Let’s see. I think it was back in October in the early 80s when it first started, if I remember correctly. I was still very young at the time, maybe ten. It’s hard for me to describe the details of exactly what happened, since it was so long ago and it’s still painful to think about. But I remember when I told my mother about it, she soft-pedaled it. She said I must have imagined it, or that I was making it up.
It was years later, after I left home to go to college, graduated, and started working, that my mother, with whom I hadn’t spoken since leaving home, called me to tell me that my father had died. She begged me to come home for the funeral and said that, after all these years, she wanted to talk, face-to-face.
When I got to her place, with tears in her eyes, she finally admitted that something had actually happened. She found some things of my father’s in the attic, specifically some Polaroid pictures he had taken of me, that made her realize that I wasn’t making it all up.
She apologized profusely. The pathos she expressed for me was palpable. We talked about the discrimination toward children who accuse a parent of sexual abuse, because no one can imagine a father doing something like that to his own child. We talked about how that old adage about how children should be seen and not heard is so wrong.
We had a good cry together, my mother and I.
Written for these daily prompts: E.M.’s Random Word Prompt (October), The Daily Spur (young), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (describe), Ragtag Daily Prompt (soft), Your Daily Word Prompt (later ), Word of the Day Challenge (pathos), and My Vivid Blog (discrimination).
This, That, and the Other 