Father's Day 2007

Father’s Day 2007

Yesterday was Father’s day and if you had asked me a month ago about my father, I would have quickly questioned if you meant the man who donated sperm for my birth. I would have countered any question about my father as I don’t have one, but there was a man who forcefully gave sperm and whom I’m told is the reason for my existence, however he has never earned the title “Father”.

Kenneth Alden Dobson Senior is the man who fathered me as well as three other children (Kimmy, Kenny & Tonya).

As you’ve read in previous bloggs, I emerged from a very abusive childhood. My father was raised by an even more horrific man – Clinton Dobson. My grandfather among other things claimed the title as religious leader for the Reorganized Later Day Saints church. He among many other Dobson men had major sexual issues and were raised with strict Mormon beliefs that places women below farm animals in the hierarchy of impotents. Even lower than the rankings of most women was the coveted position as wife. If you were a wife to a Dobson man you were treated dreadfully, giving no credence to their wishes or desires.

My grandfather taught his boys that women were to be ruled over with a harsh hand. They were present only to service their man’s needs, raise the children, clean the house and prepare the meals. If they failed to perform those tasks in accordance with the “Head of the Household’s” requirements, she was to be firmly and swiftly dealt with including verbal as well as physical abuse. That did not take away from the constant verbal abuse that Dobson men were known to deliver at a steady pace. An ongoing barrage of verbal exploitation followed by the appropriate physical abuse when called for, let the women in the Dobson households remain off balance and scared to look closely at anything surrounding the husband. The art of these tactics dispelled any woman from looking too closely at lost time, frivolous spending and other habits that hid the sexual deviances of all Dobson men. If the wife ever had the audacity to question the veracity of her husband, he was to immediately deny everything at all cost and simultaneously claim the wife is at fault for all failures the man may have. Never accepting culpability for anything they may have done even if caught red-handedly.

I watched as my father swearing his loath and hatred for his own father while continuing the traditional Dobson woman bashing that so proudly established the men in our family. Ken Dobson treated my mother like she was lower than dirt. He hid his pornographic magazines in our bedroom in an attempt to hide it from our mother. Just as his father did to him and when his stash was found, Clinton and then my father would deny its existence and even blame the kids. Ken Dobson hated my grandfather for doing the very same things to him that he was doing to my brother and me. My father also carried on the traditions of always having other women on the side. When he wanted to visit one of his many side women, he would pick a fight with my mother over some frivolous issue making it insurmountable in order to rush out the door and into the arms of what ever mistress he spent time with that month.

I remember very vividly when he threw a full jar of Helmen’s Mayonnaise across the kitchen without even noticing that he almost hit my little sister as he yelled because my mother didn’t buy Blue Plate Mayonnaise. It didn’t seem to bother him the day before when he opened that very jar and made sandwiches for work. The difference was on that specific day he wanted to have sex with one of his countless other women before going to work and the fight with a flying jar of mayonnaise deflected attentions away from his own selfless desires regardless of the fact that he could have killed Tonya in order to supplement his sexual prowess. As usual he left in a huff after verbally bashing my mother with his usual tirade of epithets such as slut, bitch, whore, worthless, never going to amount to anything, stupid and the list increased daily.

All four children suffered constant abuse. Unfortunately, both parents contributed to this growing family tradition, but as my mother was taught this trait by years of abuse towards her by my father and his siblings; she ushered down her own form of verbal and physical abuse keeping a tight control over the only people should had power over – her children. When you are told for years how worthless and stupid you are, it becomes difficult to believe other wise. As someone sincerely bestows a compliment on you; it begs the question, how dumb are they that an obvious oversight where they can’t see your worthless façade. One might think that words like stupid, worthless and hearing that you are less than dirt should trigger your mind telling you the person is wrong, but what is triggered when you hear these very destructive phrases daily from the people you know who are suppose to love you. All of this is meant to keep an unstable home life, which is the opposite of what a child needs to develop appropriately into an adult. My father didn’t care about his children; he made it clear we were insignificant and how he would stop paying for everything the moment we turned eighteen years old. I can’t tell you how many times he said that I had better know how to make money after graduating from High School because he would not be paying for my sorry ass after his legal obligation ended.

There are many things that portrait this man as a ghastly, evil man who should never have been granted the gift of children. I can’t remember exactly which birthday it was, but I was young and we were all home playing in the back yard. Kenny (older brother), me, Tonya (younger sister) and two neighbor kids were in the back yard playing while my parents were yelling and screaming as it ended with a couple of smacks by one or both of them followed by my Dad leaving in a huff. We were very hot and thirsty, but weren’t going to enter the war zone, so we were getting a drink of water from the outside water spicket on the front side of the house. It was my turn after Kenny and Tonya had already drunk their fill and I was bent over with my mouth as close to the valve as I could get it in order to drink some water. My father came around the corner of the house and without so much as a warning kicks me as hard as he could. As I flew the couple of feet away to the side of his car, the spicket caught my jaw and lips and almost ripped them off. Blood was gushing out of my mouth and from my lips while my hip and ribs were bruised and hurting. The other kids scattered as my father told me “I was no better than a worthless nigger and I didn’t deserve to live in his house. He told me I was not to step foot back inside his house because he didn’t live with niggers”. I don’t think he ever looked at me long enough to see if the damages he inflicted were harsh, permanent or superficial. He got in to his car and left tire marks down the road as he left for work. He never apologized or even commented about it ever again.

