Years March By

(Trigger warning: this post contains sesnitive topics including drug and child abuse.)

Born April Winn Ferry, 24th of April, 1974. Miami Beach, FL. When I go back and try to piece together the details of my arrival, the data is sketchy. The hospital seems to have been torn down. My mother is dead now, so of no use in data collection. My father, as is the way with fathers in the 1970s, wasn't actually there. My father recalls a phone call in the wee hours of the morning. A doctor on the other end of the line saying your daughter has been born but come quickly as she is unlikely to live through the day. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, pulls on pants and a tee shirt. He's 22 years old with one son that he ushers off to grandparents. He gets to the hospital and doesn't remember much except that there was a problem with my lungs and severe jaundice. We know the outcome as I am sitting here writing this. I know how to make an entrance.
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By the time I am 4, my parents’ marriage dissolves in a pile of broken dishes and slammed doors. I'm not sure of the extent of my mother's drug use at this point but if I had to place bets, well, I'd bet it was party-time most of the time.

A year. How does it feel to you looking back over a year? Fast or slow? Most of my formative years blur together. Except that year. Five years old. A new father. The memories are slow and torturous. Like an old VHS tape stretched to its final life playing everything in slow motion, grainy and garbled. A bedroom door creeps open, a dark figure looms. My brother cries as hands grip and shake him leaving clearly defined marks. My mother begs from a fetal position on the floor as another fist slams her face and another foot kicks her side. And then it gets bad. She flees. We flee.

Railroad tracks slick under foot as we walk. In search of refuge. A friend on the other side of the tracks. The right side of the tracks. Embrace. Tears stream down my mother's bruised and swollen face. A friend telling her she needs to leave for good, this time. Five minutes later fists pound on the door. I will kill you bitch. Just like I killed that fucking dog of yours. The dog I watched him kill through the cracks in the blinds of my bedroom. Bert and Ernie clutched to my chest. I  have lost the name of the dog over the years. A dalmatian. Maybe this is why I really hate the movie 101 Dalmatians. 

And then it is done. Five years old and too much knowledge; childhood lost. That chapter closed and after that nothing ever seems as bad. We move in with my mother's parents. Good Southern Baptists. A pastor and a pastor's wife. The only Godly part of this is the pastor's wife. She is the mask of piety and the protector of the small. I refuse to ever be alone in a room with my grandfather, Boompa. His lap always seems to be wanting the feel of a small granddaughter and his tongue always manages to find its way into her ear. I'm 6 now and this isn't that bad. Boompa is gone a lot. Off to Haiti saving those poor {insert word I won’t write}. Thank you God.

1980. A third father. A good and patient father. He sees the walls around me and gives me wide berth.

1982. I pick up the phone next to my mother's bed. This is 911 what is the nature of your emergency? Sirens blare. My third father crouches down with his back to the wall, head in his hands, tears down his face. I sit next to him and tell him we will be ok. The paramedics collect the needles strewn on the bedside table. Court. Three months in rehab should fix it all. The halls of The Care Unit are institutional yellow. It smells like burnt coffee and stale cigarettes. My third father opens the door to my mother's room and then slams it quickly. I hear a crash against the door and a cacophony of curse words. Heroin detox is ugly. Two weeks later color comes back to her face. We sit in an NA meeting next to a Hell's Angel. I investigate his tattoos. He gives me a wink. A white chip.

1983. I come home from school and my third father is loading his stereo speakers into the back of his Datsun. Damn it Tammy, you promised. The speakers are a terrible sign. Anything but the speakers. The sound of her begging washes over me. The speakers come back in. Another white chip.

The years roll forward.

​Three elementary schools. One middle school. Two high schools. Many houses.
Turns out you can't outrun your demons. They hide in the moving boxes just waiting for the moment to be unpacked.

1992. I graduate from high school just shy of “with honors”. I move to Tallahassee and attend Florida State University. I struggle. Classes are not all that motivating. I pass the first two years by the skin of my teeth.

1993. I become sick. A weird infection in my left leg. “Cause unknown”. Lupus is suspected but is later ruled out. Acute cellulitis develops. Amputation is discussed. And then suddenly, it's better. Leg saved. It is never the same.

1995. I become a bartender and thus a local celebrity. That is the way of small college towns. I meet a boy and then I meet his family. It's these moments with his family that are my first glimpse into the reality of my own family. Not everyone's mother has been married three times and court mandated to rehab after OD'ing on heroin. I know this somewhere in the recesses of my mind. But now I experience it firsthand. Resentment wells up and bottles within me for the next decade.

1998. We move to Seattle. The perfect boyfriend, with the significantly less dysfunctional family, and I. A year goes by and we break up. I stay and he moves to Boston. Seattle becomes the place of my transformation. The victim dies and the warrior is born. Riding on a sea shell out of the abyss of, what I later learn is, pretty typical dysfunction. This knowledge is somehow comforting and somehow maddening. Conversations are had over the years. Some wounds heal and others remain unresolved. A failed marriage, mine this time. Friends and careers come and go. In these transitory happenings I find the thing I've been searching for: Myself.

2010. I learn that the key to creating the life you want is to forgive and to value all that you already have. Honor yourself. Hold people accountable yet remember they struggle too. September 3 I build the courage to walk into a kung fu school. I simultaneously find two amazing gifts at one time: martial arts and my husband.

2012. My mother dies. Colon cancer. With her dies any hope of having a real mother someday. Two weeks later I find out I am pregnant. Oh shit, she's reincarnating in my womb. I reassure myself that she is elsewhere. The first of two sons.

Current. Things are never perfect. But there is perfection in the moments of our life. There is love and deep connection. There is a shared understanding of familial dysfunction. There is a worry that our sons will be really messed up by too much stability. What a crazy worry. The stability and love is worth the risk.