All posts by Elise Walsh

“You’re not my daughter anymore.”

“You’re not my daughter anymore.”

“Okay.”
“I am not your father.”
“Okay.”
“Do not try to contact me or your grandparents.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe someday we can have a relationship again, but not as father and daughter.”
“Okay.”

I had a wonderful childhood. My brother and I got good grades, played sports, never got in trouble. We were “good kids.” I don’t have many bad memories or scars that I’ve carried with me, that is, until my parents told us they were getting a divorce. We had no idea it was coming. It didn’t seem like my parents were fighting. The way it happened was so matter-of-fact. Two houses, two Christmases, two TVs; two of everything. It sounded fine: we would spend half our time with mom and half with dad, and we were all pretty okay with it. I wish I’d known then how not okay it really was.

After the divorce, my father got more involved at our Episcopalian church.  We had always been religious: my brother and I went to Sunday school; we were in the youth group led by my father. But, when the church allowed female priests and then accepted homosexuals, my father decided we were leaving. We went back to our previous non-denominational fundamentalist church and things at home got more religion focused.  We noticed my dad’s behavior changing but nothing too weird.

My brother and I were now teenagers and I was in high school. Teenagers are moody, teenagers have emotions, they like to ask questions, mostly hard questions. This was not okay with my father. He tried to deal with our “insolence” by having more household rules, more chores, and more “family meetings.”

He started bad-mouthing my mom, telling us that she was a terrible person and that she was evil.  He blamed her for leaving him and claimed she was having an affair with another man. He hated her and now we could see it. (My mom told us later that she had been dealing with this for a long time but had tried not to bring us into it.)

He was so angry; he called social services and claimed my mom was forcing us to get drunk because we were allowed to have wine with dinner despite being under-aged. (But “have wine with dinner” actually only meant special occasions where we could basically have one sip if we wanted.) We were called to the counselor’s office to talk to a Social Worker; which was mortifying. He was furious when nothing came of it, and called the cops. When they explained that responsible alcohol consumption supervised by a parent or guardian in the home is not something the police deal with, my dad tried to make us swear to God we would never drink again. I swore to not drink till I was 21.

Around the same time, my dad had started dating a woman from our church. I’m not going to deny that my brother and I were hostile and not as welcoming as we could have been—she said she wasn’t trying to replace our mother, but it was very hard to not feel guilty doing things with her and not our Mom.

Then, my father proposed. We were not okay with it. Things had already been so tense between all of us in the house, we felt like an addition to the family would only make it worse. When she broke off their engagement, my dad told us it was our fault, that we had not been nice to her. But we had never been mean to her. Looking back though, maybe we were cold and we hadn’t sought out any interaction with her specifically. My dad felt we weren’t trying hard enough. But we thought that their relationship was moving too fast and we were struggling to adjust.

They did eventually get married. And that’s when the rules really took off: my stepmother didn’t work and had sleeping problems so I was grounded for washing the dishes before I left for school because it was too loud. The next week I was grounded for leaving a dirty knife in the kitchen sink in the morning. Our bedroom doors had to remain open at all times, but their door was shut and locked and they rarely interacted with us except at family meetings or scheduled activities. My brother and I had to have our laundry done before we went to our mother’s house, but we couldn’t do laundry together because it was inappropriate for him to see my underclothes.

So my brother and I began leading double lives: trying to be Christian angels in one house and regular kids in another. I tried to be the “good” daughter my father wanted, but his rules kept changing. It seemed no matter how hard I tried to do everything right, I would always make a mistake. This led to curfews and check-in calls and extra Bible study at home as punishment.

Not long after they got married, my father and stepmother started watching an evangelical minister on TV instead of going to church. My brother and I were not comfortable with watching a TV minister, but my father informed us that the hierarchy was: “God, me, your stepmother, you”—since he was closest to God, we had to do what he said. I believed in God, I knew what Christianity was. It was forgiveness and love and sharing the gift of salvation. What my father was living was not Christianity to me.

We started getting depressed. My father was telling us we were sinners, not true Christians, because we kept making mistakes and never seemed to learn. My mom ran as much defense as she could. And she was amazingly supportive; really, we couldn’t wait to go to her house and escape from my dad’s. We could see that what my dad was doing was wrong, but we were “good kids,” and we certainly didn’t want to lose our dad. He loved us after all, and we loved him, so we went along. And, yet, he knew we didn’t really believe the things he believed and it was getting harder and harder to fake it. But I couldn’t find a way to articulate this to him.

