Non-routine raised my step dad’s irritability. Especially Christmas. It seemed like every Chistmas morning, while trying to get out the door to my grandparent’s, he and my mom argued. Over anything. I could have spun a game show wheel that landed on any word in the dictionary and that’s what he’d be screaming about.”
“Where did you hide my keys?!”
“I didn’t hide your keys anywhere.”
“They’re not on the table where I left them. Where they’re suppose to be.”
We walked on egg shells living with him. It was almost comical to think that any of us would do anything to intentionally provoke him.
But he had a way of making his accusations feel so real I always felt guilty.
“Look, they’re here, in your coat pocket.”
He never gave an apology or a thank you, just a confusing smoke screen.
“Well if you hadn’t moved my coat, I would have found them.”
Meanwhile, I’m trying to be as invisible as possible. I fantasize about sitting motionless for hours under water in a warm summer lake with a long straw for air, where he can never find me. But in real life he always does.
“Get outside and clean the snow off the car.”
His irritation would grow and they’d argue about something new. It would escalate. And escalate.
When driving, he’d express his anger by driving faster and faster, tuning up the volume to cover up my mom saying “SLOW DOWN”.
I’d grip the door handle and seatbelt tight, and intensely watch the road as if looking anywhere else would make us slide off the road.
Like a roller coaster, designed by someone who hates me, he’d actually accelerate down the half mile hill. At the bottom is an icy pond and a sharp curve to the right.
Every year I rehearse in my mind how I’ll try to climb out of the car window when we go under water and wondering if I can get to shore before my arms and legs freeze. Every Christmas I thought I was going to die.
We plead from the back seat “Dad! Please!”
I really thought I was going to die. Some years he seems so angry I thought he wanted intentionally drive us into the pond.
How we never slid into the pond I’ll never know, but we always managed to make it around the curve, up another hill, then down another half mile hill angry, icy, roller coaster.
Once at my grandparents, and around other people, he was always well behaved and talkative to everyone- who had no idea what an oven of terror we were just in.
But in behind my rosy cheeks from running around the house with my cousins, tundra of wrapping paper all over the floor, and slices of friendly Christmas pie, was the sinking feeling that we had to take that same icy road back home. And wondering what kind of mood was he going to be in.