I’m eight years old, going on nine, and I am standing in the kitchen with my parents on a Monday morning. It’s February, that time of the winter when everyone seems to be awaiting spring and some reprieve from the cold. Here in the kitchen, right now I am the focus of attention — I was the topic even before I entered. Mom and Dad hover over me, examining my skinny little body, which has now experienced something my brain doesn’t yet have the words to describe.

My mother sobs helplessly and it hurts when my father lifts the back of my thick cotton pajamas to reveal the wide smattering of small hot welts, their coloring and shape not unlike that of strawberries. The morning sun beams through the kitchen window, spotlighting my father’s look of guilt and fear. No need to look at my legs — he knows what’s hidden beneath the cotton. Maybe not as much as me, but he knows. Mom is half-heartedly stealing glances, but it’s better that she doesn’t really see. The brief and eerie silence is shattered when Mom catches a glimpse of my back and then wails at my father. “Look what you did to him! He can’t go to school like that. Look at him! MURRAY! YOU WENT WAY TOO FAR!”

The morning before began with the limitless potential that most Sundays offer to kids. I’m sure I would have behaved differently if I’d known how quickly insanity can become tangible. I was awakened by my father complaining to my mother about a plug-in portable floor heater he had recently bought. I listened to make sure he wasn’t angry with me, and when I confirmed he wasn’t, I became curious about what had him riled up. I listened while he complained. “It’s fucking garbage. It’s a piece of shit.”

My mother’s response was mumbled too softly to hear from my perch atop the stairs, making my father’s voice even more jarring. “No, forget it. It’s garbage.”

As I came down the stairs, I could see my father holding the heater under his arm; blinded by an anger seemingly disproportionate to the circumstance, he stormed past me to the garage. Over breakfast, I contemplated how something so brand new could already be destined for the landfill. Plate empty and belly full, I dressed for the cold, motivated by the idea I had dreamed up for my father’s garbage heater.

Snowflakes coated me as I walked outside to the garage, the door still open from my father’s earlier visit. His anger was reflected in the haphazard placement of the heater on the garage floor. And, as if to reassure me that my plan for the heater was the only appropriate course of action, my father’s sledgehammer sat only feet away, begging to be put to use.

I sized up the heater and sledgehammer, wondering if I could pull them out of the garage in one trip. Not a chance — my arms were the same diameter as the hammer handle and not nearly as strong. As I dragged the heater toward the snowbank beside our house, I stung my lungs with a deep inhale of morning air and squinted against the sun radiating in the sky. Thankfully, the heater glided smoothly across the snow and created a path for my second trip. Following the snowy path, I went back for the sledgehammer.

The sledgehammer looked even more powerful in full sun, the cold heavy steel winking at me as I hoisted it above my head. Its weight in this new position surprised me and I had to steady myself before bringing it down on the unsuspecting heater at my feet. I felt the adrenaline surge as I reigned blow after blow. With each swing the hammer got lighter, and I felt strong while bits of exploding plastic collided with the falling snowflakes that swirled around me. In that moment, I was powerful. Ninety seconds later, the fun was over, and the empowered thrill was gone. I was left with a mess of crumpled metal and plastic shards. I took the hammer back to the garage first and, while dragging what was left of the heater toward the house, decided not to bother with cleaning up all those little broken bits. The fresh snow would cover them up just fine.

As I turned the corner to return to the garage, I saw that my father had also returned from inside the house and was perusing his extensive library of icy-cold record albums he stores in the back corner. His eyes briefly moved from the album covers to me and ultimately landed on the heater remnants in my hands. At that sight, he was transformed into a creature motivated only by pure rage. “Cam! What the fuck did you do?!”

“I… I… I’m sorry… I thought it was garbage!” “It was, but I was going to exchange it. I can’t now! Jesus CHRIST Cam, for fuck sakes!”

That look. Those words. His eyes burning through me — I wanted to disappear.

“Go to your room and take all your clothes off right now!”

The bite of winter filled the bedroom as I shakily undressed piece by piece, my underwear topping the miniature mountain of clothes that had formed at the foot of my bed. I sat beside the mountain. One minute. Two minutes. I’m naked. I’m cold. Waiting. Anticipating. Take all my clothes off? He’s never shouted that before. I imagined him opening the door, belt in hand. It always hurts. What was next I didn’t know, but I knew it wouldn’t be good.

The lingering chill in the air settled on me in the long minutes I sat naked and waiting. The sharp February wind flickered the snow that lined the windowsills of my bedroom and reminded me of my own chilled skin. I didn’t know if I was shivering because of the cold or my fearful anticipation. What was going to be next? I imagined the painful rasp of that thick, rough leather belt on my bare skin. Bare skin? It’s painful enough through clothes.

My body tightened at the violent turn of the doorknob, and I cowered as my rage-driven father entered my room, closing the door behind him. His oft-worn belt was in hand, as I’d expected it would be. But the belt wasn’t folded in half this time — instead, his large, muscular hand held only the belt’s soft leathery end. At the belt’s other end, the two big buckles clinked against each other, dangling menacingly near the floor. Only two words broke the silence. “Lay down.” His raging, penetrating eyes felt like they denuded me even further.

