The Bullying Grounds

A new work in progress-

2016-

I hold down the button on the remote muting the talking head and his report of another mishap on 35 causing the rush hour to extend beyond the allotted hour. The house is nearly silent. Her crying has weakened to the occasional sob. It had been so severe I feared she may never stop. I couldn’t offer any words to dam the flow of tears. A hug wasn’t enough. Her face buried against my chest, her small body heaved with every cry, a pause, silent trembling, and then the heaving would begin again. I held her like that for more than an hour, the front of my shirt dampened by the endless tears. No one spoke. I didn’t have the right words. I don’t have the right words.

Her mother would. She would know what to say. She was good at that; creating rainbows during a storm. Everyone knows they come after the storm; not her. She could fill the gray sky with bright, happy colors; always knowing just what to say and how to say it. She can’t do that now. She’s two years and twelve hundred miles away. Starting her new life. A happy one, filled with rainbows. No husband, no children.

She should be here. The greatest storm to invade the clear skies of our daughter’s life, and she’s playing young and single in Chicago. Bitch.

I was forty-eight when Chelsea was born. That was almost thirteen years ago. Her mother was thirty-five. A first child for both of us. I guess some might think that was late, too old to start a family. Mostly it was planned. I wanted to wait. So, did she; I think. We both had professional careers requiring strict deference to the job with as few interruptions as possible. Children are considered interruption. So, we waited. Getting pregnant when she did wasn’t part of the original plan, but our careers had developed to where absorbing interruptions was simple.

The first time I held her I knew I had waited too long. Chelsea was beautiful. She captured my heart with her first breath and has never let go. We were a family. Doing all the things families are supposed to do. I knew this because I had books. Books on caring for babies, dealing with the terrible twos, potty training. Books about family time, unconditional parenting, how to let your child succeed. I was a book dad.

Zero experience. That’s how much I had with babies and toddlers and children. Hence the small library. I was an only child, raised by my mother after my father was killed in Viet Nam. Mom worked two, sometimes even three jobs—that’s what I thought parenting skills comprised. I had no siblings with children, nieces or nephews, to learn from. Occasionally an associate would brag about their kids at the company 4th of July picnic, telling funny stories about poop or missing teeth. I would nod and smile, but never learn.

Chelsea’s Mom didn’t require books. She knew exactly what to do each time a mother’s skill was demanded. Until our daughter turned ten years old. She became bored; onto Chicago. The books, my “How To” books have been banished to the bottom shelf of the bookcase, below the fat photo albums wrapped in fading plastic, the classics, Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, The Lord of the Rings, and below the Bibles. They stand side by side, soldiers garbed in white jackets, collecting dust. Why do “How to” books all have white covers?

But none of them, the white soldier books, provide advice on how to deal with bullies. Cyber-bullies are what they are called now days. Classmates transformed and protected by the anonymity of their home computers where they can sit unseen, pecking away vulgarities, malice and hatred on a keyboard purchased by their middle-class-no-time-for-the-kids-working-parents. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter—these are the empty hallways and vacant basketball courts of the twenty-first century. The Bullying Grounds.