Chapter Thirty

In this next Chapter of Lost and Found, we get a look at why this amazing person, my Aunt Dorothy, occupies a special place in my heart.

It’s been a quiet week in my neck of the woods. I have very little to report. However, I can confess this — I’ve been a major procrastinator this past week. I haven’t been doing the writing I wanted to do. I do know that one of the factors which plays a role with keeping my mind free and open to do the writing, is the way politics has been here in the USA. I won’t bore you with any of those thoughts here, though. I will be writing more along those lines, and sharing some of my feelings in my blog at: http://www.theleaderinside.com over the next few weeks.

For now, on with sharing more of my life ….

Be well — be in peace,

Ron Rink
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It was in the spring when I rode my bike over to Aunt Dorothy’s house the day after my father had given me a particularly awful beating. I didn’t really give a lot of thought as to why I chose to do this other than I knew it was still too cold to try to run away again. I also knew I needed to do something which might give me the same feeling I would get when I did run away, and I knew whenever I was at her house I felt free and safe.

Their house was small like ours. From the outside, it looked almost the same. The inside was completely different, though. Their living room was much larger and had a lot more light coming in. They didn’t have a dining room, but instead, had a much larger kitchen where they ate their meals. The kitchen table was where most things happened in their house. They had their meals there; they read the paper there; if either Uncle Lisle or Aunt Dorothy had paperwork to do, that’s where it happened; they did jigsaw puzzles there, and Diane did her coloring and school work there. The table had metal legs and a metal top which was always covered with a patterned oilcloth. There were six matching chairs around the table. I never paid much attention to the rest of their house because the kitchen was where I always went whenever we were there visiting
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I had looked in the mirror at home that morning and saw I had two sizable bruises on my cheeks, my lower lip had a cut on it and my upper lip was swollen. When Aunt Dorothy answered my knock on her door she just looked at me, shook her head, took me by the hand and pulled me through the door into the house. She didn’t ask any questions or say anything.
Still holding my hand, she led me into the kitchen, pointed to one of the chairs at the kitchen table, poured me a glass of milk and put the cookie jar on the table. I could see she was upset by my appearance, but she never said a word. She went into her refrigerator, cracked some ice out of one of the trays and put some of the cubes into an ice-pouch.

“Just finish with your cookies and milk, then put this on your lower lip,” she said quietly as she patted me gently on the shoulder. “If your lip gets too cold, just switch the bag to the swelling on your upper lip.”

She pulled out one of the other chairs next to mine and sat down. “After the ice has a chance to take some of that swelling down we’ll see if we need to put anything else on it. How about your cheeks? Are they painful? Do you need more ice for them?” she asked.

I shook my head no, broke off a piece of a cookie and dunked it in my milk. It was a chocolate-chip cookie—my favorite kind. I had to put small pieces into the corner of my mouth because I discovered my front teeth hurt and I couldn’t bite the cookie normally.

I kept dunking the pieces, which helped to make them more chewable—not that I wouldn’t have dunked them even if my teeth and lips weren’t sore. Those cookies dunked in milk were one of my favorite treats. I don’t ever remember a time when there weren’t chocolate-chip cookies at Aunt Dorothy’s house. The only time we ever had them at home was when Aunt Dorothy brought some over. It was another one of the contradictions about my parent’s rules – they wouldn’t make any cookies because they considered them to be against the church’s teachings, but my father would devour Aunt Dorothy’s cookies anytime they were around.

I ate a couple of the cookies and then put the ice-pouch on my lip. I didn’t realize how much the lip hurt until the ice began to numb it.

“When did this happen, Roland?” Aunt Dorothy asked with a look of concern and sorrow in her eyes. “Did he hit you with his fists?”

She didn’t ask how it happened – or who did it. In fact, it was the first time I realized she knew what was happening.

“Yes,” I mumbled through the ice-pouch, “It happened yesterday afternoon right before supper”.

I had never been at my Aunt’s house after one of my beatings, so I was nervous about whether she would want to talk about it. It was one thing to talk about it with Billy or for the people at the track to see the cuts and bruises. It was another thing to talk about it with my Aunt who I loved so much. I was also worried about what my parents would think if they knew I was talking to anyone about this. However, those worries were outweighed by the part of me which hoped she would ask questions. Perhaps it was the hope she could do something to change things.

Then Aunt Dorothy revealed something which was a huge surprise to me.

“Oh Roland”, she said as she dabbed away at the bruises on my cheeks with a cold, damp cloth, “I wish I knew how to help you. I’ve known this was happening for quite a while. Your mother and I have talked about it a few times, but she is convinced what your father is doing is right. I don’t know how your father was brought up, but your mother, myself, and all of our sisters and brothers were brought up with very strict parents. Your Grandpa and Grandma, my stepmother and father, believed that children needed to be sternly punished when they did wrong things. It all had to do with the way they were taught and treated when they were young.”

“Do my parents feel this way because of their church?” I asked.

“Yes, I think it does have a lot to do with the way your parents, especially your father, understand the Bible. I think he believes the Bible tells him he should be doing this to you. My father was also very strict as far as his religious beliefs, but neither of my parents ever punished us the way your father does you. We were spanked, and plenty often. Sometimes it was with a belt, or sometimes with a switch, especially if we were awfully bad. Most of the time, though, they would just put us across their knees and spank us with their hands on our behinds. Nevertheless, our parents never struck any of us with their fists, not even our brothers. The only place any of us were ever hit was on our behinds.”
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(NOTE: There is some rewriting needed before I can publish the rest of this, so the next Chapter will be a continuation of this incident. Thanks for your patience.)
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My other blogs:

http://www.theleaderinside.com
http://www.buddhistbelief.com
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