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For those who haven't experienced the piņata, it is a hollow paper mache item such as a hat or bull or other shape filled with candy and used in celebrations such as birthdays. Children are blindfolded then line up and take swings at the piņata until it breaks and leaves it's bounty on the floor.
This is a wonderful description of the past two weeks.
For many years, Dad's been a fairly quiet person, but much like the opening of "The Incredible Hulk", you wouldn't like him when he's angry. Here's where the problem comes in. He gets angry too easily. You see, my father grew up in a household where my grandfather was in control. Everything my grandfather wanted, he got. This was the role model for my father. Anyone or anything posing a threat to getting his way would have to be crushed. It's the only way he knows to handle his problems. It's why I'm glad I had my mom for a role model instead, because I couldn't live with that kind of "domination or defeat" attitude.
Enter the stepfamily. After years of being a single man, my father married Ann... and her family. The problem lies in the fact that he didn't WANT her family. He only wanted her... and even then he didn't really want her. He wanted someone like his mother. Someone to jump when he said to and follow blindly his every word. Problem is, she came equipped with thoughts, feelings, and emotions, which he immediately began to trample. He began searching through the bible to find some scripture to back up his obsession, twisting phrases if they didn't exactly fit and getting flustered when she didn't submit.
Then came her family, who wanted to be with her... which took attention off of him. This upset him even more.
The problem in his eyes was that she put her family above him. In his mind, he should take center stage. The thought of pushing aside the people she helped raise for almost 30 years was unthinkable to her. Then her son moved in.
Lee was never what Dad envisioned a model son would be. He could barely read, was always asking for money, had gone through two apartments and four cars in under a year, and lost all of them due to bad money management. The fact that he was a bit of a fighter himself didn't help.
That brings us to the past two weeks and the piņata factor. Two weeks ago, Dad was playing pool in the garage. Around 10:00 he decided to take a shower... unfortunately, Lee got the same idea ten minutes earlier. In a fit of rage over having to wait for the water to warm up again, Dad lost it. He turned up the television as loud as he could to ensure no one else could sleep and proceeded to spend the next two hours kicking each of the houses bedroom doors. He then changed his mind. He gathered the cards in the living room and threw them all over the kitchen, then turned every chair in the living room over. Next he went to the garage and gathered all of the folding chairs and laid them on the couches. No one would sit without his permission. He made sure of that.
For the next week things were quiet. He had marked his territory and was content with the complacency of everyone under his roof, until last night, when Dad asked Lee to change the lock on the front door. Lee did not have the money to buy a new lock, and Dad then proceeded to tell him to move out by Friday. To ensure this move would happen, he removed the bedroom doors to Lee's room. No privacy, no reason to stay.
All in all, the people most effected by this have been myself and Ann. Ann by relation, in that on one side, she is in a marriage that she does not want to fail, on the other is a family she does not want to lose. Myself because I am having to change the bandages every time someone starts to bleed. Both sides pull to me to take their stance, but in taking one, I side against the other. The problem is that neither is right.
Ann and I are nothing more than piņatas, being batted around by two blindfolded children. And Dad is hoping we'll all break.
Such is life... God, I need my own place.
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