Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Daggers

Macbeth says that "There's daggers in men's smiles." I can relate to this when my parents where still together. My father was and still as an alcoholic and he had the "dagger." I was still fairly little, about 9 or 10. I would sit on his lap, even though I was getting a little too old for it, and we would watch TV, specifically the Twilight zone, I enjoy his company and do all the things that one would do with there father, I suppose. I believed I was my dad's favorite. Almost every other day we would go and enjoy the Oregon beaches. It was wonderful to me and everything seemed to magical and perfect until I realized the truth that my dad could be turned into a different angry person by the thing what was always so present in my fathers life, that was Alcohol, it was the overruling factor that drove us steadily apart. He was two people in my mind, the one that loved and cared for us all, providing. He hugged us and played with us and made me and my brother happy, and there was the other person; The Dagger, the drunk the empty angry soul that to me seemed to be the other side of my Dad. I would hide from until his blood cooled and the fighting was over. I have two memories of him; my favorite was one which included the four of us, My Mom, Dad, brother and I. We would go Crabbing in one of our little boats or out on the docks in town. We would laugh and pluck the spidery Crabs out of the cages to measure and keep to eat, taking in the beauty of the salty wonderful ocean and there was another memory, one of the bad side, It was the time when he had gotten drunk and for no apparent reason punched my mother and broke her nose, she calle the cops and they took him away for a week. It was a little too much for me to take in at the time and made little sense of it, that was until I grew up of course. I cannot exactly say that I cam to deal with it, it will always be a part of me and there's not really a reason to try and pretend it never happened. That is the daggers purpose, to cut and to destroy, but all wounds heal only to leave a scar. My dad had that dagger and it truly did exist in my dads smiles.