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I sighed. Then looked at her. “Faith, I don't feel up to being a go-between for you with Dad. It's too, too stressful.”

“Mom, the pain is terrible. I
really need
something to ease it.” She came over, bent down and opened her mouth to expose the sore area. “Look.” It was, indeed, red and swollen.

I looked closely at her and saw the misery in her eyes. Pain. She had a legitimate need.

I called Dan. He bristled but said, “Come to the worksite and pick up some cash. I wish she'd get a job and some insurance.” He hung up.

I felt squashed by it all. Like a bug.

Would it never end?

My health began slipping. Depression sank its teeth deeply into me.

“What's wrong? It's Faith, isn't it?” Dan asked when he saw me silently withdraw to my room.

“Nothing. I'm just tired.” But he always knew. Could see it in my eyes and sense it in my tension.

Then he would march off to find her and launch into a diatribe of everything he'd done for her for the past ten years and remind her of all the problems she'd heaped upon us and our home.

Being of similar drives, they ended up yelling at each other.

“I'll get out of this God forsaken
prison
before nightfall !” Faith would scream.

“Good! I'll help you pack!” he would shout back.

Only thing, we all knew Faith had nowhere to go. And she knew that we knew it. She was utterly dependent upon her father and me.

And she hated it. She resented us for it.

Dan and I would shake our heads, wondering if the old proverb was, after all, true:
No good deed goes unpunished.

And we hated it because she was stealing our life. Our peace.

Our golden-years' togetherness.

Our space.

But worst of all, the father-daughter alliance had been mangled beyond recognition.

Would it ever be restored?

I wondered, will Dan ever be able to forgive Faith?

“
We each need our own little corner of the universe.”

— Deede Stowe

 

 

There were times when Faith and I did connect. And when it happened, it was wonderful and fulfilling. She loved going to visit Mom with me.

“Noni,” she sat on the big, comfortable child-proof sofa next to my mother, holding her hand, “you are so beautiful.” And she was.

Noni, pronounced Noh-nee, was Mom's choice of name when she first became a grandmother.

“Aw, pshaw,” Mom said, blushing with pleasure and squeezing Faith's hand. “You're the one who has the family beauty, Faith.”

“Thanks, Noni,” Faith leaned over to kiss the smooth cheek. “But I hope I look as good as you when I'm your age.”

Mom chuckled and I could tell she was pleased beyond measure. “Oh, you will, dear. Just take care of yourself. Are you still reading good books?”

“Sure am,” Faith replied, picking up her iced tea from the coffee table and taking a long pull off it. “I just finished reading the Charles Dickens book you lent me.”

“
A Tale of Two Cities
?”

“
Oliver Twist
. I enjoyed it. Thanks for your continued efforts, trying to shape me into a cultured lady,” Faith said, laughing.

“No trying to it,” Mom insisted in her school teacher voice she'd used for over forty years. “You
are
a lady, Faith.”

“'Fraid not, Noni.” It was Faith's time to blush. “I wish.”

Faith's subjugation to Mom was to me, and will ever remain, a wonder. I can see why because, I, too, adore my mother and submit to her like a love-starved kitten. It's just that Faith does not easily select and pay homage to those worthy of admiration. Period.

“No,” Mom insisted, patting her hand. “You are what you want to be, honey. Underneath all that junk you carried around for a while, beats the heart of a fine lady. And don't you forget it.”

On the way home, Faith reached over to take my hand. “I love you, Mama,” she said. “I'm so lucky to have Noni, too. She's so —
special,
isn't she?”

“Yes,” I replied, feeling tears gather behind my eyes. “She is.”

“I miss Papa Eagle,” she said, gently squeezing my hand.

“Me, too,” I said. “Noni's handled his death well, don't you think?” Better than me, I sometimes thought.

“Yeah.” Then she chuckled, “but then, she tells us that Eagles always fly high.”

“Lots of wisdom there. We do fly over the clouds when it's called for.”

Then Faith did something she rarely did anymore, she laid her head over on my shoulder and asked softly, “Do you love me?”

“I sure do.”

“How much?” she asked in her little girl's voice, “This much?” She held up her hands to measure width.

