Resilience

This blog post was first written for Season 4 of Voices from the Dwelling.

Resilience
By Ron Schultz

I remember Dad being pissed off that he couldn’t find a bottle opener, so he smashed the bottle neck on the countertop.  I’m sure Mom stopped him from drinking from the jagged remains of the beer bottle, but how she did it escapes me. Perhaps I escaped to my room in an attempt to shield myself from the terrible excitement.  

There were times I lay in my bed trying to shut out the fighting and cry myself to sleep.  Mom would occasionally come into my room and sit on the foot of my bed, not to comfort her only child, but to cry and hide from the drunken monster my father had become.  

While the people of my future home of Winston-Salem were more than likely playing and relaxing in the sunshine of spring, the Minnesota winter was coming to a head, as was what felt like the slow death of my family.

If my parents’ drunken escapades were ever physical, I was either too young or naive to notice, or they were too good at hiding the evidence.  I prefer to believe it was the former.

But this time felt different.  We were in the grips of a Minnesota blizzard.   

There was already over a foot of snow on the ground from this storm and there was no sign of it letting up anytime soon.

Dad introduced me to a new kind of pain as he ordered me to go to my friend’s house, in the near white out conditions.  I don’t know what his plan was, but I suspect it would have been a horror worthy of a Stephen King novel.  

In Minnesota, where above-zero wind chills are not worth mentioning, preparing to go outside in the winter is a process.  I didn’t consciously know I was buying mom time while I dragged ass putting on my boots and all of the layers of clothes to keep the cold at bay.  More than likely I was hoping he would reconsider.  

Before I was fully prepared to venture out into the storm, a sheriff’s deputy knocked on our door. To my 10-year-old eyes, my 5-8” tall father appeared to be a giant.  The awe-inspiring deputy stood head and shoulders above him. The only memory I have of the encounter was Dad drunkenly pointing at the officer and saying, “I’m not afraid of you!”  And pointing at the shiny cannon on his hip and saying, “and I’m sure as hell not afraid of that!”

In hindsight, I realize those proclamations could have been the start of a terrible escalation.  I wish I could remember how he calmed the situation, but when Dad was led away, I don’t think he was even cuffed.  

I found out later that he wasn’t jailed but taken to a detox facility, and from there he went to a treatment facility.  Mom was able to get sober without treatment, and they were able to stay sober for the rest of their lives.  

I wish I could say we became a happy family from there.  But both parents dealing with their newfound sobriety left little Ron having to get his comfort from books and the family pets.  

Like the mighty Mississippi River that humbly begins in northern Minnesota at Lake Itasca, where you can walk across it, if you can imagine that, stories that begin in the upper Midwest show a certain sense of resilience that’s hard to find in other geographic locations.  

A resilience that served me well 40 years later when the wheels started to come off my life, and allowed me to face the challenges of being unhoused and keep a positive outlook that I still have today.