Chapter 3

My Dad said he loved me I just didn’t believe it all the time.

Middle child syndrome? It exists. Look at my life. Walk in my shoes growing up and you’ll see it’s true. It didn’t mean my parents didn’t love me. It just meant there were three kids and two parents.

Donita, the oldest was always the first to do everything. It was exciting I am sure for my parents. First day of school. First boyfriend. First everything for Donita.

Joe, the baby. The last. The last to do everything. He was also diagnosed with ADD back when it wasn’t popular to be diagnosed. My parents feeling guilty for years of hard discipline with him were ready to help him forget by doting on him in different ways. Three kids. Two parents. Someone had to be left out. I would always tell my parents “Why did I get C’s? Cause there was no one left to help me.”

I was different than my brother and sister. I didn’t fit in. Can you hear the song “One of these things is not like the other one…”

I didn’t play sports. Not because I didn’t like them but because I was never encouraged to try them. I was artsy. I loved to sing. I loved to act. My Barbie doll was always sobbing as Ken left her on the balcony of their dream house. The songs that I would sing as Barbie came from the depth of my soul. I would sob for the loss they experienced. A drama queen? Absolutely. I would watch a sad commercial and clutch my chest falling to the floor weeping with sadness. My Mom would run in to see if I was okay and then see the TV. on. Shaking her head she would scold me for being so dramatic.

As I got older I joined the school band. I played the flute. My Dad bought me a $45 beginners flute. This was the flute that I played through Elementary School, Middle School, and High School. A judge during regionals once told me “I can’t believe you have gotten so far on this instrument. I can’t believe you get it to play the way you do.” I was called a natural. Music was in my blood.

I sang everything. I acted everything. And now I played everything. And I did it everywhere I went. I was not my parent’s favorite at this point. I was banned to the shed. We had built an office onto the end of the shed and this is where I would practice my flute and my singing. When my parents weren’t home I’d go into the backyard and sing. The cool decking around the pool had one giant circle at the end. I envisioned this as my stage and I would sing at the top of my lungs. I would sit on the benches with a pool ring slid over my ankles capturing my feet, transforming me into Ariel. I would sing her music and beg to be “part of that world.” My neighbors surely shut and locked their back doors in the afternoons.

What I heard my parents saying to me on those days they shoo’d me to the shed was “You aren’t worth my time. You have no talent. You bore me.” Of course this is not what they were saying at all.

My Dad was a salesman for a plumbing company. He would bring home all kinds of items that were given out from the other companies. Items such as bumper stickers stating “Bo don’t know plumbing”, for a popular sports idol. One time he came home and produced two baseball hats. One for Donita and one for Joe. I LOVED presents so I stood patiently waiting to see what he had brought me. He looked at me, “I didn’t know you liked hats.” And with that he walked away. He didn’t know I liked hats because he didn’t know me.

The few items he did bring me home I cherished. A magnifying paperweight in the shape of a water drop. It was my prize possession and I still have it today. He also brought home this odd shaped geometric paperweight for me. My sister started studying the shape in a math class so she begged me to borrow it and bring it to school. I refused to let her. Didn’t she know how much this item meant to me? My Father made me let her take it to school and her friend broke it. I cried for days silently in my room with my head buried in my pillow. No one understood.

Dad loved to fish. I can remember him picking my sister, brother and I up from school one day and taking us to a lake to fish. I was scared to death. Sitting on a boat in the middle of water I knew I would drown. I was seasick. I was frightened. Dad had positioned me as the look out for big rocks ahead of us as he told me “If you don’t see them the boat will hit them and we’ll sink”. It was all too much for me and I ended up dropping his fishing pole in the lake. That was the last fishing trip he ever took me on.

Standing in the drive way years later as Joe and Dad packed to go fishing I tried to joke around so that he would realize I really wanted to go. I kicked the rocks around with my toe and made some comment about him never taking me. Dad exploded. He yelled at me and shouted that if I wanted to go to get my ass in the car. My stomach dropped. I was only trying to get his attention. Make him see me there. Desperately wanting to be close to my Father. I ran to my room ashamed and hurt.

In Middle School the family was heading to another band concert of mine. My Dad stood in the living room facing the TV. He was still wearing his slacks and button down shirt from work. On the TV there was a U of A basketball game being played. Everyone was out front ready to go but he stood there with his eyes glued to the screen. I asked him if he would rather stay home than go to my concert. “Yes. I would rather watch U of A play then go hear your concert.” Another night of silent tears.

I wrote a letter to my best friend my freshman year of high school and in it I wrote that I was “pissed” at my Mom. I left it in my Dad’s car after he dropped me off at school. I realized what I had done and the consequences if my Dad found that note so I ran to the office to call my Mom. I explained what happened and lived out the day in terror. My Mother understood. My Father didn’t. When he got home he handed me his own letter in an envelope. In the letter he asked how I could be the girl he had raised? He talked about sending me away to boarding school. He talked about giving me away for surely I was not his daughter. The letter was over 3 pages long and held words that ripped my heart from my chest. It has taken me years to get past those words.

My brother and I fought just about daily. He had anger problems and although I loved him fiercely he took out his aggression on me. We laugh now at memories of him chasing my sister and I into the bathroom and then waiting outside like a lion ready to attack his prey. We would open the door and as he jumped at us we would be armed with Mom’s Aqua Net hairspray. He would start a fight with me and I would scream for my sister. She would come to protect me and they would get in a fight. I would then yell at her for being mean to him. It was sibling dysfunction at it’s finest. My Father would tell me “Michelle, let him win.” He knew my brother, knew his strength, knew his frustration, and knew that he needed to blow off steam and I only pushed buttons when I fought back. I didn’t start the fights so I couldn’t believe I was being told to let him win them. What I heard my Dad say was “You aren’t good enough. We love your brother more.”

Sunday was family day. Dad called his brothers and his parents every Sunday. I loved these calls. Us kids would sometimes sit in the living room and listen in. One Sunday he called my Uncle John. I loved my Uncle John dearly. He understood me. He understood my love for Fine Arts. When I went to visit him with the family we sat together and watched Marching Band videos. He loved me. This Sunday afternoon Dad was bragging on his kids. Talking about Joe’s grades and Donita’s schooling. It felt like hours passed with Dad going on and on about Donita and Joe. I was so excited he was saving me for last. What would he say? What was he going to be proud of me for? He ended the call without even so much as a mention of my name. Told his brother he loved him and hung up. I burst into tears and locked myself in the bathroom. As if being ignored wasn’t embarrassing enough he called my Uncle back and made me talk to him. I can still see me sitting on the floor just inside the bathroom, sobbing and looking into the mirror wondering how I could make my Dad love me.

My family was a family of eaters. I have a picture of my brother and I in Elementary school and we very much-resembled Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. When my Dad realized how unhealthy we had become he decided to put us all on diets. Every day began with standing on the scale. I would wake up early and go walking with my Dad. It was our time together. I cherished these mornings. Just me and my Dad. But I knew the truth. He was only trying to make me thin. I was fat. I was ugly. I was unlovable. Thanksgiving one year found me and Dad lying on opposite couches, sick and not able to eat a bite. I still had to get up and stand on that scale. I had lost several pounds. His words “Maybe throwing up is good for you.”

The shed. The fishing pole. The concert. The letter. The fights. The phone calls. The scale. He didn’t love me. That’s what my child heart felt.

Yet it was so far from the truth.

A few days after his death my Uncle Mike, Uncle John, and Uncle Jimmy sat in the backyard and they told me what my Father never did. They told me of how much he loved me. They told me of how he bragged about my accomplishments. How was I to know he thought I hung the moon?