Mom did her best...

Mom did her best to protect us. She helped keep us from some of the immediate dangers but in the long run couldn't protect us from everything. I know it was hard for her and in some ways keeping us protected probably made things worse on all of us in the long run. What we needed more than protection was to learn to recognize and protect ourselves from not just the immediate dangers but the more subtle dangers that came as time went on.

Mom made our house a cool place for the neighbor kids to be. Our house had all the bells and whistles we could have. I don't believe it could be compared to any house today because most kids would be more impressed with computers and game systems. What we had was probably better both then and now though. We had a tether ball, four square and hop scotch in our driveway. In the backyard we had a playhouse. Not the plastic kind you see now but one more like a miniature house with a real foundation, dutch doors, a shingled roof and windows. We also had a Japanese style bridge over a fake stream made of blue black river stones. There were huge hollow logs that we pretended were our own horses like the ones that lived behind our house. Sometimes the logs were a foxhole for pretend soldiers or just a shady place to hang out. We also had swings, a teeter totter and a metal merry-go-round type ride with four seats that went in a circle. You could make it go as fast as you could by pushing and pulling the handlebars real hard.

All of the neighbor kids came over to play. That may have been why I don't remember going to any one's house until after I was about 8 or so. We had unspoken rules. We never had kids over when our father was home. Mom made sure we knew when he'd be home. We never let people come through the house. We always came in the side gate or the garage. We never wanted to subject our friends to what he might say or do.

Mom said she did it because she wanted us at home so she knew we were safe. She said she'd rather watch us play than wonder what we were up to. I wonder if we had seen the dynamics of other families we may have been better able to see that not ever father was like ours. If we had known maybe we could have done something to escape his wrath or maybe protect ourselves better.

Mom nearly always stepped between him and us. She took blows to save us from his potentially fatal attacks. At the time she was our hero whether we knew it or not at the time.