My dad and I finally went to a Christian counselor that he had picked.  I let it all out. I told my dad how hurt I was, how he never thought of our side and never considered that maybe we had our own ideas or relationships with God that he wasn’t a part of. I asked him to be more understanding and not take out his anger at my mom on us. The counselor agreed with me. He told my dad to work on being more forgiving and patient with us. My dad was convinced it was a complete waste of time and that the counselor was obviously a quack. We never went to counseling again.

The dysfunction in our relationship finally came to a head at the end of my senior year. I had asked my mom to chaperone my last field trip but it was on a day my dad had custody. The day before the trip, I mentioned that my mom was chaperoning and my dad lost it. He said that this was the “last straw.” He called my mom and made her cancel. He made me ask my teacher if he could go instead. He didn’t care that he had never chaperoned anything before and that it was special to me that my mom chaperone this last one. He accused me of always choosing my mom over him.  He was probably right.

As High School drew to a close, I was accepted into a private college across the country. My dad disapproved of me going to an “expensive” school—really he disapproved of me going to college altogether. He believed I should get married immediately, start having kids and be the perfect Christian wife. I didn’t have everything figured out but I was pretty sure I wasn’t interested in that path. After the chaperoning incident, he told me that I had to move out the day after graduation. I didn’t fight him. I didn’t say anything really. What else was there to say?  I couldn’t handle the confrontation anymore.

My dad and stepmom didn’t come to my high school graduation. My stepmom felt I had betrayed them. The following day, I moved out. They made me leave anything they had ever given me as gifts.

I didn’t see them again until the end of that summer, my dad took my brother and me to the park to say goodbye. He hugged me and wished me well and I cried, unsure about the future. This was the last time I saw my father.

The night before I left for college, he called me. He told me he never should have hugged me when he said goodbye to me. He told me I was not the kind of person he could call his daughter. To this day, a lot of that conversation is fuzzy. I think I was in shock. All I could say was “Okay.” He hung up and I just sat there.

I was sad, I was angry, I felt betrayed, but more than anything, I couldn’t believe that a religion really meant more to him than family. After a few days, I was relieved. I had been living in fear and stress and anxiety for years. Now I was free.

Wouldn’t it be great if the story just ended there, with me feeling free? It doesn’t. The mental abuse stuck with me. I didn’t drink again till I was 21 because I was afraid my dad would find out and then we would never be able to reconcile. In hindsight, I was more damaged than I could admit.

A few years ago, my stepmother sent me an email. She said the hurt had gone on long enough and that she hoped we could put it all behind us. I assume this was due to some sermon that struck a chord. I replied that I agreed and was willing to start over but that since my dad had ended our relationship, I had to hear from him that that was what he wanted.  I never heard back from either of them.

But the wound had been reopened, so I decided that I would take the first step. I wrote my dad an email. I said I was sorry for the way things ended, that we both made mistakes and that I would be willing to start a new relationship.

His response was one sentence: “How have you changed your life so that what happened before will not happen again?”

I deleted the email.

I had—have—regrets. I lost my father. He didn’t see me graduate from college. He didn’t walk me down the aisle when I got married. He won’t meet his future grandchildren. They won’t have a grandfather. I lost half of my family. And I foolishly hoped for a long time that he would see that he had made a mistake.

Two years ago I found out that my grandmother had passed away. I should have found out about my grandmother’s death from my father, I should have had the opportunity to go to her funeral, to mourn her, but I didn’t. Because I didn’t even learn of her death until months after it happened, when, by chance, my now husband Googled her name.

That was what finally sealed it for me. There is no hope for a relationship with my dad. I don’t have delusions anymore. There is only regret left. And pity. I pity the person who does not forgive, the person who cannot love their family because of things they have cherry picked from their religion, the person who lives in fear of change and hates everything that challenges them. I don’t hate him or myself, or anyone involved in the situation. I value the family I have and the family I have gained marrying my husband. Last year, my mom walked me down the aisle and it was perfect.

I hope he is happy somewhere, wherever they live now. I hope my grandfather, if he is still alive, is well cared for. And even though I don’t have any desire to see him again, I hope that my dad forgives my brother and me someday. I have forgiven him.

Photo by Remi Coin

Photo by Remi Coin

My Cauliflower Nightmare

This summer, I was shopping at the farmer’s market and on a whim, decided to buy a head of cauliflower. This may seem pretty lame to some of you—especially those of you who put nettle chips (that you hand-picked from a field and dried yourself) on your salads—but it was pretty gutsy of me!

I don’t eat cauliflower with any regularity. I’m fairly certain my mom had some traumatic experience with cauliflower in her childhood, because we never ate it when I was little, and I have always considered it to be devoid of flavor and nutrients. I mean, what kind of vegetable is white? That can’t be normal.

