The Blind Side (Revisions)
For the last few days, I've been struggling to compile my thoughts. It's a difficult task to articulate everything that's gone on in the span of a year. I've been thinking that the more things change, the more they stay the same. But, that isn't true at all. Not really.
A year ago I saw the film, The Blind Side, with my then long-term boyfriend. I slept over at his house that Thursday night. It was the first time I'd been home in months and I was exhausted and mentally abused from finals at Grand Valley. I had made new friends and I was reconsidering my life. This is probably the BIG SHOCK moment everybody has when they realize they're about to graduate and lack any real life experience.
Greg called about an hour after I'd gotten home, he'd planned dinner and a movie like a champ. We agreed on The Blind Side because we thought anything involving football and Sandra Bullock had to be a winning combination. It was! We both reveled about it's likeness to a 2 hour Under Armour advertisement. The following day, we went Christmas shopping for his family. At Wal-Mart the auto checkout ate his $20 and it took over ten minutes for a capable employee to unjam the machine. I got home mid-afternoon. We sat around talking about the Red Wings game with my mom and sister. The dogs were terribly feisty. Greg went home. I started cleaning for the holidays, I always did that when I got home for a break.
I told my mom, "The Blind Side is the first film I've seen in theatres in ages that was actually worth the expense." Who doesn't love Sandra Bullock? Seriously, she's gorgeous, clever, and witty. At this point, I had no idea that the night before was to be the last day of my seemingly "normal" existence. Things at home had been rough, financial breakdown had led to a lot of mental disrepair. My father had been absent much of the time. I, guiltily, often thought the house ran smoother when he wasn't around. He was always a bit of a complainer and a slob. I thought this was because he was always working so hard. He was gone so much and he probably didn't get much of a break between flights and driving all hours in unfamiliar places.These are the things you do to support your family.
He was supposed to be that patriarchal figure that you tolerate not because he's your flesh and blood but because he's your father and you love him.
He was expected home from Wisconsin sometime that night. It was snowy and blowy and awful outside.
Mum left on an adventure with Aunt Renee, they were "making some last minute Christmas purchases." I wasn't allowed to join them. I stayed home, on task doing laundry for my mother. She had asked that we keep the washer going until the GIANT pile was tackled.
The phone rings, my mother asks if my father's arrived yet; nope. Then, she asks to speak with my sister. I hand the phone over.
I kept the laundry going, like tending the coals of a fire you don't want to burn out. There was an urgency in the dryer's tumbling. My folded piles were heaping over the chairs and couch until I decided to put them away. I couldn't remember which drawer was for my father's unmentionables. Over the years, the top two drawers alternated between being socks or underwear, I had both and more in my arms when I peaked into his dresser. The top: Empty. The next: Still empty. Strange. I thought surely one of these drawers would tell me what to place where.
This didn't feel right. Something is terribly off. Those panic attacks at school, the constant worrying, the never ending frets.
Something in my life was terribly amiss and it didn't hit me until I tore open the remaining drawers of my father's dark cherry-wood dresser. All empty. Not one item of clothing. Nothing. There was not a piece of his wardrobe to be found.
I started down the hallway, so calmly, so rationally. As I entered the family room, I finally shout, "Lauren." Not as an exclamatory, just calling her name like I would any other day about any meaningless thing. She comes into view, she's sitting in a chair at her laptop and she gazes up at me. "Lauren, did dad move out?" Again, my tone is normal. I'm asking a simple question. There's no shock or horror in the phrase. At this moment, it seems perfectly natural that my father would have just moved out on us. There's relief in the thought that he might have left. I wish it had been so simple.
Lo starts slowly, her eyes move wildly, she looks bewildered. Tears well in her eyes, her face reddens and hesitantly she says, "We didn't want to tell you, Mom didn't want to tell you." I'm listening but it doesn't compute. More questions are being raised in my head. I hate to see my sister cry. We're both crying, twenty-year-old children crying together. I think I hugged her next, she hates being touched. I wait before telephoning my mother, my childlike urgency was there but I almost didn't want to know. Lauren answers what she can of my questions but she doesn't know all that much.
After an hour, I pick up the phone and call my mother. She says, "We'll be home right away." I call my father to hear his sickly sweet business greeting, "Hello, you've reached Mike Ruhland. I'm unavailable right now, please leave your name and I'll get back to you." That's typical of them and has been for my entire life. My mother always answers and my father's voice-mail always catches me.
Like Sandra Bullock's dirt bag ex-husband my father'd been sleeping around too. Sexual deviant. Breaker of matrimonial vows. He hadn't moved out of his own accord, he'd been banished in accordance with an agreement before my entering the world.
The empty drawers left me blind sided.
It's been a year now. My life is no better and no worse for everything that's happened, it just kind of is.
So you see, the more things change, the more they stay the same after all.
Faithfully Yours,
Keegan Dale