My father took one step forward; the belt buckles cast shadows on the floor as he approached. He stopped when he was one full belt length away from me, close enough for me to see his teeth clench as he swung for the first time.

His arm windmilled around, the buckles barely missing the ceiling as they gained velocity. Pain for me was redefined in the moments when the buckles made contact with my skin. Fire spots burned through my back and legs and into my brain while screams escaped my mouth. The sting in my throat was second to the fiery numbness of the entire back side of my body.

There were at least twenty lashes and not more than thirty, but the time that it took for my father to deliver them was infinite. Blow after blow, after blow. Scream after scream, after scream. At some point, dizziness took over and it began to feel like I was trapped in a painful dream. I tried to escape the nightmare by forcing myself into the one-inch space between the bed and wall, all to no avail. And then it stopped, the end signaled by one last sound of metal clinking and the door closing. My stunned whimpering and burning flesh filled the silence that now engulfed the room.

I laid on the bed for several minutes trying to process with little luck what my body had just witnessed. Then the doorknob turned slowly, bringing me out of my daze. It was one of my little twin sisters, either Karen or Corinne; I couldn’t tell. They were six at the time and just twelve minutes apart in age. I could see the terror and pity in this sister’s little face as she looked at me for a moment through her salty wet eyes before shutting the door quietly, tiptoeing backward as she did. There have only been a few times in my life when I couldn’t tell my sisters apart, and that was one of them.

And now, here I am in the kitchen, not twenty-four hours later, riddled with angry red welts from my shoulders to my calves, being inspected by sorrowful parents. My father has a plan. “I’ll take him to my parents’ place in Owen Sound before the twins wake up,” he tells my mother.

So off we go later that morning, my father and I, on a three- hour drive to his hometown of Owen Sound. My throat still hurts a bit from the screaming and it doesn’t matter because I have nothing to say anyway. I squirm in my seat, as the sore spots all over don’t want to be smothered or pressed on; they just want to breathe and get some space. Dad reaches across the seats and pulls down my sleeves as far as he can, looking sad and guilty while he takes another look at the violent evidence on my arm. He’s so quiet right now.

We’re about a half hour into the trip to Owen Sound and I look at the radio — it catches my attention because it’s not on and I’m not sure I ever remember the radio without some voice bellowing from it — Dad loves his music. But he has been deep in thought, as have I. I wish I could just lay down on my belly across the back seat and sleep, but I won’t ask.

Dad starts one of his long adult rambles that I can’t keep up with — about how tough it is to pay for five people, about how his boss Gord Collins is not keeping promises, about how tough life is generally. I do nothing when he speaks except look outside for church steeples and cemeteries; I feel a bit better when I see a stately red brick farmhouse. I hear Dad talking but am not listening — there are too many adult words in a row, and I gave up trying to understand several trips ago. It sounds like maybe he’s justifying yesterday, explaining it, and I don’t care. He continues talking for several minutes before I catch a statement that registers. “What I did to you yesterday, that was a mistake.”

I’ve never heard him say he’s made a mistake. Does this mean he wishes he hadn’t done it? Or just that he took it too far? I’m not asking questions — the answers won’t change what happened. At least the man driving and talking to me is not the rage-driven creature from yesterday. The rest of the drive is just more adult speak. But it’s calm, with undertones of defeat.

When we get to Owen Sound, I enjoy the freedom. All my Owen Sound cousins are in school, so I read and watch TV a lot, but Saturday is the best because I get to play with my cousins. No one asks me why I’m here rather than at home or in school, and I only speak when spoken to, as instructed. I’ve never seen Dad this calm for so long — he wasn’t even mad last night when I wet the bed again. After three or four days, it begins to feel like a regular visit.

This Saturday afternoon we’re at Dad’s brother Dennis’, sitting with most of his family at the kitchen table. Everyone’s eyes are trained on my cousin’s new boyfriend because he keeps buttering only the bottom of his soda crackers, which is curious to everyone watching. After the fourth or fifth cracker, Uncle Dennis asks him, “So, why do you butter the bottom of the cracker?”

“Oh!” the boyfriend laughs and politely responds, “It’s so I can taste the salt better.”

No sooner had I resolved to try the cracker trick myself sometime than the focus of attention abruptly shifts to me. Seems that the boyfriend caught sight of the upper half of my forearm. His eyes dart from my arm to my eyes and, seemingly against his will, he blurts out, “Your arm. What happened to you?”

A quick glance down tells me that my sleeve has ridden up my arm, almost to my elbow. My chest tightens a bit when I see the coloring of my arm bruises, fading now to a worn-out green color. Dad pulls my sleeve down and announces, “It was hockey!”

I hardly notice the puzzled faces and suspicious eyes around the table as Dad winks at me with a smile. And I smile back — because I’m glad he’s smiling again.

The day my father was born in 1942, the family woke to a mean January morning on Georgian Bay. Icy winds whipped through the giant icicles that hung off the craggy cliffs of Lion’s Head, the tiny village amongst the Great Lakes that was his first home. It was the fourteenth of the month, just weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor to make World War II a full-scale apocalyptic event. During that winter of 1942, ominous voices boomed nightly from radios in homes across the world, reporting on catastrophe after catastrophe.

