Elephants in the Living Room
I thought it was part of the furniture
This is part six of a series. Here is part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five.
Trigger warning: Child SA, not explicit.
I was so certain it wouldn't take a whole month to post part six. So certain. After all, I have this part written out in six different drafts in word counts varying from 2400 to 24,000. How hard could it be? I have settled on the one most like my journal entries. It is long but if I separate it up into different posts, I fear we'll never get there.
Thank you for your patience & continued support. ❤️ Even when you don't hear from me for a while I am writing and editing a lot behind the scenes. Your subscriptions help me feel like I can prioritize writing more than I would otherwise.
My mom came up to Idaho on Wednesday, February 10th, 2021. Again, because I cannot believe it--even now--this was less than three months after Eric died. February 26th would have been the three month marker. Trying to remember those first few months is like attempting to peer through many layers of thick-paned glass. Instead of discernible shapes, there are just wobbly lumps moving through an expanse of cloudy green.
I've said it a million times, but I do not know how we survived it. And if I ever had a loved-one going through this, the last thing I would want to do would be to pull up and force a very heavy conversation she already told me she did not have the mental energy or space for. 🤯 Like, I can't. I cannot believe this was my life. I cannot believe this happened.
Because my parents are indigent and rarely have working vehicles, my mom rode up on the shuttle bus. I arrived at the drop-off point just after the bus pulled away and found my little momma looking lost and a little bewildered as she stood in a parking lot with her luggage balanced on her walker. My heart squeezed. I did not want to say the things she came to listen to.
We had to run some errands before heading back to my house and it was a little awkward and strained. There were two elephants squeezed into the car with us; my faith crisis and my dead husband. I'm surprised it didn't burst at the seams.
My kids were at friends houses, so we settled at the kitchen table. I hadn't slept much the night before, worrying and trying to write out something shorter and more easily digestible than the 1200 page memoir rattling around in my brain. I ended up with an outline of sorts, but didn't end up looking at it.
I didn’t hit all the things I wanted to hit, but we hit the major ones, I think. I talked about dad being so stern and impossible to please and how that affected me; how examining my childhood & upbringing isn’t meant to be an “everything was terrible” criticism, but a tool so I can sort out my current day problems and figure out why I am the way I am. I was able to tell more about what happened during the awful business meeting and how it broke me--this part, she really seemed to understand.
The biggest thing, I think, was being able to explain how I spent so many years believing their (our!) financial hardship was a trial from god, when in reality, it was because my father & her husband failed to provide. He failed to get help for what is likely a raging case of ADHD and failed to get help as his mental health issues (clinical paranoia) worsened.
We talked quite a bit about what mental issues my dad might be struggling with. Years and years ago she admitted to me that she was worried he was crazy, but if she let herself go down that path, she felt like her whole world would crumble. The hope that he really was on some big god-given mission is a big part of what has kept her going over the years. (My dad has been working on something he calls 'the process' since the early 90s... it's a whole post in and of itself, but he believes god has led him on the journey and that he will eventually be rewarded for his faithfulness & diligence with financial stability.)
Mom understood that in questioning my dad’s sanity, I ended up questioning everything else, which tipped off my faith crisis. I explained why I didn’t want to share any of it because I didn't want to hurt her.
She said not knowing was worse. She said she could tell I’d pulled back and hadn’t been communicating and she didn’t know why or what had happened. I feel so bad about that. I thought I was protecting her and all I did was make her worry more.
We talked about other things, like how awful their relationship is with my brother and his wife and why. (It's a whole other entry, but Eric jokingly called it cardigangate. Basically, my parents had a melt down over their engagement photos because my brother's fiancé's shoulders showed in the photos. They asked me to Photoshop a cardigan on her before they would send out the invitations.)
It felt like I barfed up a ton of stuff. It was a lot. I couldn’t soften it, though I did reassure her throughout that I had a good childhood and have a lot of love for my family and upbringing.
I was surprised she didn't ask where I landed. I thought she would want to know where I was with my belief in God & Jesus or whether or not I felt like there was anything left in the Mormon church that was salvageable. But she didn't ask. She just looked like she'd been pulled from the wreckage of a burning car and couldn't believe she was still alive. 💔
The kids came back around 11:30 and we went to bed. I felt awful. I didn’t know if she was going to be able to carry this, or sleep, of if she’d just go into my little makeshift guest room in the office and cry all night.
I wanted to feel better after the talk--lighter, freer. But I don’t know that I did. It felt really heavy.
