WRITING CORNER
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Although we support fiction as a whole and this is what this website is based upon, most fiction novels are based on reality.

Our September/October subject of conversation is:

• Summer experience

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Use the form below. Upon review by our staff, we will post them on this site.

WRITING CORNER

PILLARS OF STRENGTH & HOPE
written Aug. 30/08 - New Market, Ontario

Five years ago, I was sixteen and the pain I felt back then seemed insurmountable.

I lived a good life up until then – good parents, one older brother and one younger sister. We had a family that got along really well and did everything together. But like a bolt of lightning in a thundering sky, it all changed and no one saw it coming.

My mother left us. She didn’t go very far and took only her clothes and my sister with her, but we felt the distance as if it she was living over seas somewhere.

So, we were left two boys with Dad. Dad became angry and mad at the whole world. He blamed everyone for what happened to him and we stood by him through it all. We felt his pain and anger and with time, it became our own pain and anger. He would talk to us every night as we sat down around the kitchen table and told us stories about our mother that seemed outrageous at first, but we believed him. He was our Dad. He had actually made a pact with us and the words still resonate in me like a warning of danger that lurks ahead. “Together we stand, divided we fall.” Time and time again, those words were repeated and although, the true meaning of the words, fall within perimeters of true faith, the context we had used it for was for hurt and devastation. We had promised him that we would not talk to our mother ever. We were allowed to talk to our sister, but at any point in time that Mom interjected, we were to hang up the phone. And so we lived our life in anger and frustration, secluded, hateful and resentful for what had happened to us. We were the soldiers under Hiltler’s regime and my mother was the all-hated Jew. And how he hated her. And we saw everything through his eyes.

For four years, we hated our mother and her family and we even got to hate our sister because she had decided to live with Mom. The court proceeding lasted two long years, and every time Dad attended, he came back angrier than he ever was, if that was at all possible. We even stopped him from shooting her, one day, when the court ruled for him to pay my mother’s lawyers fees. He had the gun in his hand and was ready to drive to her house and do her in. We stopped him, not because we were on my mother’s side, but because we wanted to be with him. We loved him. If he would end up in prison, that would not be possible. His increasing anger spread like a virus in us, and we became three of a kind.

Years back, we had been a loving catholic family but my mother leaving had turned our home drastically and literally into a “House of Devil Worshippers,” for we condemned God for what had happened to our family. We began drinking and swearing and thinking of ways to hurt our mother.

Then I woke up. I was just out of high school and decided to take one year off and join the working force. I began working at a Used Bookstore. That was the only job I could find, but it was a job that served many purposes. It provided me with spending money – it was minimum wage, but it was mine. It also provided me with a break from all the anger I felt at home. It became a place of refuge for me and I began accepting overtime shifts. I loved Dad, but my heart didn’t have room for any more hatred for I felt like it would burst, and my mind needed to be filled with other thoughts that didn’t revolve around ending a life, which sometimes was my own.

So here I am in a Bookstore serving many customers and interacting with most of them as to what was a good read. One day, an older man walks in and begins browsing. His face was familiar, but I just couldn’t pin point where I had seen him before. Day after day, he came in. He browsed, bought one book and exited. Every day, it was a book with a title that seemed a bit odd that a seventy year old would pick, but everyone has their preferences and these appealed to him. I never questioned him on it and he would walk out as if he was proud of his daily purchase. After a month, my curiosity took over. He was the only one in the store and he approached the cash with yet another odd choice. As bold as I had been taught to be by my dear father, I questioned him. “You come in every day and every day you purchase a book not necessarily from the same author, that has the word “Devil” in the title. You must really like those books?

He lifted up his head and I looked in his big brown eyes as he answered my question. “I hate them.”

I was shocked by his answer and paused for a moment. “If you hate them, then why do you buy them?”

“To burn.”

“To burn?” I was once again shocked, but there was truth in his eyes.

“I burn them, so no one else will read them. There’s enough hate in this world, without having books that directly link us to the underworld. The underworld, my son is the devil’s home. The books I chose are those that subconsciously might have a serious negative impact on someone else’s life. What we see is usually what we live by.”

He walked away and left. I was so taken by his words that it sent my mind racing. Racing back home. Racing back to where I lived and the hate that reigned so distinctly in there.

That night I went home and looked at my library. It was full of books with titles that had the words “Hate, Devil, Temptation, Evil” and the list went on. I left them there, but didn’t sleep a wink for all that was in my mind was that older gentleman and his words.

Eager to go to work the next day, I woke up early only to find my father sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of beer in his hands.

