For a Week I've Been Contemplating Forgiveness

...in all of the letters my father has written to me over the last year, not once has he ever asked for my forgiveness...i'd overlooked this until last week when i began rereading them all again to develop some new chapters...i spent a few hours specifically looking for any phrase that might hint at a plea...in dozens of pages, not one...

...nor have i ever told him that i've forgiven him...

...and rightly so...after all, i wasn't a woman he brutalized...if i were in his shoes, their forgiveness would be much more important...even not in his shoes i somehow wish those women would forgive me...i can't quite put my finger on an explanation for this except to paraphrase some of the research i've done about children of incarcerated parents...we usually internalize our parent's behavior, to the point where we often feel in the wrong...the scientific research on this phenomenon, and the case studies about children of incarcerated parents, all support this thesis: my desire for forgiveness is normal...so perhaps what i've done, essentially, in writing to him and uncovering the details of his past, is forgiven myself...

...what do we really do when we forgive someone? do we tuck away the grievance, like it's an old movie stub or a wine cork? does forgiveness entail what pop psychologists call purging? do we have to vomit every minor infraction in order to reach the pinnacle of compassion?

...or do we somehow erase the grievance from our memories?...the old adage "forgive and forget" (mostly interpreted as "to forgive is to forget") kept running through my head this week...this is a paradox for the memoirist--we cannot forget, because we must remember in order to write...but to write well, to achieve perspective, we have to forgive...or should we read the adage as forgiveness causes forgetting, forgetting is a result (by-product?) of forgiveness? when we truly forgive do we have no memory of the crime against us? does forgiveness cause that to happen? as a writer attempting a memoir, i can never forgive my father because i must remember what he's done...it's a part of him as much as the blood in my veins...

...is forgiveness a rationalization of an action: X happened because of 1, 2, and 3...if we dabble too long in the because, do we lose sight of X? do we forgive X because of 1, 2, 3 or do we understand X because of 1, 2, 3? what is the difference, then, between understanding and forgiveness?

...today the dalai lama offered this message: "Along with love, compassion is the face of altruism. It is a feeling from deep in the heart that you cannot bear others’ suffering without acting to relieve it. As compassion grows stronger, so does your willingness to commit yourself to the welfare of all beings, even if you have to do it alone. You will be unbiased in your service to all beings, no matter how they respond to you."...in writing this memoir, i am acting to relieve much suffering...my own and that of my family...even my father's torment...i hope i've reached a point of unbiased service...

70-80 Victims

...trying to remain virtuous today as i plug along in what is, to date, the hardest part of the memoir i'm writing: the crimes my father was charged with...i've had some great help researching my father's past from the attorney who prosecuted him, a man who has prosecuted hundreds of criminals and says he remembers very few of them--my father being at the top of the list...he helped me piece together much of what actually took place in those bedrooms...while i can't interview any victims--could only find one and she, understandably, doesn't want to relive it all--talking to the attorney has helped me fill in much of what i need for the book, my father also being tight-lipped...ultimately, though, what i want to achieve is not sensationalism, but dignity for the women, and perhaps even, a little for myself...

...still, research is research--removed, distant, almost foreign...talking with the attorney has uncovered secrets my father, nor the rest of my family, would never share...now i'm staring down the barrel of being not simply the daughter of a man convicted of 8 counts of rape and burglary, but the daughter of a man who probably--according to LAPD--committed somewhere between 70 and 80 rapes...

...not easy to stomach, really...

...but the writing goes on...i'm up to 312 pages and whether or not it will ever go into print is beginning to weigh heavily on my mind...

...i was at odds with myself about what picture to post today...i decided on this one because it is one of hope...to anyone unaware of my circumstance, this photo is just a father and daughter enjoying her first christmas...

...it's hard to believe that's me...even harder to believe that's him...

List Keeping

...i'm big on lists, use them for everything...over the last year, i've been using this list as a template of ideas/themes for the memoir...i've been astonished to find--in corresponding with my father--the similarities in our childhoods:

• we were both raised by people who really should't have been raising us--in his case, a mother and step-father, in mine my maternal grandmother--not that they were "bad parents"...they just didn't have the temperament for raising children
• both of us have huge blanks when it comes to who our fathers are...in my case, i suppose i can get as much information from him as i can, but i'll never really know who he is...such is the case with pathological criminals
• we are both quick tempered, suspicious of most people, with above average intelligence
• we were both lonely children--he took out his loneliness with aggression, while i tended to internalize it and hate myself for it
• neither one of us had a childhood to speak of...at age eight i was thrust into the adult world...likewise, my father began working at age eight and was expected to be a man

...so here's the big question: what made me so different from him? was it simply because my grandmother told me she loved me, but my grandfather never said those words to my father? should i believe all of thatpop-psychology?...was the difference that i was scared to become him--to lose my freedom, my dignity, my sanity? no one had a more omnipresent morality tale than i did growing up...did it shape me that much?

