An Excerpt..
I was six years old when I learned how a man reacts to his own regret. My younger brother and I, were watching cartoons on a Saturday morning while we sat with bowls of cereal on the living room floor. That's what most kids did on those weekend mornings in the 70's; tuned in for the three to four hours of animated wonderment watching our favorite characters like Bugs, Daffy, Tweety and Sylvestor.
My brother would tune the entire world out when watching cartoons. A bomb could detonate right outside our window and he'd never hear a thing. That's exactly what happened that morning. An explosion ignited behind closed doors that began with a low rumble. I recall, dropping my spoon back into my bowl with a splash of milk when it began and I looked up at my brother. He was just smiling his usual way at Daffy Duck's beak being completely spun around from the bazooka that Elmer Fudd had just shot at his face.
My mother was holding her own kind of bazooka at my father that morning. And when the yelling became so loud that I nearly ran to see what kind of catastrophe had happened, the door to the bathroom sprang open with my mother charging her way out of it.
"I'm sorry! I'll change! I can change!", was all that I could hear being wailed from my father. I was certain, that behind the towel he was using to hide beneath as he cried, he was suffering from a broken beak, too.
The first time you see your father cry like a child is the moment you realize that no one is ever safe. We all break. All of us.---------------- ©Heather Johann
