"The Fog of Perpetual Intoxication" Submission #15

"If you're going to be my wife," Mom claimed Jack said, "you're going to drink with me!"

If that's how it went down, mom apparently didn't put up much of a fuss. In fact, she seemed to thoroughly enjoy drinking. I never figured out how Jack had a power over her that Dad never did. All I know is that mom's alcohol consumption went from zero to sixty in a very short period of time. The booze flowed like a river.

It started with beer and transitioned to vodka and orange juice and finally to vodka and water. If someone is pounding vodka and water from morning until night, they ain't doing it because it is a wonderful experience for their taste buds... it is a means to an end... it was a pathway to being black-out drunk.

Mom and Jack drank every single day, without fail. They maintained somewhat of a limit on the weekdays because they tended bar at night. Jack also worked the swing shift at Firestone in Des Moines but for some reason, he seemed to frequently be off of work for long periods of time. Union strike?  Disability? I don't recall but he was off more than he was on.

But even that moderation fell by the wayside eventually.

The weekends, particularly Sundays, when the bar was closed, Mom and Jack would get utterly blitzed. Mixed drinks for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between. The drinking ceased when they finally passed out. Not before.

One Sunday afternoon, I walked into the house after playing some touch football in the neighborhood. As I got to the door, the first thing I noticed was that Jack's Buick Electra was not in its regular spot on the North side of the house, along 21st Street.. Odd.

"They must be gone." I thought.

I walked into the darkened living room, shades all pulled down. I found my mom on the couch... crying. I turned on the light and looked at her. She looked a mess. Her hair was noticeably disheveled but worse was the very swollen, bleeding lip.

"What happened to you?" I asked, my voice shaking. I was pretty sure I knew the answer and Mom confirmed it.

"He didn't mean it. He didn't mean to hurt me." She cried, her speech slurred from injury and extreme intoxication.

She continued. "It was my fault. I should have just kept my mouth shut and this wouldn't have happened."

Well, there was no doubt... my mom was expert at pushing people's buttons and egging them on. However, there was and is no excuse for a man to strike a woman... ever!

Thinking now about that first time that I saw my mom, wounded from physical abuse, it makes me angry. In fact I seethe as I type this. But rage was not the primary emotion I felt at that moment. As a 12-year-old, insecure, misguided preteen... I was scared... shaking.

Apparently, I lacked the machismo to seek retaliation for beating up my mom. I just didn't want him to do it ever again. Remember... from the moment my real father died, I feared my mom would die too and this event just gave me yet another way in which that might come to pass.

I hoped that my mom was right... that he "didn't mean it." Unfortunately, this was only the first physical beating of many. In one of their fights at the bar, Jack hit her so hard that she flew off the bar-stool, unconscious on the floor, near the jukebox. Stitches and an ambulance ride were Mom's prizes for that little scuffle.

The beat-down was witnessed by all the regulars. Did they just stand by as this all happened? I don't know the answer to that question but I do know that as time went on, Jack's bar lost most of their regular clientele. Who could blame them?

Their passion was on display every day... their passionate love one day, their passionate violence the next day. An odd cocktail of unbridled affection followed by violent aggression.

It was at this point in time that I began literally hating my life in Iowa. Until then, things hadn't been so bad since our big move but that all changed about six months into Mom and Jack's marriage.

I began to absolutely dread weekends. When my friends would rejoice at the final school bell on Fridays, I would start to feel that dread in my stomach and a trembling in my legs. I wanted to go to school seven days a week... not for love of school but for fear of the events that I knew would take place... like clock-work... at home.

Can you imagine a kid hating the weekends? It's just not right.

Let me park here for a minute.

This was the start to the darkest period in my life. Worse than the death of my own father, which was horrible enough. I'm not being dramatic; I'm being real.

I was 12 years old. I was not equipped to process what I saw and experienced. No child should EVER be put through this.


Not only did the alcoholism of my mom and step-dad result in weekly, horrible arguments, not to mention regular hand to hand combat... the fog of perpetual intoxication rendered them clueless to what was happening in my life. They didn't know where I was or what I was doing... ever. They didn't know what I was feeling. They never attended my sporting events. They never attended parent/teacher conferences. My mom never washed my clothes, let alone buy me new clothes. They lost total track of me and utterly surrendered their obligation to parent their minor children.

This was the ruination of my childhood. This was the cause of unspeakable anger, hurt and bitterness. It changed me... and not for the better.

But God is the giver of grace.


"Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the LORD upholdeth him with his hand."
Psalm 37:24

Where would I go? Whom would I seek?