It was still awkward the next day. I asked if she had any questions for me and she shrugged and shook her head. She looked at her lap and picked something on her sleeve and said, "I don't know what to do with any of this."
We drove kids to and fro, ran errands, and I tried to make her relax while I cooked our meals. She tried and tried to get a hold of dad to find out what his plan was for Friday, but he's really difficult to get a hold of (he refuses to own or carry a cell phone for paranoid reasons; I think she had left her phone with him but he wasn't answering it).
Friday was a little tense. Mom still hadn't been able to get a hold of him and I had responsibilities. After trying to reach him for the sixth time, she sighed and said, "Just go do your things; if dad misses his chance, it's on him."
I rearranged what I could; my oldest took the youngest to his eye appointment and my dad finally showed up around noon. I was in the middle of work, so he went out to shovel my driveway.
It was awkward all over again. Mom had heard it all and was looking sort of small and shriveled on the sofa. Dad was red-cheeked from the cold, with a dusting of snow in his hair. He gave me a hug and told me he had something for me to watch.
I don't have a television set in the upstairs living room, so we went downstairs and struggled to find the right cords, wires, and batteries for the remote in an attempt to get an old DVD player working.
Once it was all set up, instead of playing the movie, he started talking. I don't think either of us intended to have the entire conversation away from mom (she had stayed upstairs) but that's what happened. In retrospect, maybe it was nicer for her to avoid hearing it all over again, though I was worried she felt lonely and abandoned.
Though the topics were all the same, the conversation with dad was much longer than the conversation with my mom. I think it lasted four hours. It's hard to keep him on track and he talks in circles, though he seemed less overwhelmed than mom and more receptive, I suppose.
He wanted to explain why he was so exacting and strict with us, and though he said he didn't want his explanations to excuse his behavior, I'm not sure accountability is really one of his strong suits.
He believes in accountability as a principle. He believes one must take responsibility for one's own actions in order to seek forgiveness from others & from god. But because he believes in redemption and because he believes that only god can see into our hearts and judge us, he believes if another human holds onto hurt, it's a choice they are making. He believes the hurt person can turn it over to Jesus and let it go and be healed and forgive, and if we don't (or don't turn it over properly), our sad feelings are on us.
Best story I have for this:
My dad's father was a lot like him. Though he was a warm and loving grandpa to me, he was a very stern, very exacting father to his children when they were young and they coped with this in different ways (my father has four siblings). One of his sisters, well into adulthood was attempting to talk to her mother, my grandma, about some of the hard things she went through with such a stern father. My grandmother waved this away, saying, "We had a good life."
It was said with a strong, matriarchal finality. The life was overall good, so you have no right to complain or criticize. When really, my aunt desperately need to process what she had been through with someone safe; someone who understood.
My dad would often repeat this little anecdote if he felt like we (my siblings and I) were becoming too critical. He believed, and probably still believes, that if his sister was sad about something or struggling with something from their upbringing, the answer was not to burden her parents with it, but to instead give it to Jesus who would, I suppose, magic it away.
The trouble is, though my dad believes this fiercely, it hasn't worked out in his own life.
Part of what he wanted to explain to me was more detail about the abuse he and his siblings suffered at the hands of a babysitter.
I knew about the abuse growing up, but only in the most general terms. It was only ever referenced with whispers and I did not know the nature of it or how long it lasted.

The abuse was sexual and started when my dad was probably four or five years old; his little brother would have been two or three years old. I don't know if the abuse affected my dad's other siblings; another daughter would be born a couple years after the above photo was taken.
The babysitter was female, probably eleven or twelve at the time, and babysat for multiple families in their neighborhood. This meant that for years, when the kids got together to play in the street, the neighboring field, the park, or even school, they would sometimes act out the things they had been made to do.
It's heartbreaking and horrible. It was the late 50s and no one had names for what was occurring or knew how to identify safe adults to talk to. This was also a deeply Mormon community in a Salt Lake City suburb. If any of the children did talk to their parents, their parents probably had few tools with which to deal with or understand the abuse.
The abuse went on for years. My dad said, looking at his lap, "We grew up you know, and I was a normal boy--" his voice cracked. "We grew up and the things that... had happened... became interesting." He struggled to find the words through all the shame.
I could see it so clearly, how it must have been. And my heart ached.
