A Story of Love or Hate?

Chapter 4
 

When I read Raymond Carver’s essay titled What We Talk about When We Talk about Love, I thought about my stepfather and how he treated my Mother while they were still married.  In Carver’s essay, a character name Terri talked about her previous relationship and how “the man she lived with before she lived with Mel loved her so much he tried to kill her” (Carver, 2010) and it took me right back to my childhood.  I never really understood my parent’s relationship as my stepfather hardly ever showed any emotion towards my mother.  I remember one Christmas Eve where all of a sudden my stepfather pulled my mother onto his lap and let her sit with him.  I guess to him, this was his way of saying he loved her.  But then, money got tight and we almost lost our business and he asked us to leave so my Mom went out and found a job in another city and before long we were packing our bags.  One night, he asked my Mom if she would stay and she wouldn’t continue the conversation while he was drunk so he waited for her to go to sleep and then tried to kill her while she was sleeping.  I came home from a babysitting job that night and my memories couldn’t be more vivid of my Mom running from the neighbor’s house and telling me to quickly pack a bag and of the stepfather sitting in the chair looking like he had done something so very wrong all while my stepbrother sat beside him as a guard protecting his family.  We saw him a few years after that because we were tied to him because of the three children he had before me and my Mom met him.  It was hard on all of us but we got through it and many years later he even hosted my Mom’s 50^th surprise birthday party in the house where I almost lost her at the age of thirteen.  So, I ask you if this is a story of love or hate?   I say it’s a story of love, hate and forgiveness.

Carver, R. (2010). What We Talk about When We Talk about Love. In M. Krasny, & M. Sokolik,
     Sound Ideas (p. 327). New York: McGraw-Hill.