I was seven, excited about the Fourth of July as most kids around my age were. This is back when you could still purchase fireworks (not the boring safe ones sold today). My favorite were the firecrackers and as much as I enjoyed the firecrackers, they frightened me a bit because my older siblings and cousins used to tell stories of someone they knew who had fingers blown off or eyeball blown out by holding a firecracker too long. So whenever it was my turn to light one, I in most cases would break off running before I could actually light the firecracker. Then go back feeling like a coward as my siblings and cousins would make fun of me. When I would actually light it, I'd damn near kill myself running and tripping from it, so as I sit and type this little ditty about a little girl named Felicia, I start to wonder about those horrifying stories I was told. Now the finger story may be true, but the eyeball? I now picture a child just as frightened as I was hauling ass away from it and put their eyeball out in a number of different ways, but a firecracker? Maybe not.
Well this day the first part of the holiday was celebrated at my parents apartment in West Oakland, CA. Acorn Apartments to be exact. Our family were some of the first tenants in this complex before all of the craziness begin happening there. Contrary to popular opinion, in my youth Acorn was a neighborhood, we looked out for one another. Were there drugs? Yes, but now I live in Foster City, CA and I see regular drug transactions and stealing. So...................
I remember going to Pond's Grocery Store when I was a kid, they made the best Shrimp Fried Rice. My mother would send me there to get the Fried Rice, a note to tell them to let me buy her cigarettes and whatever else she needed from there. My treat for going to Pond's would be a Nestle Crunch candy bar, which at the time cost a big whopping twenty-five cents.
So there was a bunch of us kids during this holiday, running around chasing each other, be it sibling, cousin or neighborhood friend having a good time, yet my distant hearing could pick up on the fact that my parents were having another argument. As a child I would watch this ebb and flow of my parents relationship, they loved as hard as they fought and yes it could be physical at times. My father would hurt my mother physically, but she was clever and always knew how to get him back emotionally, mentally and sometimes physically when the Gods of Strength happened to be on her side. That day felt a bit different though as it seemed that is all they did that day. I'd go in to get a glass of water, arguing. Come back a bit later to use the bathroom, arguing. Ask if I could go to the store, arguing. It was just different that particular day.
Well as the day started turning into the evening, my father yelled at us kids to get in the car, as he had to take my older siblings home so they could spend it with their mother. Then we were going to Richmond to watch the fireworks on the water (I wonder if they still do that) and then on to my cousin's house where in the evenings is when the adults would do their fireworks, which tended to be more dangerous. So we piled up in my parents 1975 Monte Carlo (no seat belts, kids sitting on each others laps and headed to Richmond, arguing...
After he dropped my siblings off the arguing intensified and I remember being scared and started to cry. I kept it silent because if my father heard me, he'd begin yelling at me and would probably not let me see the fireworks - these are the things that run through a 7 year old's mind. We arrived in Richmond and saw my cousins already parked in the area to watch the show. The arguing stopped for about 20min, long enough for me and my cousin to get on the hood of the Monte Carlo, sitting Indian style with Kim in my lap to watch the show. Fireworks start, parents begin arguing again and for the life of me I truly cannot remember what it was about, but it was different. There was venom spilling from each parent's lips and now that I think about it, the wrong fireworks in their eyes.
At the height of the show, my father slapped my mother. I sat Kim on the car and ran over to stop him (this is what a child in a domestic abuse home does). She slapped him back and you can see she put everything she had in it, because he was 6'4 and she was 5' on a good day. As I try to get in between them, my older cousin pushes me out of the way and breaks it up. I cry not sure why they are fighting, my mother then put me and my sister in the car and rolls down the window smoking cigarette after cigarette. My father standing outside still yelling, making threats, etc. I'm embarrassed and scared all the other people that came to watch the show staring at us, some leaving. My mother usually would still be arguing, but she just sat in the car, smoking her cigarettes, staring at my father making an ass out of himself.
Now for some odd reason, they thought it was still okay to go to my cousin's house after this fiasco to do fireworks. My cousin told my father to ride with him, to hopefully calm him down before we got to their house and my mother followed. We arrive at John F. Kennedy Manor in Richmond. My cousin pulls in the parking lot and my father jumps out of the car, my mother had not parked yet, she decided it would be more fun to try to run him down instead. My mother was on the sidewalk chasing him (he could run) I just remember closing my eyes crying and hugging my sister tight. Years after this night I remember my mother telling me right before she was about to hit a car to get to him to run him down it dawned on her what this would do to her children. She kills him, where would we be? They may not have agreed on much, but they did agree on how we should be cared for. So she backed the car up off of the sidewalk and we went to one of her friends house to stay for the night.
That was the end of my parents marriage and my first day of Independence. Life for me after that day changed in many ways as if a veil was removed. We moved from Oakland to Sapulpa, Oklahoma for a year, then on to different parts of southern California for a few years and eventually back to Oakland. I went to numerous schools, lived in different versions of a family home and each move, each school, each friend gained, each friend lost changed a happy little girl into a child constantly on her toes and finding it very hard to trust.
My relationship with my father changed of course. He moved on, married again - but he was unhappy. He was the type of man that had to have somebody, be it good or bad. My mother on the other hand tried to move on, but never could find that fit. Plus she begin having health problems and being a single mother was always her first priority and she sacrificed a lot for me and my sister.
I on the other hand had to ween myself off of my father. Things were different now, I had to help my mother with my sister and her health issues. As much as I loved my father, he felt like the enemy a good portion of the time. He wasn't there. Yes, physically he was, but emotionally and mentally he wasn't and I had to step up in areas that he shouldn't have allowed his child to do.
But...
There is forgiveness. Now I can look at it with an adult's eye, I can see it wasn't all his fault, it wasn't really anyone's fault. It was just life. It happened exactly as it was supposed to happen so I could be the person I am today. There was a lot of pain and misunderstanding and a lot of dysfunction. Yet I'm here, I broke the cycle, I refuse to live like that, I refuse to bring a child into that. I realize my parents did the best that they could with what they had, so in my mind that makes them great parents. I never doubted the love - I knew I was loved and as I look over their lives, I realize that they broke some cycles as well, so it all sums up to it being a work in progress.
So this holiday is something different for me - I don't celebrate it for the traditional reasons (which I have issues with, but that is a different blog altogether). I celebrate it because I survived it. No matter the confusion and the pain, I made it. Ashe...
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