How I found my dream

I had my date on Friday night. It was fine. We went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant and then saw a show that a local theatre is putting on. My date is a nice person, he opened doors for me and stood up when I left the table to go to the bathroom, but there’s no connection between us. I could see us being acquaintances at most, but not really friends.

            Although, he did get me to talk to him about something I rarely bring up. He asked me about where I like to go dancing and drinking, and when I told him I don’t really like to drink and was at that club where we met at because of Hannah and Lucy, he asked why. Most people don’t ask why, but he did.

            I told him that I don’t drink more than a glass of wine at dinner because my grandfather, my mom’s dad, was an alcoholic. A rich and successful alcoholic, but an alcoholic nonetheless. Since alcoholism is hereditary, I don’t want to test and see if I’ve gotten that part of my grandfather.

            I left it there, and he sort of seemed to get it. Only, I left out a pretty big part of the story. You see, the complete truth is that my grandfather abused my mom. Because he was an affluent businessman, no one suspected that the bruises on my mom were from him, caused by his gin and tonics. And while I can’t imagine hurting anyone like that, even with alcohol in me, drinking heavily became a repulsive concept to me, especially since my mom couldn’t tolerate such behavior, either.

            Though, my parents would have never met if Mom hadn’t been so desperate to get away from her father. Mom moved across the country for college, and that’s where she met Dad, who was getting his MBA while she worked on her undergraduate in art history. She was beautiful and from a respectable family, and he…well, sometimes I suspect that she married him to get out from under her father’s thumb. And it did work, since Mom never saw my grandfather after her wedding. He died of liver disease when I was six. 

            And, if you haven’t connected the dots already, this is also why I wanted to become an attorney advocating for abused children. I didn’t find out about Mom’s past until she died and I found her journal. She hadn’t written much, but it gave me enough to understand her childhood and fleeing from her father. Dad said he didn’t know about any abuse, and refused to believe me, even when I offered him the journal to read. It might have been too soon after her death to bring it up.

            Anyway, after I realized that my mom had kept all this a secret, I thought of how many other children never had the chance to speak up, how much they suffered, how limited their choices seemed to them. I knew I didn’t have the mind to fight the cancer that killed my mom, but I was already pre-law track, and that I could still honor her if I fought for children in a similar situation that she was in.

            Now instead of honoring my mom, I’m trying to save my dad. Funny how life works sometimes. There are so many sacrifices to make, so many twists you never expected. But they have to be made.

            Well, I’ve certainly told you a lot today, and not much about fun stuff like a date. Sorry that I tend to do that. It just sort of all came out.