The Mormon church has quietly removed or downplayed talks that shamed victims for whatever part they might have played in their abuse. They've quietly removed text from lesson plans and teenage pamphlets that discouraged, shamed, and banned masturbation, but they've never apologized for the harm they did. They've never issued any official retractions, and as the church operates with untrained volunteer clergy, it continues to suffer from leaders who pass their unexamined shame to the next generation and continue to do harm.
While my dad was growing up, these teachings were more overt. And once he was old enough to understand what had happened to him and what he had done as a "normal boy" he was weighed down by shame. He never felt worthy. And in Mormondom, worthiness is not something merely gifted via the grace of Jesus's sacrifice; it is something earned.
For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do. - 2 Nephi 25
When it came time for my dad to serve a mission, he would have been expected to confess any sins that had not been confessed previously to his bishop. But his bishop at that point was his father; someone he did not feel he could confide in. So he lied and was sent on his mission 'unworthily.'
After two years, he came home to marry my mother. They had me a year later. I think I've said in previous newsletters that as the oldest, I'm the only one of my siblings who can remember my father when he was more normal. He went skiing and hunting with his brothers, wore his hair a little longer, sometimes grew a beard.
But he had not yet confided in my mom about the abuse and it continued to weigh on him (I can't remember when he told her). I was maybe six or seven years old when he seemed to transform; became less warm, more stern. He never yelled, never spanked. But his eyes were often dark and troubled. He locked himself up in his basement office and studied scripture for hours.
During our talk, he said he tried for years to earn his worthiness by proving how perfect he could be. He did not intend for it to affect his wife or children, but it absolutely did.
I remember. He was unbelievably hard on himself, praying and fasting and repenting for the smallest of things. Once, in the late 80s or early 90s he returned a dolly to U-Haul on the Sabbath. The store wasn't even open; he had run out of time on Saturday to return it but wanted to drop it off before they opened Monday so he wouldn't be charged for another day. When he got home, he was overcome with guilt. In his mind, he had broken the Lord's 4th commandment: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." (Exodus 20:8). He locked himself in his room and fasted and prayed for three days. And when he emerged, he did not look healed or loved or forgiven. He looked ravaged. Broken.
He claims that he finally reached out to a friend serving as a Stake President in a different stake. He thinks this was the mid 90s and claims that this conversation healed him, and insists that he began softening after that. He might have, I'm not sure. I left home in 1994 and in my experience and memory, he remained very stern up until around 2001 when his first grandchild came along, though I do know he was not as strict with my two younger siblings as he was with me.
He has never received any licensed counseling for the abuse he endured, its subsequent trauma, or any of the ways the purity culture of the church exacerbated and complicated the trauma. The perpetrator is still alive and has never been reported or brought to justice. He did not tell his parents about the abuse until fairly recently. I do think he has met with some of the other victims, but I don't think any of them ever sought real help and I don't know how many of them might have gone on to perpetuate the abuse in their own homes and communities--hopefully none.
I will say this: Growing up with my dad was hard. Very hard. But it could have been so much worse. He did not lay a hand on us. He did not perpetuate the sexual abuse he was subjected to. I am deeply grateful he broke that cycle, though I am devastated that he internalized so much shame and continues, I believe, to shoulder the trauma alone.
He claims the atonement of Jesus Christ has healed all, while still displaying some pretty classic PTSD symptoms, though there is no way, at this point (he is now seventy years old) to separate his many and varied coping mechanisms from a variety of crises, traumas, and other undiagnosed issues.
We talked a lot about how my dad positions himself as a person of authority in almost every situation, be it with family, friends, or strangers he meets on the street. I tried to explain how exhausting it is for those around him. Most burn out and excuse themselves from the table or room; he can clear a room at a family party like no one else. He is always teaching.
I guess I'd said enough in the initial conversation or maybe the letter, because he'd been thinking about this as well. He thought he'd gained some insight into it, though remained pretty bewildered on how to correct the behavior.
He has long admitted that he has dyslexia, as do most of his siblings and extended-family relatives. There's a lot of alcoholism on that side of the family going back generations, and I believe, from my comfy armchair where I diagnose the deceased, that they were probably all suffering from a combination of learning disabilities, ADHD, and/or were on the spectrum. Add in the church influence and viola! Self medicating peeps be all up in this family tree.
Dad remembers timed reading tests in seventh grade. There were color coded boxes or files at the back of the room. Everyone started with say, the red box, read whatever document was in there (perhaps answered reading comprehension questions as well), returned the paper to the box and then moved on to orange, then yellow, and so on. Dad sat in his chair unable to parse the words on the first page, becoming increasingly more ashamed as the rest of the class moved through the colored boxes and finished. He sat there, still stuck on the first one, feeling stupid and utterly humiliated.
