How Was Your Day?

"How was your day" was a forbidden question in my former home filled with abuse.  

I often wonder what my now adult sons actually remember.  And remember correctly.  I ask myself over and over again.  Have they literally blocked it out for survival in their present world?

The world without me in their lives.

I was listening to a television interview from the Today Show...about children and anxiety.  As it aired a most important issue, I heard a specialist with suggestions - sit down for dinner as a family.  And ask, "How was your day?"

We could not do that at 11 Piping Brook Lane in Bedford, our home then.  We were forbidden to talk during our dinner meal.  It would upset and disturb Robert - my then husband and the father of my two boys.  Should a word be said by any of us at the dinner table, there would have been hell to pay.  And I paid.

Robert wanted no family conversation at the dinner table.  In fact, right up until my divorce, he didn't even know what the names of the children's schools were, who their teachers were, and who most of their doctors were.  We only existed to him.

He purchased the best of the best headphones - I remember them distinctly. Huge.  And would sit at the dinner table more often than not with his noise cancelling headphones on, as he watched the television in the kitchen.  That was when the boys were too young to understand his demand for complete silence from them.  When they got older, Jason and Jared understood that they were not to utter a word during their meal.  And eating at separate times was not an option for Robert.  He wanted the salad on the table at exactly 4:30 pm.  Meal at 5 pm.  And kitchen "closed" at 6 pm.  That meant that anyone working in our home had to abide by this - or be fired.  That also meant that my children could not have normal playdates with other children at our home...the friends had to be picked up by 4:30 after school which did not allow for much time.

So many times, I received physical consequences at our dinner table.  Even in front of my children.  Almost always in front of my sons as though their father was teaching them a lesson, too.  Robert always referred to his "Rule Book."

Post traumatic stress allows me certain qualities.  One such "quality" is the ability to recall trauma like it is happening today.

Flashback, 1994:

Sitting at the kitchen table on a spring day, we were in the middle of eating our meals.  The phone rang (but we were not allowed to answer during dinner).  I heard the message playing on the answering machine.  It was from a friend, Idan Rozins.  She was asking a question about a piece of property in the neighborhood of her new home.  At the time, I had a real estate salesperson certification (I hated it).  I had absolutely no ambition to work because Robert would demand any money I earned anyway.  So, it wasn't like I was attaining any independence from his brutal control.

 After hearing her message, I opened my mouth at the dinner table as I sat with Robert, Jason, and Jared.  I asked my husband what he thought about the property at Winkler Farm in Bedford, down the road from us.

I remember the saliva forming at the corner of his mouth.  I remember the red Izod short sleeved shirt he had on as he rose to his full height from the dinner table.  Worse of all, I remember the terrified look in my son's eyes as his father raised a hand, voice screaming, and whacked me on the side of my head, right eye hurt first.  Jason fled the room, running upstairs to his bedroom, finding shelter from his father's tirade behind his closed bedroom door.

It was Jared who stayed with me in the kitchen.  It was Jared who grabbed the back of his father's shirt - my young son, who thought his 9 year old body could stop a 5'11", 190 pound man.

Raging and smacking me over and over again with one hand as he kept my head still as his target by pulling the back of my hair...my son witnessed this and shouted for his father to stop. So much crying.  My heart hurts so much just remembering it all.  The blows to my head were nothing compared to my son's wails as he saw his mother violently abused.  And this was not the first time he witnessed the abuse - nor would it be his last.

Robert took one arm and I remember him extending it fully to hit Jared in the chest - his small chest.  It made my son lose his balance as he backed into the kitchen island.  Then, like his brother had, Jared ran out of the room.  He ran upstairs behind the safety of his bedroom door.

Any live in housekeeper working in our house knew to stay in their wing of the house when we were eating dinner.  And somehow, they also knew that when they heard fighting and crying - they were to remain in their rooms and stay silent. 

So much for sitting together as a family and asking children...

"How was your day?"

One thing I did do for all those years, though - tuck my sons into bed each and every night they were home.  When they were in sleep away camp, on teen tours, or overnights at friends', I missed them terribly.  They were my only joys.  I tucked them in at night right up until the last night I saw them under that roof - when they were teenagers.  And every night, I would quietly ask them...

"Tell me three things that made you feel good today."

It was my own way of asking, "How was your day?"

By their bedsides.  Then, as I would kiss their foreheads before sleep took over -

"Goodnight.  I love you.  Sweet dreams."