Flashing Lights and Flashbacks

Life should come with a trigger warning

I peer through my bedroom blinds into the cold, dark night. Like a belated Christmas celebration, red, blue and white lights dance on the snow-covered ground. A police cruiser is parked two houses down, in front of my neighbors’ home. It is a neat, two-story brick structure that houses a thirty-something man and woman and their two young daughters. I don’t know their names. The daughters have built a delightful fairy garden under the weeping cherry in their front yard. I contributed a tiny plastic frog who is reading a library book.

From deep within my chest, a familiar sensation arises. I stamp it down. I stamp down hard. But the stamping doesn’t do the job this time–the time machine whirrs. I am transported back nearly fifty years. I am huddled under my blankets, tiny fingers stopping up my ears, trying to block out the yelling, the screaming, the verbal humiliation emanating from my parents’ bedroom. I feel fear. I feel sorrow. I feel anger at my mother for her vicious diatribes. I feel pity and resentment at my father for not defending himself. But most of all, I just want it to stop. I realize no one is coming to save me.

Gazing out of the window, I wonder which of the neighbors has called the police. It is common knowledge that the couple “doesn’t get along.” This is not the first time the police have graced their door. I hope that nothing has happened to the family. Then I realize that, of course, something has happened to that family. Something is happening all day, every day to that family. It just reaches such a fever pitch–every once in a while—that it radiates out into the ether. I worry about the girls.

Growing up in an environment of turmoil, insecurity and unabashed hostility is toxic to tender minds. My siblings and I have dealt with it, each in our own way. For one, I am a firm believer in divorce. I advocated for my parents’ divorce as a teenager, when their relationship had devolved to the point that we were never sure if one of them would just not come home the next day. My own marriage, going on 30+ years has been rock-solid and tranquil by comparison. My mom continues to insist that this “boring” stability is a product of my turning a blind eye to the glaring deficiencies in my marriage. She continues to helpfully shine a spotlight on these deficiencies when she sees them.

My mom surprised me recently. If and when we discuss the past, she typically dismisses or minimizes my observations about how tumultuous our family life was. She normalizes the dysfunction and reminds me that “no family is perfect”, that children “exaggerate” things in their memory. I question my own memory banks but then remind myself that it is not normal for children to have the phone number for Child Protective Services memorized.

On that particular day, we were discussing our old neighbors, Laverne and George, who lived across the street so many years ago. They resided on a large corner lot with their white miniature poodle, Mitzi, who was famous for her bark and her bite. Laverne was a very successful Mary Kay lady who drove a pink Cadillac and attributed her prosperity to “the favor of the Lord”. She also made excellent chocolate cream pies, possibly through some form of divine intervention. George was a stern, pot-bellied man who dyed his pompadour-style hair jet black and kept an immaculate lawn. That day my mom told me something that blew my mind. She said, “Laverne once told me that I needed to cool it down or someone was going to get hurt.”

“What?” I replied, quite dumbfounded. I had no idea this immaculately coiffed, sanctified maker of flaky-crusted pies had any insight into our topsy-turvy household. “What did Lavern mean by that?” I probed.

She went on to explain that, back in the day, neighbors had been talking about our family. The neighbors had deduced, through the evidence of their eardrums, that all was not paradise within our tidy little household. They had suggested to Laverne, the only one friendly enough to approach my mom, that she say something. So she did. My mom received the information coldly and didn’t talk to Laverne for several months afterwards. I am certain it only sharpened my mother’s suspicions about the rest of the neighbors. Laverne’s suggestion went unheeded.

The reason that this revelation blew my mind was that for the past five decades, I have lived under the illusion that my family was floundering in the turbulent sea of domestic violence all alone. I was convinced that the dirty little secrets of our household were actual secrets. The idea that the whole neighborhood was in on the secret was like looking into a funhouse mirror and seeing a tiny version of myself now backed up by a phalanx of witnesses to the mayhem. Other people knew. It was not my wild imagination. My mom had been chastised and warned. Somehow, this validated my childhood experience, although it was fifty years late in coming.

It was Laverne, years later, who was the first to come over when the garage door went up, and our childish cries–full of incredulity and foreknowledge–reverberated into the street. It was Laverne who took the phone from my trembling hand. It was Laverne who explained to my mother–who was calling from the airport to say she had just returned from her trip to Chicago–that my father had been found dead in the garage, of apparent carbon monoxide poisoning.

So we had finally arrived at the day when one of my parents would no longer be coming home. We had arrived at the day when someone finally “got hurt”. The police pulled up in front of our house, lights flashing. Laverne had been right. The neighbors had been right. They had seen through our sham lives. They had been peering through their blinds at the ugly mess of our lives all along.

My writing of this essay was inspired by Susan Kacvinsky and her essential Substack Modern Mythology. I was especially moved by her essay Joy is my Sky which should be shared far and wide. It shattered my mind and heart into shards and then somehow put everything back together again in a better configuration. I am eternally grateful for her contribution.

I would love to hear your thoughts about my essay. Please leave comments. Also I encourage you to share your own experiences, if you desire. Subscribing will boost my fragile ego and embolden me to continue sharing more of my writing in the future.

If you would like to learn more about my father’s story please read my very first Substack.