...when i was three, i fell and cracked my skull...i needed stitches and still remember the doctor in the emergency room stapling my head back together...pleasant...sometimes i wonder if that crack in my skull is the reason why my neurons don't seem to fire the same way as everyone else's seem to fire...why i'm prone to depression...

...when my father was seven, he was hit by a car and lost consciousness...this was 1961, so there were no MRIs or CAT scans...doctors didn't even see a danger in concussions...but i've done some pretty heavy research into frontal lobe damage caused by car accidents, and based on what i've found, it seems my father probably suffered a lesion that disrupted his frontal lobe for the rest of his life...

...is that the difference? technology and some modern medicine and my father may not have become the monster he is...

In The Blood

...so i've spent the better part of the week--my spring break--adding to, editing, and rewriting the memoir...my page count is 243...i think i've probably got another 100-175 pages to go for it to become a finished draft...so much of half the narrative depends on what my father writes, the interviews i'm able to have with my mother, the willingness of them both to tell me the truth...their ability to even remember...

...this morning i revisited some material i wrote a few years ago...after elizabeth was born i thought maybe i'd done the wrong thing, having a child who would, perhaps, inherit something in the blood that would turn her into a copy of her grandfather...or worse, that i'd snap and become something like my father...

...i wrote some of this during that time...some of it i've tweaked...for the last two years it's been the introduction to the memoir...i hope it does it's job...i welcome/need comments...thanks, everyone...be brutal...

I am the daughter of a convicted rapist.

It’s taken nearly three decades for me to admit that to myself.

These words are a confession to the rest of the world.

The last time I saw my father I was seven years old, a month before my eighth birthday. I was trying hard to be both the son my father didn’t have and the young lady my mother wanted me to be. So far, my father was winning. I played baseball. My favorite toys were my He-Man action figures. I rode a black BMX bicycle. My best friend was a boy who lived three blocks away. I’m sure that the last time I saw my father I was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a white t-shirt, my long blonde hair tucked beneath my Mickey Mouse baseball cap to keep myself cool in the California desert. I was wearing Vans, blue canvas with white laces, and tube socks pulled to my knees. Though my mother dressed me each Sunday in a frilly dress, white lace socks, and patent leather shoes I’m sure I was convinced that I was my father’s son.

What I’m not sure about is what my father looked like. Was his hair blonde or light brown? Was he balding? How tall was he? What did he do for a living? Did he wear glasses? After his arrest in July of 1985 all pictures of him disappeared from our house, he possessions followed shortly after. His car was never returned from the Los Angeles County impound. It was as if he’d disappeared. Or like he’d never existed at all.

I’ve spent twenty seven years believing my father was a deceitful, evil, sick person who raped women and used his family as a cover for his crimes; that he had always been strange, a troubled person; that because of my short temper, pinched lips, and constant scowl I acted and looked exactly like him; that if I wasn’t careful, one day he’d come for me, or send one of his prison pals to come for me, and I’d suffer. Maybe not die, but suffer.

It took some conditioning to believe all of this, but it worked.

I’ve spent twenty seven years living as the child of someone who never existed.

I’ve spent twenty seven years living as the child of one of the most notorious criminals in California State history.

I thought I would die with it. That after I was gone the evil, the sickness, would go with me. It is the son who inherits the sins of the father, I’d been taught in Sunday school. I would take the burden off my sisters and keep it all for myself.

Then some things changed.

I had a child, a girl. And I told myself I would not raise her with the same fears that had ruled my childhood. And I told myself that when she was old enough I would tell her about my father. And then it occurred to me that I had nothing much to tell.

I was sure I could think of something. I’d been trying to write about my childhood—in secret, furtive moments, in fear of my family’s reaction—for a quarter century. But I didn’t want conjecture, rumor. I didn’t want my daughter’s grandfather to be simply a handful of newspaper articles over twenty-five-years-old.

I didn’t want it for myself.

I was tired of it all—the secret I’d kept for so long, the fear of the dark, of open windows, of strangers. I was thirty four years old and I’d not once slept with my bedroom window open. I’d never gotten into my car without checking beneath it for a predator waiting to slit my ankles and abduct me.

I was more afraid of passing along fear to my daughter than I was of passing on any mental illness that might live in my blood.

And something else—having a child raised the question of why my father had children of his own. If he was the sick, evil person I’d been taught to believe how had he managed to marry, hold a job, attend church, have three girls he never once touched sexually?

It occurred to me one afternoon, as I was watching my infant daughter play in the grass of my quiet, safe, suburban house 3500 miles from the California town that had been the ruin of my childhood, that I’d never asked anyone anything more about him.

I’d been too afraid.

If someone had said to me the day before, the hour before, the second before I’d had this thought, that fear was a powerful motivator, that it could damage a person faster than a bullet, I would’ve laughed. Something inside of me would have tugged. There would have been a mental snag. But I would’ve laughed.

I watched my infant daughter crawl along, pull blades of grass with her nimble fingers, squint against the sun that turned her blue eyes crystal clear, and thought to myself,If I don’t let go of this fear, I’ll never be her mother.

I’m trying to let it go.