The Christmas that Changed My Life
By Carol Ann
Christmas is the time of year when family and friends think of joyfully reuniting and
catching up on the year’s events. In this age of computers, many people have chosen to
mail out an annual family newsletter stating the highlights of the past year.
Christmas at our house was always a time of great stress. My father was a perfectionist and very controlling. He would always bring his mother to our house, on Christmas Eve to stay the night. She whined each year that this Christmas would be her last for more than 20 years. She wasn’t quite five feet tall; a stout English woman that gave birth to my father at age 45, right after moving to the United States. She came from the “stiff upper lip” culture and perhaps was part of the reason my father was unforgiving, controlling, negative and volatile.
Now I was born three days before Christmas, so I was named Carol . . . guess it’s better than Holly. The Christmas I turned eight would change my life. You see that night after going to bed, my sister Joyce and I heard a loud noise and running. We jumped from our bed and ran to the direction of the noise. It was coming from our parents’ bedroom. My father had been drinking again and evidently my mother said or did something to set him off. Or should I say, he found something to set him off. Most abusers create or imagine problems if there are none to be found. The noise we heard were sounds of him beating her up. He dragged her into the master bathroom and locked the door. He punched her relentlessly. He tried to smash her head against the tile floor and smoother her with a washcloth. He tried to scold her in the shower.
Through my mother’s screams I was pounding on the bathroom door pleading with him to stop. Even at eight years old, I knew this wasn’t right and I tried to phone the police. This was before 911, push-button or rotary phones. I tried to pick up our black phone to tell the operator to send the police, but my grandmother kept taking the phone out of my hand, telling me, “This is only a little fight, it will be all right.” Basically she didn’t want to see her son hauled off to jail. I went back to the bathroom door and pounded and pounded and screamed at him that I was calling the police. He didn’t know his mother was standing sentry duty by the phone to keep me from calling for help.
When my mother finally emerged she was badly beaten. My sister and I rushed her into our bedroom and locked the door. We placed my mother on the bed, against the wall, the farthest place from the door should he attempt to come back. I lay next to her in the middle and my sister lay on the outside keeping an eagle eye on the door. I held my mother whimpering and crying in pain all night. I stroked her hair gently, realizing that was the only part of her body that didn’t hurt and telling her that she was okay now. She trembled all that night.
The next morning I didn’t want to open any presents from that man. His gift of violence was not what I thought Santa would bring.
He was a businessman with a reputation to protect, but after seeing how injured my mother was, he paid for our family doctor to make a house call on Christmas Day. Mother didn’t go out of the house for reasons of embarrassment for a full month. She was bruised from head to toe and even sunglasses couldn’t hide the beating she took. She couldn’t go to the hospital because then the family secret of living with this tyrant would be out.
The next morning my father used the excuse that he didn’t remember what happened during his drunken stupor. His version of this story to this day is that he slapped her across the face one time.
Well, you may be saying it was the alcohol. I don’t think so. He was so controlling that the slightest thing like leaving an empty saucer in the refrigerator or turning the garden hose off at the nozzle instead of the faucet would set him in rage.
One day he tried to kill my sister because he thought she left the no-draft window open on her car. Unfortunately my older sister, when confronted by my father, said the wrong thing to this mad man. She said, “You can’t hurt me.” He tried to prove her wrong. He then started punching her, dragging her by her hair through the house to the kitchen where he tried to smoother her with a dishcloth as he was kicking her in the ribs. I fought him off and got my sister loose from his lethal grip and she ran upstairs.
My mother blocked the top of the steps and shouted at my father, “If you try to come up these steps, I’ll kick you the hell down!” Mother’s first question to me when the violent scene was over was, “Did he try to rape her?”
I responded, “No, I was there the whole time.” This led me to understand that rape was another portion of his violent attacks. That night my mother and I moved my sister out of the house of hell to live with my mother’s sister and husband for her own protection. She never returned home again.
By the time I turned 16, his outbursts were becoming more frequent with threats like, “What do you want me to do, blow your brains out?” With guns in the house I knew someone would end up dead. I convinced my mother that we had to get out.
My father would stay out all night every other night. Mother and I made plans to move out one of the nights when we knew he wouldn’t be coming home. We lived in an affluent neighborhood, so we paid the brothers of a maid of one of the neighbors to help us move out.
Now things were not easy after we moved out. In fact, he still stalked us and laughed at my mother after the third attorney she tried to hire to file for divorce was willing to sell her down the river for a mere $800. As soon as an attorney learned of his wealth, mother was the loser.
After I married at 17 . . . thank God to a peaceful man . . . and moved to the Pocono Mountains, I saw a story in the local newspaper requesting volunteers to establish a Women’s Resource Center. I grew up supersensitive to my surroundings and feeling responsible for the peace and happiness of everyone around me . . . a very unrealistic expectation. But I did understand first-hand that abuse crosses all social, ethnic and economic lines. I knew people didn’t have to stay living in terror any longer. If I didn’t come from an abusive background, I would have probably just read the articled and figured it was a good idea and never responded. Instead I was willing to become a charter member of this supportive organization. I received training for the hotline crises counseling. We established a safe shelter, and I did advocacy work to help the women get protection from abuse orders. I did public speaking and fund-raising to further the cause of women and children’s rights.
Yes, the Christmas I turned eight did change my life, but it also allowed me to understand that with a little help, people can stop living in fear. My Christmases are now filled with love and most of all Peace.
I Wish You All Peace on Earth
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