Getting started

I’m not going to start at the beginning; in part because I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprises for anyone, and partly because I really don’t know when it all began. My fabulous wife helped me figure that one out. I use to think I knew when it started, but fifteen years of constant deliberation still hasn’t dug that one up.

My wife has this friend from junior high school who one day in 8th or 9th grade just stopped wanting to hear anything her father had to say. One night she went to bed daddy’s little girl, and by morning she had revoked his ticket to participate in her life. If her mother said “no you can’t...” that was perfectly fine. She’d be no more upset than any teenager wanting to bend a rule or two, but if her father said no to the exact same thing, she would explode. It would unleash a barrage of verbal and physical violence that seemed over the top by any perspective. Screaming, yelling, kicking, and biting, not to mention the flying kitchen utensils. It was unreasonable anger. Where did it come from? He hadn’t touched her in over a decade; not since he promised to stop. When did all this hatred begin?