thirteen-year-old, couldn’t recall a time when his dad didn’t drink.
He knew they resented him, but he was a good husband and
father—wasn’t he? They lived in a nice neighborhood in a big house and
the oldest had her own new car. Unlike his own childhood, where he
grew up in a rundown house in a rundown neighborhood, his children
would never know what it was like to take public transportation to
school; to wear the same clothes two or three days in a row; to be called
poor and made fun of because their shoes were holey and their toes stuck
out of the end. And unlike his own father, he didn’t hit his wife and he
had never once spanked his children. His wife handled the disciplining
so they could never grow up to tell stories of how any scar came at the
hands of their father. He was a good dad, he reasoned. How could they
resent him?
He frequently felt if he could just die, could just disappear, he
would do them all a favor. His wife could remarry to a nice, handsome
non-alcoholic who would always put her needs first above his own selfish
wants. The children would have a true chance at becoming successful and
being someone if he was out of their life permanently. However, since
he grew up Catholic and still believed in God and the church’s teachings
to a certain extent, suicide wasn’t an option. And so into the early hours
of the morning when only the moon and he were awake, he would pour
himself double whiskeys and wait.
It was in these moonlit hours, in the somber solitude of night,
that he frequently thought of his father; he always had a drink or two for
him, also. After all, it was his father who taught him how to be a man.
It was his father who, during his twenty-four years of sobriety, promised
him that one day, he would make his son proud and stop drinking, too.
And honestly, if a man can’t keep a simple promise to his only son, well
then he really isn’t a man, is he?
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