Chapter 13

By the time Christmas came around, we hasd sort of enacted a fragile truce. Dad was no longer a bear who was constantly muttering threats, and I was not the morose brat. I still didn’t go out or do anything, but I wasn’t being nasty about it, either.

Mom was the best adjusted of the three of us. She was almost back to “normal” but there was still caution in her manner and actions when around us. But I seemed to have gained a bit of respect from her, and she was treating me less as a child, and recognizing I was transitioning into early adulthood.

It was our tradition that the immediate family exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve, and then we did the big gift thing on Christmas Day with the extended family. This year we were going to Palm Valley, just south of Jacksonville, to spend time with another part of the family on my mothers side. The rest of the family would show up throughout the day in time for dinner.

By now, I was ‘old news’ and the family had moved to other topics. College was one of them. My cousin Sean was getting a good scholarship at Florida State University (FSU) for football and everyone was really proud of him. When asked of my college plans, I said that I intended to apply at the College of Coastal Georgia. Since CCGA was fairly close to home and I could just go to classes and not have to pay for housing, if I continued to live at home. Major? At this time, “Undecided” was the designation. Like Melody had been doing, I would take the core classes that I could build on, later.

This mollified my family, especially my father.

Speaking of Melody, we emailed each other about once a week. Sometimes it was a brief message, other times, more in depth. Thankfully, she understood my reasons for what I had done. But she still told me that her uncle was dejected and not the same fun, happy man that he had been.

“Please tell him,” I wrote, “I love him. I will ALWAYS love him. I can’t see how I could ever stop loving him. Because of that love, I had to shield him from my father. What might happen next summer? I have no idea. I can only hope that we can maybe rebuild things.”

After that, I asked that she give my love to her mom and sister, and a tummy rub to Chica, I hit send.

As for Carol? Seems that she and Mike were doing great. They hadn’t reached the point of sleeping together, but by the way she described it, I was sure that the big event would be soon, especially as she had asked me some pointed questions.

“Use birth control!” I warned. “You CAN get pregnant the very first time! But if that happens, at least you have 3 names for boys and 3 names for girls that you can use!” She found that amusing. She also promised to hold onto the new cheerleader top that had been ordered for me. I would get it one day in the future, one way or another. The rest of the squad sent their love.

Just after Christmas, Dad bought these things called ‘cellular phones’ for himself and Mom. They were cute and reminded me of the communicators from Star Trek. Every time he opened his, I expected to hear chirping sounds and “Kirk to Enterprise!” They used it at midnight on New Year’s to call me from a party they were at. I guess they wanted to make sure I was still at home, watching the ball drop in Times Square. I had been invited to a few parties, but declined. “I’m still grounded.”

Two things of major significance happened just before Valentine’s Day. The first was an email from Melody. It had an attachment that when I opened it, was a wonderful picture of Pat, sitting on the front porch, holding Chica. He looked almost like his old self, with a soft smile and a loving look in his eyes.

“Is that him?”

I jolted out of the mental fog that I had allowed myself to fall in, as I studied the picture with longing. I hadn’t heard my mother come into my room.

“Yes.” I figured no sense in denying it and I wasn’t about to shut the computer off to hide it. “And that’s Chica.”

“He’s cute. I can see why you were attracted to him before you got to know him.” She took a deep breath and continued. “Patty, you’ll be 18 in a few months. And honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if you and your man reunited and headed off on a new adventure. Please don’t be angry with me, but I scheduled an appointment for you with Dr. Winslow on Thursday. I think you should go on birth control.”

Well! Knock me over with a feather, why don’t you! “Why?”

“Because I’m too young to be a grandmother! Be honest,” she laughed, “if he showed up, nobody would see either of you for a week and when we did, neither of you would be walking right.”

“OH MY GOD, MOM!”

“Oh, hush! You know I’m right. But sweetheart, I just want to help you be careful. Okay? I remember how it was with your father, how we would sneak off and...”

“STOP!” I held up a hand. “I really don’t need to hear about you and Dad, okay? But thanks for understanding.”

We exchanged a hug and a week later I was on the pill.

The other thing was one afternoon, while I was meeting with Crystal, she closed the notebook she had been scribbling in during our weekly counseling sessions and smiled.