I chuckled, reminiscing over our little ritual from her childhood.

“Honey,” I said, “more than you'll ever know.”

“No, Faith, you cannot drive the car to the store,” Dan snapped, tired and irritated and just having walked in the door after a hot afternoon of outside work. I whiffed the odor of tar on him as he passed. Asphalt has its own unique aroma.

“But, Dad,” Faith plodded on, “it's only a mile away. I'll be really careful and — ”

“It's not going to happen,” Dan said over his shoulder as he walked away. His take was
give Faith an inch and she'll take over completely.

I could not disagree with that assessment.

“I'll take you,” I quickly volunteered, going for my car keys.

Once inside the VW, as we drove to the nearby Lil' Cricket, Faith said, “Mom, it's really hard being cooped up like a twelve-year-old. And, worse, being treated like one.”

“I understand, honey. I really do. But remember that you
did
ruin several of our vehicles when we let you drive them.” I tried to stick to the immediate issue, which was, in this case, our refusal to allow Faith to drive our vehicles. So I avoided the twelve-year-old reference, knowing that it could, in moments, evolve in a quagmire.

“That was
then.
I'm
clean
now, Mama. Why won't Dad trust me again?”

“That comes with time. Just be patient.”

Things between Faith and her father escalated so I began in earnest to hide from Dan any crisis between Faith and me so as not to add fuel to the illustrious fire. Dan's take on Faith and her current status in our home was at odds with my own. Theirs became vicious clashes with neither backing down in their heat, saying such terrible things that I would often get in my car and drive off until it was over.

I felt the love/hate thing in my bones, smelled it, tasted it and grew desperate to extinguish the bitterness.

One day, I overheard Faith talking on her cell phone with an old friend, one from her teen years, before her drug days. About an hour later, she came into my office and asked, “Mama, can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” I said, recognizing a real need for my attention and swiveling my computer chair so that I faced her. She sat down opposite me in another chair. “What's up?”

“I've been talking with Freddie Muntz, remember him from high school?”

“Sure do. Nice guy.”

“Well, somehow, we got to talking about Dad. You know, Freddie always liked Dad, ever since Daddy helped him dig his car out of the muddy ditch one day. He really began to relate all the good deeds he saw Daddy do and — ” She stopped and her eyes filled with tears. “Suddenly, Mama, I saw my father through his eyes. I do have a wonderful Dad.” She began to cry then, great sobs of regret.

When she finally wound down and took a deep drag of air into her lungs and released it, she cut those marvelous, near translucent blue eyes at me, red and swollen
now, and desperate. “Do you think he'll ever see me in a new light, Mama? Really?”

“Ah, honey, I think so.”

Tears gathered again and her voice trembled. “I pray he will. I miss my Daddy.”

And for a long time, when I had my morning devotions, Faith would join me and we would pray together for family unity. I watched her hope grow and, behind the scenes, saw Dan's stance against being her “enabler” grow more rigid.

I felt torn in two.

My heart nearly broke.

Faith went all out trying to win back her father's affection in those coming months. I watched and waited.

And prayed. Oh, how I prayed that Dan would get a new perspective of his daughter. I watched her present him little gifts and surprises, watched him turn them away. Not hatefully. His was an apathetic attitude, stuck in the mentality of “I will not be her enabler.” And in his dysfunctional view of things, any softening toward her would result in her taking advantage of him.

It was the quintessential “all or nothing” mentality of a dysfunctional.

I watched, horrified at times, not knowing what to do to defuse the one-sided standoff.

On other days, sieges of conscience and emotional need would strike Faith, rendering her so humble and contrite that I hardly recognized her. She would hug me all throughout the day with an endless stream of “I love
you” and reaching out to Dan. “Daddy, can I bring you some coffee?”

“Here, Mama, taste this.” She offered me bites of most dishes she tackled and actually cooked a lot. Was, in fact, a great cook. In her depressive condition, food became her entire world and pounds began packing back on her long frame. She managed to acquire food stamps, which helped tremendously during our own financial struggles and her jobless existence. We never used the food card. Only Faith used it to buy things she loved. She was generous with the goodies, always offering Dan servings.