I brought home my bold purchase, put it in my fridge, closed the door. What had I done? Clearly I needed to find out what exactly this thing was and how I could make it tasty.

So I did what any aspiring cook would do: I Wikipedia-ed cauliflower. I learned that it’s in the brassica oleracea family and related to broccoli and Brussel sprouts (which I love). Cauliflower has lots of vitamin C and fiber while also being low in fat and carbohydrates. Unfortunately, it does not have quite as many vitamins and nutrients as broccoli, but it’s pretty close.

Excited to try this alien vegetable, I consulted the regular resources in my kitchen (because I find the number of recipes online terrifyingly daunting): The Betty Crocker Cookbook New Edition and The Good Housekeeping Illustrated Cookbook (the exact 1980 edition my Mom has). Both had recipes involving boiling or steaming the cauliflower, followed by drenching it in fatty sauces, which sounded pretty foul. But then I remembered that my aunt had given us a cookbook for Christmas, Barefoot Contessa How Easy is That?. Inside I found a recipe for “garlic-roasted cauliflower”—and anything with garlic in the title instantly had me drooling.

I consulted the recipe. I needed:

  • 1 head of garlic, cloves separated but not peeled
  • 1 large head of cauliflower (or two small ones), trimmed, cut into large florets
  • 4 1/2 tablespoons good olive oil
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
  • 3 tablespoons pine nuts, toasted
  • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

I didn’t have lemon juice, pine nuts, or fresh parsley, but I did have a garlic clove!

  1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.
  1. Bring a small pot of water to a boil and add the garlic cloves. Boil for 15 seconds. Drain, peel and cut off any brown parts. Cut the largest cloves in half lengthwise.

I preheated the oven and started the water boiling for the garlic cloves. Wait what? Boiling the garlic cloves? Unexpected invaluable lesson: boiling them for 15 seconds makes peeling them a heck of a lot easier!

I took my knife and cut off a floret (think snacking on raw broccoli size), I was getting excited about the prospect of my delectable, garlicky cauli—HOLY CRAP, THERE’S A SPIDER IN MY CAULIFLOWER!

I screamed. Actually, to be more specific, I screamed like I was five. (Side note: I have arachnophobia.) I found myself in the living room, clutching my phone, feeling very itchy, and frantically texting my fiancé to come home from work NOW and save me!

Now, I love farmer’s markets, and I understand that there is an inherent risk that my organic, pesticide free produce might have been walked over by buggies. But, there was a spider…a LIVE spider…in my cauliflower.

To help you better understand my state of mind when confronted with a surprise spider attack, these are the first things I thought:

Where are all his spider friends that must also be lurking in my produce?
How did it live in my fridge for 3 days?!
Is it a radioactive super-spider?!

[Editor’s Note: I saved you from the nightmare-inducing photo link that used to be here.]

While I was deciding if it was safe to reenter my kitchen, I started to ponder the pros and cons of continuing this cauliflower adventure. Before I could do anything though, I needed to deal with the spider.

And by deal with it, I mean I waited until my fiancé came home, thoroughly rinsed (by spraying it down with the hose outside—just kidding) and cut up the cauliflower for me. All while I stood a safe distance away…with our sharpest knife…just in case. Thankfully, he found and killed the spider. (Thanks, babe!)

He wasn’t sure that we should proceed but I decided we were going to be adults and see this through.

After satisfying ourselves that there were no more radioactive spiders, that the cauliflower was clean and edible, and that we had enough of the ingredients to make a go of it, we finally continued with the recipe:

  1. On a sheet pan, toss the cauliflower with garlic, 3 tablespoons olive oil, 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Spread mixture out in a single layer and roast for 20 to 25 minutes, tossing twice, until the cauliflower is tender and garlic is lightly browned.

Roasting is super hot and I convinced myself that this would vaporize any potential spider buddies.

  1. Scrape the cauliflower into a large bowl with garlic and pan juices. Add remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil, parsley, pine nuts and lemon juice. Sprinkle with another 1/2 teaspoon salt, toss and serve hot or warm.

Unfortunately, because we lacked some of the ingredients, it didn’t taste all that great. But if I had, I am convinced it would have been splendiforous! I have yet to try cauliflower again but (now that I no longer consider it the mutant of the vegetable world) I intend to soon.

And since I’m still alive and writing this article, I would call it a major step forward in overcoming my arachnophobia!

Well, I still need saving…but I scream less, and not as loud.

IMG_0468

Photo by Elise Lundstrom