Memories of an alcoholic father (not mine):
She was Daddy's little girl. She was riding in the car with him late at night, on the way to meet the rest of the family. She was dozing, and he must have thought she was asleep, but she kept sort of waking up, because she was cold, and finally she realized it was because he kept rolling his window down and back up. So she looked at him, and saw that he was quickly chugging mini bottles of booze (those nips thingies) and then chucking the empties out the window. He looked over and saw her watching and said, "Don't tell your mother about this." She doesn't think she ever has.
(He stopped drinking a few years later. He's sort of started trying to make up for lost time, and he's a much better father now.)
Other things I know:
He was a medic during the Vietnam War. His best friend died in the war. His daughter once interview him about Vietnam for a school project (why oh why do teachers insist on making students do that sort of thing?), and he told her about the landscape, and what they ate, and that sort of thing, but nothing about the
war. (Well, fair enough--seriously, teachers, CUT IT OUT.)
Another friend died when he was young, maybe 12 years old. A few kids were playing up on a nearby mountain, where all the kids from the neighborhood played a lot. (Another time they saw a flasher, and after that they always vaguely hoped they'd see him again--I'm pretty sure they never mentioned him to their parents.) They were near the edge of a drop-off, a quarry or something. And the boy said something like, "I'm going to kick this rock off the edge even if it kills me." And then he fell off, and he died. He was an only child. I think his parents ended up getting divorced, eventually.
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His father, my grandfather, kept a packed suitcase under his bed. Whenever he and my grandmother would fight (I think she yelled at him a lot, because my uncle once told my aunt, his youngest sister, that she behaves just like their mother did, and oh boy does my aunt yell at my uncle a lot), he'd threaten to go upstairs and get the suitcase and leave. He never did, of course, but it always terrified my mother. My mom was a very nervous child. It's so weird, because that's not at all how I remember or think about my grandparents. Of course. Grandparent-grandchild relationships are totally different from parent-child relationships.
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My father once told me that the only good memories he had of his father were when his father defended him from his mother. (I don't have many memories of my grandfather, although I know he had a hard life. I know he was very smart, but never had a chance to go to school. He was missing a few fingers on one hand from the first or second knuckle, because he was a mechanic in the army--Korean war--and he was working on the engine of a boat and it started and bam, no more fingers. I was always a little scared of him, but he loved my little sister and she loved him. My mom was a little relieved when he died, because he used the N-word, and she wasn't sure how she was going to deal with that when I was old enough to understand. She was kind of scared of him too.) I love my grandmother, but it's true that she's maybe not so nice to my dad. She's probably a little nicer to my uncle, my dad's younger brother. She loves my mom, though, and my mom loves her. (A neighbor said to my mom, of my mom and my sister and me, "You're her favorites. She has names for the rest of them, but she loves you." Well, sucks to be the rest of them, but pretty funny if you're us.)