“Son, sit down and chat with me for a bit.”

I sat down and for once in four years I was really listening to my father’s words. He was bad-mouthing my mother, yet again, telling me how much he hated her and wanted her dead for what she did to him. He went on about her family and my “little witch of a sister” as he called her and speaking about nothing but the hatred he had for them. I never said a word, but tears began forming in my eyes. It was time to go.

I got up immediately, kissed him on the forehead, grabbed my jacket and left without saying a word.

I opened up the Bookstore and fifteen minutes later the old guy came in. He reached on a shelf and to my surprise came to the cash with a book title that was out of the ordinary.

“Are you burning this one too?”

“Nope, I’m reading it.” He looked at me with his big brown eyes and said, “You should do the same.” Then he grabbed the book and exited once again.

Knowing there was another copy of “My Sister’s Keeper” on the shelf, I grabbed it and started reading. It brought tears to my eyes with every written word. No one was coming in to the bookstore and that was odd, but I kept on reading. I finished the book during my shift, eating up every word and tears sporadically rolling down my face. No one had come in, except the old guy during my entire shift.

I got up and walked to the door and noticed that all the stores around were closed. Then it dawned on me. It was a Thanksgiving. Everything is closed on Thanksgiving. I wasn’t even supposed to come in.

I went home and went straight to bed, knowing we hadn’t given Thanks to anything in four years and this Holiday would not prove any different. Dad came knocking and wondered if I was feeling okay.

“I’m fine…I’m just tired,” I said. He looked at me seriously and suspiciously and said just a few words before closing the door. “You’ve changed.”

I slept like a baby that night. In four years, I don’t remember ever sleeping that well.

The next day, I felt transformed. It felt like a big load had been finally released off my shoulders. I went to work and during my bus ride, I was seeing things in a different light. I wasn’t judging the people that stepped in or out, like I had done every other time before, instead I found myself looking at their qualities. I came up with a quality for everyone that entered the bus and I felt proud of myself for being perhaps the only one that did.

When I got to work, the old guy was waiting and once again he shocked me. In the months I had been working there, I had never known him to be a priest.

He grabbed a book and came to the cash.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were a priest?”

“Does it matter who I am? If I had told you would you have talked to me?”

My response was the only truthful word that had come out of my mouth in years. “No.”

He winked at me, turned around and left. I never saw him enter the bookstore again.

My life changed from that moment on. After my shift, I called my father to tell him that I was going to be home late. He asked me what I was up to, but all I told him was that I had things to take care of. It took me two hours to get the nerve to do what I was going to do. My shame seemed insurmountable. But the old man’s truthful eyes made me reach for the ringer.

My mother opened up the door and upon seeing me instantly began to cry and hugged me with such tenderness that my heart burst in a million pieces and the darkness in my soul was replaced by such brightness, it was hard for me to keep it together. I didn’t. I bawled four years worth and so did my mother and sister.

After a half hour of uncontrollable tremors, shaking chins and a flood of tears, we all finally took a grip of ourselves and began speaking to each other.

Mother began.

“I don’t want to bad-mouth your Dad. I know you love him. Let me say what I have to say, only once and then we’ll let it go. I need to speak the truth.”

This was her story; I never once gave her a chance to tell me, until now.

“Three years before I left, your Dad and I had marital problems. The reasons for the problems need not be shared. We weren’t getting along at all, but in front of our children and family, we learned to become very good actors. We had both agreed that we would not whisper any hint of this, especially in front of you kids. We tried to work it out, but your Dad started to become impatient with it all. The progress we had made on the marriage dissipated when his constant want to control everything around him became an issue I could no longer live with. He wanted to control our sex life, literally forcing me to do things I didn’t want to do anymore. He wanted to control me every step of the way. I wanted to stay at home and be with my children, even though your father and I didn’t get along, but he forced me out. If I wasn’t going to share his bed every day and do everything he told me to do, was when he decided to force his way into getting me to do it. The more he pushed, the more I wanted to go. I stayed longer than I should have…but it was due to my children. When you were at school, life at home was hell. The moment you came into the house, life in your eyes was normal. And we pretended, until I made the decision to finally end it. He threatened me sexually and physically. If I wanted to continue to be a good mother to you children, I had to leave. I knew if I had stayed things would have gotten progressively worse.”

“When you were at home, why didn’t you tell us what you were going through?”

“Would you have believed me?” she asked looking directly in my eyes.

