IMG_9298

It had become common practice at our house to retreat to our respective bedrooms the minute we saw the 1997 Chevy Impala pull into the driveway.

No one wanted to stick around for the impending fiasco; we were all too familiar with the scenes as they replayed every single night.

Every night, around 9pm my heart would start pounding and anxiety would consume the very core of my soul knowing that in just a few minutes his key would unlock the front door and there he would stand with his faithful companion; The brown paper bag.

In it, his drink of choice. Brown liquor. Or as my mom would call it; the devil’s juice. Remy Martin, Johnny Walker and Crown Royal were amongst his favorites.

But that night, as I watched my younger sibling head to the basement and my older one climb the steps two by two to get to his room as fast as he could I stayed behind.

I’m not sure what I tried to achieve that night by sitting there with him. Maybe I wanted an explanation. I wanted to know why he drank so much. I wanted to know why he couldn’t be normal. Why he couldn’t have a normal life without a constant need to consume the enemy’s spirit.

But before I could muster up enough courage to pose my question, he was already on his second glass. Straight, no ice, no coke. Straight.

The more he drank the more he talked. He never had anything nice to say. I finally retired to my bedroom where I sat at the edge of my bed wondering why we were dealt this hand.

I hated the sight of that brown paper bag because to me it meant another night spent listening to this man hurl insults at us.
I hated that brown paper bag because it meant that I couldn’t have conversation with this man about anything meaningful because he most likely wouldn’t remember in the morning.

I hated that brown paper bag because it would wake me up every morning with the sounds of a man ejecting the contents of his stomach thanks to a night of boozing.

But most importantly I hated that brown paper bag because it was a constant reminder that the man carrying the bag was my father. And that brown bag was all he’d ever known.

In the absence of maturity, to me, the bag didn’t represent a disease, to me it was a mere choice. Either you drink or you don’t.

I now understand that it was so much more than that.

That brown paper bag was a disease, and my father at the time was gravely ill.

Charlotte