Article July 25, 2011 Issue

Relationships renewed by Love

Name withheld

Before I reached the age of three, all of the significant men in my young life had passed on: my father, my maternal grandfather, and my paternal grandfather. My mother told me I was so bereft that when taking the car ferry across the Mackinac Straits in northern Michigan, before the bridge was built, I would go up to kind-looking men who happened to sit or stand by us and ask in my little three-year-old voice, “Would you be my daddy?” This caused my mother and grandmother a good deal of embarrassment and I am sure no little pain.

Just after I turned five, my mother was to marry a man she met while finishing her college degree. I was to be the flower girl in the wedding. You can imagine how excited I was to have a real daddy coming to live with us! Unfortunately, shortly after our new family group settled in, the unhappy, false nature of this man began to surface. Sarcasm and acrimony swirled around me, and abuse of many kinds centered on me. 

To the outside world, we had a life to envy: a beautiful home and a cottage on a lake, exciting vacations, a large circle of friends, lovely clothes, and many things to enjoy. But family relations inside were so difficult and volatile growing up that I literally fled to college, taking everything I owned and could carry with me.