The first few memories I had were always of dawn, when the night cloaks the sky and withdraws slowly for the brightness to enter. They were always of confusion, the feeling of disorientation you experience when you are awakened from a deep sleep. All I remember is how deep blue everything looked in my eyes. It was a beautiful blue, not quite the darkness of the black-purple night sky but with the dusky blue of daybreak widespread with blinking stars. In contrast, the reason behind my awakenings were dark.

My mother was so dependent upon my father then. He played the old and traditional chauvinistic role of the provider of the family, the only source of income. Except, he was no good with saving up money. Whatever money he made from working overtime at GM would be blown on cocaine, beer, parties, and strip clubs. Having a gambling problem probably didn’t help. My mother did try to save up her own money from working at what I would call an American version of a sweat shop. It wasn’t exactly a sweat shop deal. She worked from home and would turn in her finished products at the warehouse or wherever it was. She learned quickly that if she didn’t hide her money, my father would take it and blow it on his selfish needs. Once, she told me that she tried saving up money for my brother and I but when she looked at the bottom of her coffee can, the money was all gone. She confronted my father and he had taken all of it.

On those nights that my mother gently roused me from sleep, she would usher me out of our squalid apartment and out toward the car. As I sat without my seat belt buckled, all I would do was look at the passing scenery out the side window. Everything was a dusky blue as night fell away. I didn’t know what I was doing in the car with my mother but she explained to me that we were looking for my dad. I accepted this as a child, as there would be many of these nights to come. I didn’t know why we were looking for my dad. I didn’t realize that in proper society or any society at all outside of the ghetto we had lived in then, dads were supposed to come home after work and laugh and eat dinner with their family. A peck on the wife’s cheek and mussing up the children’s hair. Yeah, that wasn’t it at all.

These drives always seemed to end up with us running into my dad walking out of some gas station with a full case of beer in his hand. My mother would quickly get out of the car, the one car our family had and pull him aside. I would watch out my window as my mother yelled and cried, asking for him to come home and be with us. His face was always red, eyes glazed over from a drunken stupor or riding on a high, and he’d have this stupid smile on his face as if he couldn’t comprehend how hurt my mother was. He couldn’t comprehend how he was destroying or distorting his toddler daughter’s understanding of how a family should be. Looking back, I remember one of his friends would start up the car my dad had arrived in and drive up to us telling my dad to get in and hurry to the party. His ‘friends’ never cared about how we were coping. They never cared about how they weren’t helping our case and encouraging him to shirk his responsibilities. He was a grown man after all. He should have been able to recognize his priorities. But he didn’t and he couldn’t be bothered with such trivialities.

The long point is, my life started out with waking up to hurt, pain, the sound of tears in my mother’s voice, and the anger and cursing. Throughout my life after those first few memories, I have awakened to angry words, arguments, and crying only a few times. From moving to a different state, to my mother making more money than my dad and becoming the source of our income, to moving into bigger houses, to attending greater and newer schools, to the increase in our household income, etc - no matter how better off we would seem, there were still nights where I would wake up to the fighting and disappointment in my family. Of course, life changes constantly and moves along no matter what. My family has come a long way. My parents are divorced. I’ve been kicked out several times to live with my dad and in the end, ended up living with my mom again. I’ve graduated and life has wound up here and I’m just glad I have Lord God to walk me through all the shit I’ve had to go through. Life is amazing to be honest, despite the ups and downs. I’ve changed my ways of coping with everything - healthier and better techniques.

What brought this on? I woke up at about 2 AM to the rage and fury in my seventeen year old brother’s voice. His ex had called him and told him things that enraged him. Of course, he rebuked and yelled at her for nearly two hours straight. I have never heard so much anger and brutality in his voice even though what he was saying was the truth and what she needed to hear. I awoke from a deep and tired sleep - unfeeling. You tend to have no feelings towards something when you become accustomed or used to it. Even though it’s been awhile since I’ve awakened to the sort of thing I described earlier, I recognize it upon awakening. I do believe that this will occur again throughout my life, however rare they may be. I just think it’s odd that even though it’s going to be waking up to different situations, different people and circumstances, I’ll be reminded of the cycle I seem to be in. No matter how well off and far I’ve come, my beginnings will find a way to show up in my present. It seems I am destined to keep waking up like this every now and then for the rest of my life. Life seems to have a way of cycling similarly from beginning to end.