I remember once, when Avery was about eight, I was standing with him at the door of his closet. I was trying to make him do something. I think it was about getting ready to go somewhere or possibly about picking up. I never seem to be able to get the details straight because so many memories are similar that they intrude on each other. I just know that he was not listening to me, at all. I was bending over, holding him by the shoulders, speaking as earnestly as I could, and he would not listen. It’s not like he was arguing; he wasn’t even bothering to let my words into his ears.

I remember feeling frazzled, pressured, and impatient. Whatever I was trying to get him to do, I felt like I would be in trouble if he didn’t do it. So, in an effort to get his attention, since speaking face to face wasn’t working, I slapped him. He slapped me right back. It was one of the biggest shocks I have ever had. I would never have had the gall to slap an “authority” at his age, no matter how unjust they were being. No matter whether they had slapped me too.

I was so shocked, and offended, that I slapped him again. I don’t remember if he got in a second slap, I imagine he did. By that time I came to my senses. I apologized immediately. Being slapped by him was one of the most humiliating things that has ever happened to me, because I very much deserved it. I knew that he was in the right, defending himself against my anger. I don’t think I really got his attention, but he definitely got mine.

I remember the first time Dad admitted to me that he and Mom were having problems. I was 18 and we went on a walk around our extensive, six and half mile, country block. He walked and jogged and I was on my bike. I said almost nothing because the information he was giving me was so much to take in.

I was grateful, at first, that he was being honest. Finally, I was being given the respect and decency of knowing the truth about the situation I was forced to live under. I was also terrified. My entire world felt like it was crumbling around my ears. What he said was not very surprising on the one hand because it fit my reality a lot better than the basically good marriage I believed existed. On the other hand, I had honestly believed my parents were doing pretty well, and our family was overall normally healthy.

Since the conversation encompassed all six and a half miles, I’m guessing it lasted between one and half and two hours. He went all the way back to when he and Mom were dating and told me what seemed like everything. He told me he should have realized when they were dating that he shouldn’t have married Mom, and told me their marriage got worse as soon as Julia was born. He told me that their sex life was never good. He told me so much that I am having to censor it here.

I just tried to process it all. I was honored that he was sharing with me, and thought that maybe this meant he would let me help him.

I felt confused, trying to figure out where the truth met between the dire story he was telling me and the face that he and Mom put on to us kids and the world. I wished the block wasn’t so big, so the conversation would end. By the time we were almost home, I felt so sad for him and Mom.

It made me really uncomfortable that he talked about their sex life. I also wondered if he really didn’t realize that his confiding in me about his unfulfilling and disappointing sex life made me feel like I was supposed to offer him sex. I knew, at least I was almost sure, that he would be horrified by this suggestion. But, on the other hand, I felt like he should have known that it would make me feel like that.

This was the first time that we had this ‘conversation’ of him listing all Mom’s faults (largely sexual in nature) and the ways he had been wronged in their marriage. He technically admitted to having some faults as a husband; but, while Mom’s faults were shared in specific detail, I never figured out what he thought his were.

At first, I tried to give him counsel. I wracked my brain for the right thing to say that would save him and Mom both. After hearing his exact same story with all the lurid details too many times to count and realizing that he didn’t want and wouldn’t receive anything from me on the subject, I refused to listen to it. At the time, I didn’t realize that what I was experiencing was verbal sexual abuse.

Sometimes, he changed it up a little by interjecting into his saga of marital abuse, strong advice about how I should and should not treat my future husband. He would use Mom’s actions against him as examples of how I should never treat my husband. I wish I could say that I didn’t take any of this skewed situational advice to heart, but I did. I still find it cropping up sometimes in how I think about myself as Jon’s wife.

One night, he took me out to eat and started talking about Mom again. I told him that I was unwilling to listen anymore and we needed to talk about something else. He tried to say a few more things about her, but I politely and firmly cut him off. I could barely eat, my stomach was so tense. Once he realized that I really wouldn’t listen to him talk about Mom he had nothing more to say and we ate our entire meal in silence.

That meal marks the point for me when Dad and I stopped talking. Once I didn’t allow him to talk about Mom, he basically stopped talking to me altogether. The few times that we have had private conversations since then he has mostly talked about his current girlfriend or again, Mom’s failings.

Only within the last few years have I learned the technical term for the kind of relationship I was taught that God wanted me to have with my Dad: Emotional Incest. Where his emotional needs would be met by his children.

I remember when Mom would tell Gracie, “Go do something with your hair. It looks like a mop.” Every. Single. Day.