It was probably 1965 or 1966. To get a rough idea of what growing up in the 60s with dyslexia was like, this article is a good (heartrending) one. Dad didn't know the word 'dyslexia' back then. None of his teachers ever gave him that word, no one had any tools to help him. He just struggled along. And eventually when the reading switch flipped, he determined to never, ever feel like the dumbest person in the room again.
He's never been a great speller, takes ages to write a letter or type up a talk. My mom and later, me, were always on call for proofreading and correcting. I would edit his talks when he served on the High Council for our church and had to travel to different ward buildings each Sunday to speak. I remember my mom sitting at his desk with a tape recorder and a microphone, making audiobooks for him before audiobooks were a thing.
Again, I can see how it happened. I can see how, without any real help; without any real counseling, he built himself a raft so he wouldn't drown. He turned that raft into a boat, then a ship, and eventually an entire floating city with walls and a defense system. And he's still just floating out there, the smartest man on an island he built out of desperation and toothpicks.
His hair is almost all white now. And he still doesn't know how to have a two-way conversation. He truly believes he knows everything (and my god, he has truly taught himself so much), so no one is his equal. All of his friends are 'lesser' individuals he is mentoring. His children and even his wife weren't (and to some degree still aren't) given space to grow into adults. Our thoughts and opinions are meet with a knowing smile while he waits for us to finish. Then he starts with, "That's only part of it..." and then talks for an hour. Granted, he does it with a lot of gentleness and a deep desire to share knowledge, but it's divisive and isolating in ways he can't fully comprehend.
He agreed that he treats everyone like they do not know as much as he does, but he laughed a little before giving me a hopeless shrug. "But it's true. I do know more."
"Let's say you do," I said. "But is being the smartest person in the room worth more than the relationships you have with your kids? Your grandchildren?"
"No," he admits. But says he doesn't have any idea how to change.
A year or two ago, my dad was up the canyon having a picnic & campfire with family. Dad hadn't seen his grandson in a while and approached his camp chair to ask him how he'd been. The grandson, a typical teen, shrugged and said, "Good." My dad sat down, pointed at the fire, and proceeded to talk about the chemical reactions occurring in the pit for a long time. He went on and on about how the atoms in the burning firewood react with oxygen to release energy and produce different molecules, and of course, because it's my dad we're talking about here, how these things all bear witness of Christ.
Fascinating stuff. And we've all learned a lot from him. He's your man if you find a rock that looks like it has crystals embedded in it and want to know what kind. He's your guy if you don't have easy access to Google or an encyclopedia and wonder aloud when the typewriter was invented.
But, it's not the stuff of connection. It's not how you build a relationship with your grandson unless he's deeply into pyrotechnics--and even then, it'd be better to listen to that grandson talk about his excitement for fire and not the other way around. Never once did my dad ask his grandson how his latest mountain bike race went or whether or not he was excited to go on a trip to Moab that summer.
But the hardest part for my dad to hear or give space to, I think, was me explaining what his string of failures in business looked like from my perspective, and how upsetting it is to see my mother not cared for. We trusted for years that the reasons she wasn't getting medical care were beyond his control, that these were god-ordained tribulations and trials, when in fact, my father had the power to turn their lives around the whole time.
My mom has a lot of guilt because she never went to work herself, but glosses over the fact that dad discouraged her from doing so. Without understanding the deep ADHD need for body doubling, he could only tell her he needed her as a helpmeet and wouldn't be able to function without her. And, based on their agreements, mom filled her end of the 'traditional marriage role' bargain. She stayed home. She had the babies, she fed us with her body, she served in church callings with little support from a spouse who wouldn't 'baby-sit' (much) or even change diapers (though I understand the latter more, he never wanted us to have any memories of him in that area because of his own trauma). All while he failed to fulfill his side of the bargain: provide security.
He was least receptive here. And I think it's probably down to all the walls he's built around his island city. It's too painful to look back over the past 40+ years since I was born and see nothing but struggle. So many good ideas, so few brought to fruition, a past that could have benefited from real therapy and medication, and probably the structure of a real job with accountability, teams, and partnering.
I don't know what his perpetual optimism might be a symptom of, but it's incredible, really.
"It's all going to be okay," he says, patting my arm. "I have this deal in the works, and we're going to have enough money to buy a house and get mom's knee replacement. It'll work out by Friday at the latest. And if not then, by next month. For sure by Christmas."
