My father wasn’t Principal until 1993.
The plaque is wrong.
He left before the fall of 1992 to come back.
To work again in the school district I guess that year. I’m not sure where he stayed those months – his parents or brother I believe.
He drove the Blue Beetle all the way cross-country alone.
My mother and I did not leave until March 1993. I remember she was packing when the call came that grandpa Jim had died. I remember their small dog, his belly pokes and laugh, and knowing he was gone. I saw her cry but I never asked where he had gone I just knew.
They had nothing when they came back.
They owned that condo in Iowa too – I don’t know what they got for it when it sold.
We stayed with my Uncle Brian and his family – I shared a room with Jenny for a bit. It is how we became close as little kids. I still laugh at hearing IRA – Brian had a motorcycle and was rooting for a united Ireland back then. I will never first think about a retirement account. He was younger than I am now – with a beautiful home, and so much fun as an uncle. My love of Ireland – oh it came from him as much as any family member.
We rented a house the next year
Bought the year after that
My mother went back to work the moment we returned.
Everything was gone – pension to zero, nothing.
My brother was born the year they bought.
My sister went to Harvard the year after.
I was at private school in second grade – the year my sister started college and before my brother turned one.
Every fight was about money.
Or about the house not being clean.
So I asked to attend public school the next year. It didn’t solve anything.
My mother worked 12 hour days or more.
My father left his dirty laundry on the floor, dishes in the sink, towels in the bathroom.
I remember.
We had fun – he played with us, he was present. He was a wonderful father and teacher.
But she wanted to recover what they lost financially those years in Iowa.
She wanted a clean house.
He worked fewer hours.
She wasn’t wrong to want what she wanted. Responsibility matters. Keeping a roof over your family’s head matters. Keeping a clean house and a safe one matters.
She should not have been demonized for it. She did not have anyone supporting her to do it.
It was too much on me and that wasn’t fair.
She needed others, she needed a village too.
They never understood each other at all.
It isn’t a competition on suffering.
Laughs and Lobotomies 