No, it just can’t be that way – I wish it wasn’t. If I could go into a time machine, I’d jump back to 1967 and be that 10-year old girl again before my innocence was so cruelly taken away from me…I’d fight back before the battle even began instead of enduring the pain and struggle, the denial, the guilt, fear…
One part of me remains stuck in that time period – sometimes I still am that precocious little girl running around the streets of San Francisco in that neighborhood in the inner Sunset District…I still careen down hills on my skateboard without a care in the world…and life is good….it’s what I imagined it would be before he walked into our lives…he’d been hovering about for years – even them. Hanging out at my mom’s best friend’s house…
I know it never would have happened if Mom hadn’t broken up with my dad. He didn’t want to leave…he wanted to stay but Mom said it wasn’t working out I guess…all we kids knew was that Mom and Dad fought quite a bit…Mom wanted someone more “intellectual” than my Dad I guess..
So it was the summer of love when they told us the news – that Dad would be moving out. I still remember how sad and defeated Dad looked…and how sad I was too…when they sat us all in the living room…Dad sitting in the big, blue stuffed chair and Mom sitting in the French chair..me sitting on the piano chair and Michael and Jennifer on the couch.
Nothing felt quite the same after those moments…Mom said it as better this way. I could tell Dad didn’t agree…Ooooohhh, why do things have to change?
“Where will you go, what will we do?” I blurted out…feeling betrayed somehow, wondering if Dad would even be around…this was unheard of…a family broken .. yet things had already begun to change with the summer of love and all…but still!
“Don’t worry. Your father will still be around, and he’ll come see you,” mom assured me.
Whatever…
After they sat us down, Dad sat in the blue stuffed chair looking as if he could burst into tears at any moment…I’d never seen him look like that before…he was listening to the big band music he loved so much…
I remember running up to him and giving him a hug…as I hugged him Dad said, “You know, I really don’t want to leave…your Mom…”
“I know.” I comforted my Dad even though I was only ten…
I knew that life wouldn’t be the same again…
But what I didn’t know was that our lives would also roar downhill into a turmoil and strife that was as dark and terrible as the tsunamis and quake…our own personal disaster from hell…