Rinse & repeat over and over and over, and he's still looking toward the future, a happy, hopeful look on his face. Never mind how much time has passed or how much time is running out. Never mind losing not one house, but three. Never mind needing to move in with your mother-in-law in your seventies.
He did finally show me the video. A friend was helping him film some shorts of us working in the garden. He maintained a spectacular Mittleider garden for years. In the video, there are a few different takes of him walking out to the garden with us. We're pretty little; I look like I'm about twelve, making my siblings around nine, six, and four. Dad is foreboding and serious; overly concerned about us doing it 'right.' We seem happy, excited, and interested. My little brother (about age six) is very cute in it; so eager to help, but dad is almost scowling, asking us to do it over and behave.
Apparently my dad was watching some old family movies with my sister and this came up. Dad reflects fondly on our babyhoods and childhoods and was dismayed to find himself looking so grumpy and impatient. My sister looked at him with confusion, and said, "That's how you were with us."
"Always?" he asked, baffled.
"Always."
He was stunned. He wanted to hop in a time machine and do everything over--I mean, we all have parental regrets, things we wish we could have moved through with more patience and grace. Maybe many of us don't fully realize how our exhaustion or exasperation came off to our young children. But I think my sister and I were amazed he didn't realize how his own perfectionism affected us. We thought it was very intentional; it seemed that way.
He looked at me with tears in his eyes an said, "I'd go back to you standing in your room crying for help with a spider."
For years the thought I was only screaming for attention, so he’d take forever to come help me. I was terrified. Absolutely terrified. They never sprayed for bugs and my room was in the basement. There were always dozens of these yellow bubble-butt spiders in the hall and creepy dark red or hairy brown garden spiders crawling through my improperly sealed basement window. I developed serious arachnophobia and was paralyzed whenever a spider startled me. I'd sob and cry, screaming for help, terrified to take my eyes off it to get a shoe to smash it, certain it would crawl away and then lie in wait to hatch eggs in my mouth while I slept.
When he'd finally arrive, he had this judgmental look on his face, like he was disappointed and also 'on to me.' I was so confused, but too scared the spider would get away to react or question him.
Years later, he realized I wasn’t faking it and confessed that he’d probably made my arachnophobia much worse. Nonplussed, I asked, "My word, even if your kid is acting out because they need attention... maybe, I don't know, give them some attention?!"
I know, it's the bleeding-heart, attached parenting softness of Gen X reacting to the often more aloof and distant Boomer parenting many of my generation received, but it was painful to think of my terror while my dad decided (for years!) to withhold care because I must be trying to manipulate him for the love he wasn't freely giving. 🤯
Dad promised he would work hard on listening and connecting without teaching so much and I was curious to see if it would happen. He also seemed committed to showing up for me better, and making sure all of his kids & grandkids knew they were loved unconditionally. He has, as I think I've said before, worked hard on this in the past couple of decades, but it's so weird and uncomfortable. After growing up without it, it's strange to experience him patting me on the shoulder and telling me I'm a good mom. My body does not know how what to do with it and it's often a high cringe situation.
Like my mom, he didn't have any questions for me as far as where I landed on the religious spectrum. This both surprised and didn't surprise me. I am sure my mom is still curious (still hasn't asked) while my dad will be much more whatever! about it because in his brand of Mormonism, he believes we all make it in the end. (It's a part of his worldview I like better than the real, separated forever divided heaven Mormonism actually teaches.)
Overall I thought the meeting--while overlong, and nothing I was in any way emotionally prepared for 2.5 months after the love of my life dying suddenly on my kitchen floor (!!!)--went reasonably okay. Part of me wanted to know what they talked about on the way home, and part of me was glad I couldn't hear them.
My dad's desire to return to me screaming in terror in the basement and take better care of me will come up in the next installment.
As ever, thank you for being here.
xx
The title is from this Stephen King quote:
There's a phrase, "the elephant in the living room", which purports to describe what it's like to live with a drug addict, an alcoholic, an abuser. People outside such relationships will sometimes ask, "How could you let such a business go on for so many years? Didn't you see the elephant in the living room?" And it's so hard for anyone living in a more normal situation to understand the answer that comes closest to the truth; "I'm sorry, but it was there when I moved in. I didn't know it was an elephant; I thought it was part of the furniture." There comes an aha-moment for some folks - the lucky ones - when they suddenly recognize the difference.