I do not recall ever being a horribly bad child or one prone to misbehaving often. I’m sure I had my moments. If I did not get my way, I made sure that everyone knew what way they should have given me. I was very loving and passionate, in every aspect of my life. I loved playing pretend more than anything. Playing dress up, and make believe, and adventures were my favorite things to do. For the most part I was extremely easily entertained as a child (I still am).
Growing up in the neighborhood that we lived in there were many children to play with, and of course I had my closest playmates, my brother and sister to keep me company. I can remember in the late fall we would ride bikes down the block playing what we called “truck drivers”, breathing heavily, and blowing out air as to imitate someone smoking a cigarette. I also had a fancy for playing cars. I would draw out very intricate and elaborate roads and neighborhoods and cities with chalk in the driveway and then drive my cars all around. My brother and sister eventually grew out of the age where it was cool to play with your little sister, and I became nothing but an annoyance to them. This is when I felt we really started to grow apart, because we never became close again after that.
I always wanted to make money as a child. I planned all different kinds of schemes with the neighborhood kids to raise money. We held the typical lemonade stands of course, but sometimes we would add a twist to entice our customers, such as “Buy our lemonade, all donations are going to the Humane Society!” and we taped pictures of our cats to the poster. I can assure you that we had every intention of giving that money to the humane society, but in the end I don’t think we really did. I also made a daily effort to bargain with the ice cream man whenever he would roll into our neighborhood. I would try to use the barter system to get some ice cream. I would offer him a friendship bracelet, or one of my painted rocks for an ice cream sandwich, but he never seemed interested.
I have a hard time recalling any memories at all of my entire family together. I have memories of course, but when I really think about it every one of them is either a memory of us with my mom or with our dad. About the only thing I can remember with my father in that house was when he started sleeping on the couch, and fighting seemed to happen more often than not. The night that my father moved out my mother took my brother, sister and I to a hotel for the night. I know it is possible for children to fabricate reality, and think that something happened when it really didn’t. I think back to that night at the hotel (the night my father moved out), and I can remember the man that would soon become my stepdad meeting us there. I never ask about this, I never have questioned, but I still wonder. In returning to our home the next day my father had left a t-shirt out on the bed in a display like manner that read “Worlds # 1 Dad”. I don’t know if that was supposed to make us feel guilty or what he was trying to prove. I was nine years old, so I felt pretty indifferent about it all and didn’t understand. I have literally blocked out this part of my life, subconsciously.
It had been four years we lived in that house when my father moved out. I am nine years old. My brother is 10, my sister is 12. My mother requests our presence in the kitchen. All three of us kids sit down at the table with her. Sitting downstairs watching TV is Mark Bragdon whom we know from church, a “friend of the family”. Someone my mother had been spending a significant amount of time with the past few months. My mother starts talking and rambling about things I cannot comprehend, and I sat there nodding my head with a smile on my face. Basically she was just trying to help us understand something I still to this day have never quite understood, something I still never talk or ask about. She informed us that the man sitting downstairs would soon become our stepfather, and move in to live with us. (Keep in mind two weeks prior to that night the papers of her divorce from my father were finalized). This man would be moving into the house my father had just moved out of. I do not remember feeling sad or angry at the time. I never once felt that any of what was going on was my fault. I just pretended like it never happened that everything was fine and normal.
For my siblings this was a little harder. My sister was 12 at the time, so this was a much more pivotal moment in her life and she did not take this situation lightly. I just never questioned anything or tried to understand. The more I find out, the less I want to know.
Mark Bragdon was not a complete stranger to us when he moved in, yet in so many ways he was. He had been a friend of the family for several years; we knew him and his wife and daughter from church. I cannot recall the exact date that Mark divorced his wife, but I can only assume it was around the same time my mother and father divorced. I never knew his daughter (Sarah) very well. We never became close. She was older than Susan by several years and did not come around very often. The relationship between Mark and his ex-wife was pretty non-existent, so Sarah has never been a large part of my life. Come to think of it, whenever I am asked how many siblings I have I often forget to mention Sarah.
When Mark first moved in with us I was ecstatic. It was something ‘new’ and ‘cool’. Looking back now I can see that he tried to be cool in a way to win our approval or something. And I did think he was cool at first. He told us he was a football player, an ex-marine, a racecar driver. He was huge, and tall and muscular. He seemed like he was the smartest and the best at everything. He was our new playmate for my brother, sister and I.
Then I began to go through an awkward stage in my relationship with him. I never quite knew how to refer to him when I was younger. He was not my father, yet he was married to my mother. I think my mother saw this struggle that we were having so she eventually came up with the idea for us to call him “Major Dad”. It is kind of sickening when I think back to it. I feel like we were brainwashed into thinking all these things about him, and calling him that. This title lasted only a while, and then once I reached a certain age I started calling him Mark. As we grew older it seemed he grew more comfortable. You know how it is when you first get to know someone and they put on this act or make them out to be what you want them to be. Then once they grow more comfortable they slowly melt off that mold, and layer by layer you really start to see what is underneath. Thus began our emotionally abusive relationship.
