Chapter 3 - My Mother Had Always Called Fear “Discipline”
Growing up, Margaret did not hit me often.
That fact became the reason I defended:
everything else.
She was not:
violent.
Therefore she was:
strict.
That was how I categorized my childhood.
If I talked back, she took:
my bedroom door
off its hinges.
If I lied, she made me stand beside the kitchen table while the rest of the family ate.
If I cried, she said:
“Finish performing and come back when you can speak.”
Once, when I was ten, she made me sit in our dark laundry room for nearly an hour because I called her:
unfair.
My father, Paul, came home and found me there.
He opened the door.
Margaret told him:
“Daniel needs consequences.”
Dad looked at:
me.
Then her.
Then closed the door again.
I never forgot:
that.
Not because the room was dark.
Because Dad had the power to open it and decided:
Mom probably knows best.
Thirty years later, I became him.
May you like
That realization would hurt more than anything else about the fire.
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