“Patricia, please don’t take this the wrong way, but even with what happened last summer and the aftermath, I think that you’re one of the most well adjusted people I work with. Our weekly sessions are a delight, as we can talk about whatever you want to, even if it’s no longer your ‘angst’ as you like to say.”

“Thanks. Believe it or not, these sessions are sort of the highlight of my week.” I looked down at my hands in my lap. “You don’t judge me or try to persuade me in a particular direction. You let me talk freely and I know you do really want to help me. You actually listen to what I have to say about things. I’m very grateful.”

“You’re welcome. You’re growing up and we need to be honest. I have no magic ‘reset’ for your brain that will give the innocent child back to your father. I feel that your parents might also benefit from counseling. But due to potential conflicts of interest, they should probably meet with someone else.”

This made a great deal of sense. “What do you suggest?”

“I want to set up a two hour block of time for all of us to meet, together. There’s things I’m certain that you’ve shared with me, that they are unaware of. And on the other side, I can imagine that they have things they want to sharewith you, but are probably afraid to do so, because it would set things back so drastically for all of you. I would be here to act as a neutral third party, so maybe we can further clear the air?”

This was going to be way outside of my comfort zone. These meetings were sort of like a tiny island of sanity for me. But I knew that if I was going to have a real relationship with my parents again, this needed to happen.

“Well, since I’m grounded until 2020, it’s not like I have a lot of stuff on my social calendar. Okay.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Kellogg, I want to thank the both of you for making the time to be here today.”

It was an early Saturday afternoon and we were sitting at a round table that had a 48” diameter. My parents were holding hands on the table top.

“We love our daughter,” Mom started. “We just want her to be happy and for all of us to be okay again.” Dad just nodded.

“That is the goal, to some extent. However I want to let you know that we may cover topics today that you find uncomfortable with. I’m here to act as a neutral third party to help keep things on track. Please, no yelling, no threats and please allow whoever is speaking to say their piece. Okay?”

We all agreed.

“Can I start? Mom? Dad? Before we get going, I want to once again say how sorry I am for turning your life upside down last summer. It was monumentally selfish of me and foolish. Your fears were valid, and I was too immature to realize the potential danger that I had placed myself in. Again, I’m so sorry and I promise that I’ll never do something like this again.”

Tears were forming in my parents’ eyes.

“I vanished and you had no idea where I was, who I was with or what I was doing. I thought that sending the post cards would help a little, but I can see that in some ways they made it worse, because it was like you were grasping at straws, waiting for news and praying that they didn’t stop because that might mean something bad happened.”

“We lived for those cards,” Dad sighed. “This was so totally unlike anything we would have expected from you. Nobody had any idea that you had planned this. Total surprise. Like I’ve said before, if you had just told us how you were feeling, we would have tried to work with you on doing something. And as much as I hate to admit it, you’re right when you stated that standing in the Orlando sun all day to go on a few rides wasn’t a great option.”

“And you swore that you would never go on the ‘Small World’ ride again!” Mom laughed. At Crystal’s inquiry she continued. “You get on a boat thing and it goes around sections of what is supposed to represent nations of the world. All these cute little animated dolls spinning and moving and over the speakers you hear that song repeated over and over and over. After a while it makes you crazy! We went to Disney when Patty was six, she had to go on that ride about a dozen times because she liked it so much.”

“I bet that if they had played it to prisoners during Desert Storm, they would have gotten confessions from every member of the Republican Guard!” Dad rolled his eyes.

“Anyway, Patty, your mother and I lived in fear that we would never see you again, or that if you did manage to return to us, you would have been hurt. A father is duty bound, in his heart, to protect his children, his family, from all harm. In a way, this emasculated me, because you took that ability from me, and I couldn’t bear to face it again.”

“Again?”

Tears were flowing as my parents looked at each other. Mom continued. “You are not my first child.”

Thunderstruck.

“We never told anyone, but your father and I eloped when we were in college. I was pregnant. We decided to get married and have the baby. Respective grandparents would just have to accept it. They didn’t know that I was living with your father in an apartment. They thought I lived on campus. My room mate just took a message if anyone called.”