Back in 2001, after I moved back to Alaska to be my mother’s caregiver, we spent a lot of time chatting about our life experiences. One day we began talking about the domestic violence she experienced by my father.
There were times that he would get mad and beat her so badly that he’d knocked her out, and then he’d leave for a week or two. As I said in my book, he didn’t know whether she was dead or alive. When he came back, he never apologized and acted like nothing happened.
She told me about an incident when she was pregnant with me while living in Philadelphia. She went on to say, “I was in my 8th month of pregnancy with you when your father became very angry with me. I don’t even remember why he was angry,” she said. “I never knew what was going to set him off, it always seemed so petty.” For the next few minutes, she lowered her head and sat quietly. Then she lifted her head, and with tears in her eyes, she whispered, “He kicked me in my stomach, and I fell to the floor and he kicked me again. I tried to protect you by rolling to my side and wrapping my arm around my pregnant stomach. He kicked me in the back and my legs. I lay there in fear as he turned and walked out of the house.”
“Oh, my God, Mom!” I was stunned and shocked by what she told me. I could see him in my mind’s eye because I saw him beat her so many times. I started to cry too, and I just wrapped my arms around her and we cried together. We sat there motionless and didn’t say anything more. After a few minutes, I stood up and said, “How about I make us a snack?”
That night I lay in bed, remembering the times he beat her. She wore many black and blue marks over the years. My heart just broke for her, being so abused by him. That night, I cried myself to sleep.
Two weeks later I had gotten an eye infection and had to go to the eye doctor. The doctor was a woman in her thirties or early forties. She was about my height and had medium length brown hair. She greeted me and I followed her back to her exam room. She looked closely at both my eyes, mentioning, “Well, you definitely have an eye infection in both eyes.” She continued to examine my eyes and said, “I see some scar tissue on the optic nerve of your left eye. Did you get hit with a baseball when you were very young?”
“No,” I replied, “but I am blind in that eye and have been since birth. I do have some vision but can’t read with it.”
“So, you weren’t hit with a ball?” she asked. “What ever happened, you had to be very young to have this amount of scar tissue because your optic nerve is damaged.”
“Oh! I think I know what happened. Several weeks ago, my mother told me that when she was eight months pregnant with me, my father kicked her in the stomach.”
The doctor blurted out, “That’ll do it!” She went on to explain, “That late in the pregnancy, your head is large, rigid, and tightly packed within the uterus. This means there is less fluid to cushion your head against that direct kick to your mother’s uterus. That’s what caused the damage to your optic nerve.”
When I arrived home, I told my mother what the doctor said. She began crying and we hugged. I quietly announced, “Well, at least we know.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I took her hands in mine and responded, “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. It’s in the past, done, and over.”
