mom be explaining that to her gourmet club ladies who lunched at each other’s houses? What would happen when relatives visited from out of town - how would they be explaining this?
“John likes to hurt the girls hands before dinner and the girls weren’t gong to let him anymore so we locked up the food so as to force them to sit at the dinner table”- would’ve raised an eyebrow with even the asshole’s mother.
What further threats were mete/d out I don’t know but my sister and I returned to the dinner table and he never stopped crushing our hands.
I don’t know where he is now though I know I long kept a red dress in my closet for news of the occasion of his death.
I still have to remind myself, give myself little a pep prepare to be brave talk before prayers at such hand holding tables and I know at that my father would sit pleased and proud of himself. Pleased he’d conditioned such a strong response that not even amnesia could take it away.
People talk about forgiveness and some about forget-ness but its not about either. What it is about is as long as my body still remembers I’m still paying what was always his tab.
That was his one and only recipe and it wouldn’t be fair to talk so much of Martha’s recipes without mentioning what her spouse brought to the table.
