1/14/2024 0 Comments Terry cruz dadBeing an athlete also got me a pass from the gangs in the neighborhood. My muscles served me well, especially on the football field. No boy should have to grow up thinking like that, but at the time, I didn’t know any different. Somehow, I knew my father would go too far one day, and I would need to be strong enough to take him out. I liked being able to control something in my life, even if it was just the way my body looked. At 13, I discovered the gym in the rec center’s basement. There was a community rec center down the street from Flint Academy, the magnet school I got into in seventh grade because of my artistic talent. I dreamed of becoming strong and powerful like that. I would sit at the kitchen table and draw superheroes with bulging muscles. Not that I knew the word vulnerable but the message was unmistakable to me: “Squash your feelings. I decided then and there that I could never let myself be vulnerable again, as if I had discovered the key to my survival. He turned and stared at me in shock, as if my love was the last thing he wanted. I tiptoed over, put my arms on his broad shoulders, leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He looked so pitiful sitting there all alone, listening to Bobby Womack. One Friday night when I was in second grade, my dad stomped into the living room, put on some sad soul music and slumped in his chair. I’d try to make conversation about how he shined his shoes (he had served in the Army and still dressed with military crispness) or whatever else I could think of, but he’d give clipped answers, as if to say, “Leave me alone.”Īfter finishing his shift at the plant, he’d go to the American Legion hall and drink, come home, fight with my mom, yell at us kids or just sit in his chair in a stupor. What boy doesn’t? I would watch him get ready for work. Still, I loved my dad and yearned for him to love me. He was even scarier than my earthly father. What I learned was that you didn’t ever cross God. Instead, he preyed on his congregants’ shame about their weaknesses and their fear of hellfire. The pastor didn’t preach about God’s love and grace. But her church was as dysfunctional as her marriage. She was a devoted churchgoer, and she took us kids for hours-long services and Bible school. She liked to scream about what a sinner he was. My mother would say things to lay him low. As seen in the April-May 2023 issue of Guideposts photo: Larsen&Talbert He was a foreman at the GM plant, a hard worker and a good provider. Even so, I was considered lucky by neighborhood standards because my father was around and didn’t beat us kids. One of my earliest memories was of seeing my father, drunk, knock my mother to the floor. I grew up in Flint, Michigan, the middle child of three.
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