My father stopped drinking when I was 13.

I’ve never felt that he owed me an apology.  Except maybe for keeping his secret.

As a child, we all just want to fit in.  I’d go to school and NOT hear stories of other children’s fathers missing dinner and arriving home well past midnight drunk and screaming.  So I’d not mention it either.

I learned to get cautious when 6pm rolled around and my dad wasn’t home yet and my Mom wouldn’t let us eat—holding her dinner for us all to eat as a family.  Then 7pm would arrive and she’d tell us to eat.  As she nervously keep herself, her hands, busy.  Then 8, 9, 10. Bedtime for us.  An unusual quiet would have fallen on the house.  No laughs at the sitcoms.  No questions of where he was.  We all knew: Getting sloshed.

Then we’d be awoken by his screams.  Even with my mother closing our bedroom door and hallway door, you could hear my father bellowing angrily at my mother.  I never caught WHAT he was ever angry about.

I never told my friends about the nights my mother packed us up and took us to a seedy hotel on the highway where we’d duck in the backseat so the hotel clerk would not know a woman with four children was checking in, in case my father called looking for us.  Nor did I tell my friends about the nights we rushed off to my grandparents.  None of us kids talked about it to our friends or to each other.  We held the secret.

When we went to my father’s great aunt and uncle’s house after a particularly bad incident, I thought it finally meant my parents were divorcing.  We didn’t stay just one night, and we’d NEVER gone to a relative of my father’s.  Oh, how naive I was.  His family spoke of my family’s Catholic faith and my mother’s duty as a wife.  Yes, of course it was expected that my father would be penitent.  But return to him, she must.  And she did.

Thirteen years.  Thirteen years that was my normal.  I blocked out the physical abuse my siblings assure me was a part of this ritual.  I still flinch when my husband yells at our son, involuntarily being reminded of the spontaneous yelling my father did that indicated worse was in store.

And for another 30 years, I’ve not discussed my father’s secret.

When he gave up drinking, that habit was replaced with another, more socially acceptable but just as oppressive for his family.  We don’t discuss that with outsiders either.

I never felt I needed to forgive my father for his drinking.  It just WAS.  I had a good childhood, was well provided for, had friends.  But deep down, even now, there is anger, hurt, pain and unforgiveness.  Not for the drinking but for the lies we told—or rather for the facade we gave that told the lie.  For the secret we were dutifully expected—and did—keep.

The issues with my father are different now for me.  But scratch deep enough and the issues aren’t different.  He can say, do as he wishes and we are expected to hold our tongues and be dutiful as his children.  When we speak up, out, there is fallout.  Sometimes just for a few days, sometimes for years.  For my oldest brother who witnessed the longest of my father’s drinking, that fallout lasted a decade.  And is still on shaky ground.

How does one heal unilaterally?  How does one learn not to flinch?  How does one overcome the damage of secret-keeping?  And yet keep a family together?