Pythia Peay's Blog - Posts Tagged "alcoholism"
I Thought I Knew You, But....
Since publishing my memoir of growing up with an alcoholic father—American Icarus—so many friends, old and new, have written to tell me that while they thought they knew me, they realized that they'd had no idea what had really gone on behind the scenes of my early family life. So on this last day of my book-giveaway campaign, here is an excerpt from Chapter 8, "Icarus' Daughter," that illustrates the truth that they were right—just as I also had little idea of what had gone on in their family lives growing up as well.
The following scene takes place in the fall of 1967, when I'd been chosen as the junior class runner-up for homecoming queen:
"One might have thought this would have pleased my father; it didn't. I was nearly sixteen, but Joe was determined to put a stop to my growing up. He'd refused to even give my mother the money to buy me a new dress for the homecoming dance. My good-looking date was the upstanding son of the school principle. But that made no difference to my father, who held to his strict "no getting into cars with boys" rule, even for this special occasion.
For my mother, who'd grown up in the vibrantly social culture of Buenos Aires, my father's obsessive control around dating was an especially bitter fate. Number one on her list of expectations for both her daughters was romance, marriage, and a husband. Tucked beneath the nightgowns in her dresser were two sealed envelopes addressed "To My Daughter On Her Wedding Night." Staring dreamily out the kitchen window over her cup of Lipton's tea, Sheila would reminisce to my sister and me about the balls she'd danced at as a young girl. "I hope one day you know the joy of putting on a beautiful ball gown and dancing a waltz with the man you love," she'd say, looking past the grain silo into her distant past. When or where she thought that might happen, I had no idea.
Now, my mother became my ally—"going to bat" for me, as she used to put it, with my father. Somehow, she'd scraped the money together out of the food budget to buy me a plum-colored A-line dress for the dance. After much hectoring, she'd even persuaded my father to agree to let my date drive me home after the dance. On the morning of the homecoming game, Sheila took me to the local beauty parlor to get my hair set. Later that evening, after a day of much primping and preening, I was led by my mother to my father's chair. "Joe, doesn't Pelly look pretty tonight?" Sheila asked proudly. My father never even lifted his head from the Newsweek on his lap. When the handsome captain of the football team placed the sparkling tiara on my carefully teased and sprayed hair, then planted a kiss on my flushed cheeks, Joe wasn't present to watch me beam in happiness. He was at home, drinking.
Not that this bothered me. It had never been Joe's habit to show up for any of our sports or school performances. He'd long ago handed that parental task to my mother. Besides, the one time Sheila had forced my father to attend one of my sister's flute performances, he'd left in the middle of it to go to the local bar. After getting pie-faced smashed, he'd arrived to pick Colleen up on the sidewalk after everyone had left. Then he'd yelled at her all the way home, calling her a slut and a whore for wearing a short skirt on stage. So having my paranoid, zany, inebriated father at a public-school function wasn't anything I particularly wished for.
The following scene takes place in the fall of 1967, when I'd been chosen as the junior class runner-up for homecoming queen:
"One might have thought this would have pleased my father; it didn't. I was nearly sixteen, but Joe was determined to put a stop to my growing up. He'd refused to even give my mother the money to buy me a new dress for the homecoming dance. My good-looking date was the upstanding son of the school principle. But that made no difference to my father, who held to his strict "no getting into cars with boys" rule, even for this special occasion.
For my mother, who'd grown up in the vibrantly social culture of Buenos Aires, my father's obsessive control around dating was an especially bitter fate. Number one on her list of expectations for both her daughters was romance, marriage, and a husband. Tucked beneath the nightgowns in her dresser were two sealed envelopes addressed "To My Daughter On Her Wedding Night." Staring dreamily out the kitchen window over her cup of Lipton's tea, Sheila would reminisce to my sister and me about the balls she'd danced at as a young girl. "I hope one day you know the joy of putting on a beautiful ball gown and dancing a waltz with the man you love," she'd say, looking past the grain silo into her distant past. When or where she thought that might happen, I had no idea.
Now, my mother became my ally—"going to bat" for me, as she used to put it, with my father. Somehow, she'd scraped the money together out of the food budget to buy me a plum-colored A-line dress for the dance. After much hectoring, she'd even persuaded my father to agree to let my date drive me home after the dance. On the morning of the homecoming game, Sheila took me to the local beauty parlor to get my hair set. Later that evening, after a day of much primping and preening, I was led by my mother to my father's chair. "Joe, doesn't Pelly look pretty tonight?" Sheila asked proudly. My father never even lifted his head from the Newsweek on his lap. When the handsome captain of the football team placed the sparkling tiara on my carefully teased and sprayed hair, then planted a kiss on my flushed cheeks, Joe wasn't present to watch me beam in happiness. He was at home, drinking.
Not that this bothered me. It had never been Joe's habit to show up for any of our sports or school performances. He'd long ago handed that parental task to my mother. Besides, the one time Sheila had forced my father to attend one of my sister's flute performances, he'd left in the middle of it to go to the local bar. After getting pie-faced smashed, he'd arrived to pick Colleen up on the sidewalk after everyone had left. Then he'd yelled at her all the way home, calling her a slut and a whore for wearing a short skirt on stage. So having my paranoid, zany, inebriated father at a public-school function wasn't anything I particularly wished for.