This is how Murray Charman Waugh came into the world: Violence and unrest penetrated his infant ears, telling terrible tales of death and destruction. Like his father before him, my father was born under the cloud of war and economic depression. It was an era when parents harmed kids and called it love. Toughness and strictness were the pillars of their models of care — there was no time for weaklings or sharing feelings when my father grew up. Any conditions related to mental health — stress-triggered stuff, things that are all in the head, depression and even illnesses as severe as bipolar 2 — they were signs of weakness and should be handled discreetly in the home.

My mother, Anita Rae McEnany, was born in the spring of 1947. In stark contrast to my father’s violent birth era, Anita joined the world in the midst of beautiful spring weather, surrounded by the beauty of post-war peace and prosperity.

The fifth of six children, Anita was the first boom baby in her house. But, while the outside world enjoyed some peace, Anita’s household was anything but peaceful. The few times I’ve pictured my mother as a child, I’ve imagined her doing and saying as she pleases on the front lawn, while two exhausted parents whisper forebodings and four much older siblings shake their heads and ignore her.

Anita grew up in Ajax, which hugs a slice of the north shore of Lake Ontario as part of the east side of Toronto. This is a town that was created specifically to manufacture ordnance and munitions for the Second World War. Job-starved, depression-weary men and women from near and far flooded the factories as Canada spiked its war efforts in response to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Anita’s father, Clyde, was one of the contributing men, while her mother, Janet, taught primary school down the street.

At Ajax High School — the same school I would later graduate from and then teach for — Anita learned to sharpen her skills in reading, writing, and mathematics — and of course, a staple class at the time — home economics. This is about the time when my father met my mother, sometime in the mid-sixties; however, it remains a mystery how they met, since they apparently kept the courtship rather quiet. Perhaps it was due to the optics involved — would a dashing, sharply-dressed, slick, professional twenty-something gent wooing a high school girl have raised some eyebrows?

A romance between a working adult and a schoolgirl may jar some, but certainly not my Gramma Janet — she adored my father. No surprise there. He had such a charisma about him, a way of drawing the attention of all the eyes and ears in a room. He could make people laugh until tears streamed down their faces, which would only inspire him to dig even deeper into his charm. My parents were married in 1966, and a year later I was born, shortly before my mother’s nineteenth birthday. When exactly the violence started in our household is and shall remain an unspoken mystery — though I’m quite certain it preceded my birth.

It’s a month after the belt buckle incident and I’m back in Toronto. As I bound down the stairs, passing Mom on my way to the basement to watch TV, I casually mention to her,

“Dad has been working a whole lot these days. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

Mom heaves an uncomfortable sigh and takes a big inhale. She begins speaking in her soft way, “There’s something I need to tell you. Your father…he moved out, he doesn’t live with us anymore. I told him to leave a few weeks ago. After what he did to you, I don’t want him around you or the twins. I’ve let him do it to me, but that was crossing a line.”

A swirl of mixed emotions floods my brain and body. There’s a pang of guilt — but just for a moment — because I simultaneously picture Dad’s belt tucked safely away in some distant bedroom closet. The wash of relief that comes over me drowns out any feelings of guilt.

If Dad’s been gone three weeks, it means he left shortly after our sudden week-long Owen Sound trip. Now that I think about it, I only saw him once after that. Where is he living? Maybe back in Owen Sound? But then he’s got a great job downtown Toronto so he couldn’t move too far. I bet he found a place close to the Canadian Tire where he works. Last he mentioned to me, he was in line for promotion into senior partnership — I wonder how that’s going for him. I’m not inclined to ask any more questions. Mom says we will be able to figure it all out and that’s all I need to know.

Sitting at the kitchen table across from Mom, I help her learn something called shorthand. She said it will be a good skill for her to have when she gets a job. She has been looking for work since Dad moved out a few weeks ago. It’s a strange language, shorthand. It’s only in written form and is strictly for secretaries. It uses symbols and codes to document things, and Mom will use it to capture what is being said by her boss, a man who I imagine is inseparable from his tailored suit. When she gets a job and has a boss, that is. She will need one soon, she said, since she is now feeding four people.

I have her shorthand textbook open to a practice question that I read to her while she struggles to record it in shorthand. I read her a brief sentence, something like, “We will focus on market growth this quarter.”

Mom’s string of symbols and squiggles doesn’t resemble the correct answer, found just beneath the sentence I read. She looks discouraged and I don’t blame her — this language is stupid. Who could learn all those symbols? Who could memorize them, thousands of them, and string them into a sentence? It seems to me that the time saved using this shorthand language would be less than the time spent learning it. But I never say that to Mom because this is what the boss will want. And she is trying hard, harder than I’ve ever seen and, although I notice the absence of things like treats and money for comic books, the quiet calm of the house more than makes up for it.

And everything will be okay because Mom is going to get a job, a good job, and we will be just fine without Dad. She has an interview next week, and she’s confident. I will help out as much as I can, like I do with this shorthand language. We’ll be okay.