The question made me cry. Never once, had we given our mother a second chance. Never once, had any of us attempted to sit with her and discuss the issue. We were just pissed off that she had left and never once did we every think there was another side to the story.

“Probably not.” I responded with such shame, it hurt.

“I prayed every day to have all my children back in my life. It took a long time for you to come and it might take much longer for the last one, but I’ll never stop praying. Your father decided to implicate the children in the issue that we were having and that was not necessary. My belief is that the divorce should have never involved all of you. But my belief is that your father needed to hide behind his children to try and convince himself that the marriage break-up had nothing to do with him whatsoever and therefore put all the blame on me.”

She paused.

“One more question, before we end it for good?” my mother said.

“Why is it that your sister was implicated in this whole scenario? Her choosing to live with me had no bearing on what has happened between your father and I. Instead she was cast aside, just like I was as if we were the plague.”

I looked at my sister and immediately thought of the book I had just read. I reached over and hugged her and asked for her forgiveness.

And immediately her response was “I forgive you.”

I stayed for a few more hours and we chatted about what the future holds for us. When I left, I felt horrible again. I had to face my father to tell him what I had done.

I entered the house and he was sitting in his usual spot – at the end of the table with a bottle of beer in his hands.

I sat down and told him about my night with Mom. After only a few words spoken, he looked at me straight in my eyes and said, “You disappoint me.”

I paused and took a deep breath. “I’m sorry you feel that way Dad, but I had to see her.”

Without letting me finish what I wanted to say, he interrupted and said: “Maybe it’s time you go live with her then.” And he swigged back the remainder of his beer.

It has been six months since I last spoke to my Dad. I tried on numerous occasions to call him, but he immediately hangs up on me. I now live with my mother and my sister. Our home is a happy home. My other brother has slowly, but yet secretively come around. He says he did it for me, but I know he did it for himself. He knows life with mom is a much happier place than at Dad’s right now. My brother enjoys himself when he comes around and it feels like we have a family once again. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving.

There are a few morals to my true-to-life story:

1. Things aren’t always what they seem to be.2. There are always two sides to every story.3. Children of divorced parents should never take one side over the other.4. If hatred is a predominant reality in your home, you’re on the wrong path.5. Listen with your heart and soul.6. If you’ve loved someone all your life, then your love cannot change for that person overnight.7. Everyone makes mistakes in life and we must all learn to forgive.

I’m now twenty-one and studying to become a priest. I had never seen my old friend in the bookstore ever again, until now. He is my guide in priesthood and the angel who came and saved my life. I will always be grateful to him for changing the hate in my soul, to pure goodness. By the way, he never burned the books. He has them all lined up on the bookshelves in his room. He loves to read a good crime fiction novel for the protagonist usually prevails which proves to him that good rules over evil. He had only said that for my benefit for he felt the anger and hatred within me.

My mother is alive and well and I love her to pieces. In my heart I should have never strayed from her love, but I am the Prodigal son and she has done exactly what the Bible story depicts. She has greeted me with open arms and has never once stopped loving me.

She was a victim of abuse, verbally and physically, but has regained her strength by leaving control and hatred behind and concentrating on love and forgiveness. Her faith in God gave her back her children. It took years, but we are all by her side, including a new addition to the family – my seventy-year-old angel. To this day, she continuously tells all of us not to leave our Dad behind. She knows first hand how it feels to be left behind and believes no one in this world should ever be victim to that.

My father is still drinking and hates the world, which now includes all his children for now my brother has joined us. I continue to pray for him to find his way back and I believe in my heart he will. It might take some time, but I know he will.

My purpose in life is clear. My experiences can now become strength and hope for those of you in similar situations. Don’t be a victim of divorce, but be a pillar that stands tall and erect. Walk away from hatred and evil thoughts. Love and support both your parents. In my story, we were the fuel that kept the fires of hatred going. We should have never put ourselves in the middle of the situation. Everyone makes mistakes and that was mine.

I have no need to claim this story or make any money from it. My hope is that it will travel the world and perhaps help one person find his/her way back home.

Remained Anonymous,

PS: Have faith and let it be your guide. I’ll see you in my travels.

Anne - Vancouver Canada

My summer experience is a wonderful one. Got myself a new husband, dog and house - all in that order. My husband is a wonderful man. My dog is a doberman and my house is located in the foothills of Vancouver with a breathtaking view. Love my life!

Fred - Toronto, ON

My summer experience was to the contrary. Awful...awful...awful. Can't wait for the year to end. I was stuck in a hospital all summer and totally devastated that my father had only a few months to live. Like I said...awful

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