I can remember it like it was yesterday. My sixth birthday had just come and gone. I was on top of the world. I had gotten everything I asked for that year, including the way cool Little Mermaid tent, which I of course pitched in the middle of the living room. I had everything a six-year-old girl from a town of 10,000 could need. Life as I knew it was perfect.
My brother and I were in the living room that day. I had my Little Mermaid tent set up in the living room across from my brother’s Ninja Turtle tent. He and I had been in them all day, losing all track of time.
When mom walked in two hours later than normal to allow the babysitter to go home, we didn’t think anything about it. We just kept on playing as she went back to her bedroom, and got on the phone.
A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. Mom finally came out of her cave to answer it. It was Nanny and Pap-paw. I still didn’t think anything of it, because life was good in that tent.
“Lucas, Tori please come out here and sit down,” Mom said with a crack in her voice. Of course we were reluctant, but he and I crawled out and sat on the couch with a grandparent on either side of us.
That’s when one sentence rocked my world. “Daddy did something bad, and he’s not going to be home for a while,” Mom said.
These little words opened up the door to the next 17 years of my life. My father’s battle with a drug addiction, and my family’s struggle to survive it.
What my mom told my brother and what she told me were two different things, due to our age difference. My brother, who was 10, got the real story. My father, the man that I thought was perfect, walked into a bank with a toy gun and tried to rob it for drug money. He was arrested and put into a federal penitentiary in Springfield, Missouri, for three years.
Mom told me he had done something he shouldn’t have and he wasn’t going to be at home for about three years. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I didn’t understand why Dad wasn’t coming home. I crawled back into my Little Mermaid tent. For days this had been a place of fun and laughter. Tonight it was a getaway from tears and confusion.
This night, November 5, 1991, was a night that I would never forget. Since then his drug addiction has not only been a battle for him, but it has been a battle for me and my family.
Growing up in a small town was nice. You knew everyone and everyone knew you.
Growing up in a small town was horrible. You knew everyone and everyone knew you.
Going through life with an entire town knowing that your father is a drug addict has been the challenge of a life time. Everyone looks at you as if you are helpless, and even though sometimes I have felt that way, I never wanted people to feel that way toward me. His drug addiction and time in prison wasn’t just a one time thing. My dad has been in and out of prisons all over the state of Arkansas since his extended stay in Missouri.
I spent hundreds of weekends in the car with my mom and my brother traveling. When you’re 6 and 10 these trips to see dad were an adventure. When you’re 16 and 20 these trips to see Dad have grown old.
My mom, brother and I have been buzzed into huge barb wired enclosed prisons, about 10-12 different prisons to be exact. We’ve walked through a metal detector at a prison more times than I can count.
112119. That’s his ADC or his Arkansas Department of Correction prison number. I’ve probably recited that number to a guard at the prison check in more than I’ve recited my own social security number.
That’s just life when you have a dad who can’t shake his addiction. He missed seven birthdays, six dance recitals, and every high school dance except one. He’s missed more football games where I cheered and played in the band than I can count. He wasn’t there to move me into college my freshman year. Well he hasn’t been there any year actually, but life goes on.
People ask me all the time if I could change the past would I. My answer is always no. If I could snap my fingers and relieve him of this addiction I would. However, I wouldn’t change a single second of the past and the things I have experienced.
I have discovered that I have the strongest mother in the entire world, who for one second hasn’t stopped loving the man she married when she was 20 years old. I have found strength in a family that protects me. And I have found peace in a God who is unconditionally my Heavenly Father.
This life that I have lived for the past 17 years have made me into the woman I am today.
However one thing hasn’t changed. For one second I have never stopped loving my dad. If anything I love my dad for all of his imperfections today, more than I loved him before I crawled out of that Little Mermaid tent.