The day I decided to leave home I was fifteen years old. It was the day my brother went into the Navy. Kenny had promised several months before that before he left for the Navy he would beat the shit out of me showing the rest of the world what a faggot I was. He made good on his promise by turning me around in a dark hallway as I walked to my bedroom following a brief verbal altercation. He requested that I give him my hairspray from my bathroom, but my father paid for all of Kenny’s accoutrements, where I paid for all of mine. I told him to get some from Daddy, he should have some upstairs as I left the kitchen heading down the hall for my bedroom, and Kenny grabs me by the arm to turn me around and starts pounding. Before I even knew what was happening he landed blow after blow to my face along with a series of racial epithets (faggot this and faggot that). Kenny didn’t break my nose, but he was as close as a person could get to breaking it. He broke two front teeth, split open my lips in four places, blackened one eye and left bruises all over my face and down my body. It looked more like I suffered in a car accident rather than got beat up by my own brother. As I was in the half bathroom that was attached to my bedroom, my father almost tore the door off its hinges. Not knowing who was at the door, I held up a bat in the event that I needed to protect myself. My father was incredulous as he took the bat away from me and for a second held it as though he was about to swing it while he looked at me as if he was contemplating using it on me while I tried to balance myself between the wall and the sink counter barely able to focus on much of anything with all the blood and blurred vision. He threw the bat down into the bedroom behind him and picked me up throwing me back against the far wall saying he should finish the job. I couldn’t really see out of my eyes, but the blood was pouring everywhere from different parts of my face, but in that second all I could think about was that if I survived, I was leaving this hell hole as soon as I possibly could.

I moved out of my father’s house months after that incident occurred with emancipation papers drawn up, an apartment and a full time job waiting. I had been saving and buying the things necessary to fill an apartment and it was all waiting for my moment of freedom. I moved to Baton Rouge on my own for six months and then to Atlanta Georgia for three years. I met my first ever boyfriend and moved to Boston and lived there for three years. I had always dreamt of going to college for computers and my dream school was Louisiana State University (LSU). I paid off my debt and placed myself in a situation where I could go, so after my relationship with Ricky ended, I moved back to Louisiana to attend LSU.

My father begged me to stay with him in an effort to appease his new girlfriend who hated that we didn’t speak. Very apprehensively I moved back in with my father to conserve what little money I had and take as few loans as possible. Given my father’s new found generosity, I asked him to help me purchase a much needed computer from Ricky for $1000 dollars. He paid for the computer and I was paying him back with monthly payments. I repaid $550 dollars by the end of my first year. During my second year at LSU I had an opportunity to work at IBM under an Internship Program at their National Support Center, but I had to take a writing class while I was in Atlanta Georgia interning for IBM. I packed all that I could in my car leaving the monitor with several other boxes that my father said he would send to me. I received all of the boxes except the one containing the monitor. When I left I asked him to help me pay for the English class that he never responded to my questions, but when he refused to send the monitor it all became clear that while I was paying for school, books and food, he was upset because I took away his ability to play solitaire after work on the computer. My father got upset because he used the computer to play solitaire and he was unable to do so when I took it with me. Kimmy told me he was angry because I took his computer away from him and his refusal to pay for the class was justified. Once the internship was over and I returned to my father’s house knowing I would have to find another place to live while completing school, he had all of my belongings out on the front yard in the wet weather along with a note that told me to “get it the fuck off his property and never come back”. This was because I took his solitaire game while having to take a writing class.

There are many reasons that I can claim my father has never been a positive influence in my life and therefore has not earned the title “Father”. The greatest of these is the simple fact that he doesn’t know what true love is, so how can anyone expect him to give it. However, yesterday I was forced to think about all of this and find a solution that comforted my heart.

I will never have a relationship with the man who fathered me. Neither does he earn the right to claim being my dad. He never contributed to my well being and has gone out of his way most of my life to deliver grief and misery instead of love and understanding. But with all that he has neglected, I can only come to one conclusion a second time in my life; he is being the man that his father taught him to be. He was not strong enough to see how that life leads to one of misery and self loathing. Therefore it is incumbent upon me to be the bigger man for the two of us. That while I will never hear from the man who fathered me and know there is no love in his heart for the son who could never measure up to being a real man. I can do what is right by forgiving him for all the wrongs he has perpetrated on me.

I know deep within my heart that had he ever been given a positive childhood himself, he might have made a wonderful father. That given the opportunity, he might even show love for someone that has disappointed him every day I draw a breath. I have great empathy for Kenneth Alden Dobson Senior in that while he bestows grief and bile on the existence of his children; he does so towards himself as well. He can’t really see the man who is reflected in the mirror because he long ago gave up looking for meaning where loathsome disgust resides. Kimmy tells me all the time he gives all that he can, all that he knows how to give and until yesterday that could never have amounted to anything for me. When given the chose to grow and become a better person, I know he chooses not too. I just could not understand how any father would choose not to love their own child. However, given countless opportunities to show his children that he is a decent man who could bestow true unconditional love, he chose not too. For this and many other faults – I forgive you.

I know there is nothing I could ever do or say that might make you realize what you’ve done and what you’ve lost; but I can forgive the injustices and hope for a better end to your life. I can know that once you pass, you will recognize the many traumas you have delivered and beg for forgiveness. I can ensure that you have at the very least – my forgiveness.