How my father overcame his demons and taught me what it takes to raise a child.

Story by BRINNON KUMMER

Whenever I think about my father, a very specific scene drifts into my mind. It is early June in 2009, somewhere along the Oregon Coast between Newport and Cannon Beach. I am 13, sitting in the passenger seat of my dad’s black Ford F-150 with the window down and my hair blowing in the breeze. I smile and stare out at the rolling cliffs and ocean. His “Journey’s Greatest Hits” CD is playing again for probably the third or fourth time, but I don’t mind. My dad is eccentrically weaving another one of his childhood tales that never fail to make me laugh, regardless of whether or not I understand the jokes. It’s a moment in time, a memory that I still turn to when the going gets tough. One that reminds me how lucky I am to have such a pleasant place to mentally escape to. I truly appreciate it, because our life together could’ve gone very differently.

My dad was the second youngest of four children. His own father was a workaholic, often absent and uninvolved in their lives. The parenting fell on the shoulders of his mother, a common dynamic at the time of their marriage.

His parents divorced when my dad was a teenager, and the divide in loyalties and responsibilities allowed the kids to do whatever they wanted. All four of them were sociable, funny and well-liked by their peers, but without parental guidance, they each began descents into trouble.

My dad took the divorce particularly hard, and began to experiment with drugs and alcohol in high school. He checked into rehab when he was 18, attended a quarter and a half of community college, and then dropped out and resumed his old ways. When he was 22, he met a girl from across town, newly divorced with a 2-year-old daughter. Luckily for me, they hit it off almost immediately.

Within a year she was pregnant with me, yet my father still fought to shake his dependance on alcohol. After I was born, they got married and saved up enough money to move into a small house in Arlington. Being away from his past helped, but it was not far enough. A bad day at work or an injury at the gym was all it took to turn him back to his vices. Life went on as usual, a flux of progress and stagnation that would build to a crescendo culminating shortly after my sixth birthday.

Drinking had made my dad unlike himself. He was angry for no reason, short with my mother and myself over the slightest things. He couldn’t be happy until he was drunk.

I don’t remember much from those early years, but I do remember the day that it all came crashing down. My sister and I were watching “Fear Factor” on the living room couch. I could hear my parents arguing upstairs, progressively louder and louder and then finally I heard a BOOM. My mother came rushing down the stairs, picked me up and told us we needed to leave now. Her eyes were red and puffy, and while she was shaking with fear she seemed overpowered by a maternal instinct to protect her cubs. She led us out across the lawn, into the car and to our grandmother’s house.

It would’ve been easier — and probably safer — for my mother to cut him out and for me to have never really known my father, but she didn’t. She could’ve pressed charges against him for assault, but she didn’t. She could’ve tried for sole custody and I could’ve never seen him again, but she didn’t. She could’ve moved us out-of-state, but she didn’t. Instead, she gave him a firm message: their marriage was over, but she reminded him that he still had a son, and that he had more in life than just chemicals.

I remember visiting him for the first time in rehab after the incident, wearing my red Power Ranger costume that I would be trick-or-treating in later that night. He cried and hugged me and told me that he would be done soon and that I would be able to spend the weekends with him, thanks to a deal my mother was able to make. I wasn’t really old enough to grasp the weight of the situation, but I could tell he loved me, and I was happy to have my dad back.

He spent months in rehab; and upon release, I began seeing him again regularly. At first it was in my grandfather’s basement, then a sleazy apartment in downtown Everett, then a small house in a nice neighborhood. He worked his way to a managerial position at a high-end window and door factory in Everett. Every cent that didn’t go towards bills, he would spend on us.

My dad found himself at rock bottom. It wasn’t God, or the law or any external force that pulled him out; he did it himself, with the love he had for his child. As I navigate the age that he struggled through, I find myself surrounded by the same temptations and fears. I see old friends going down similar paths. I see peers unable to let go of the college lifestyle and become adults. I see classmates expecting children, emotionally unprepared for them.

I was lucky to be able to learn the standard fatherly lessons from the man himself: how to throw a football, how to change a tire, how to shave. But I also learned some things that are much harder to teach. I learned how to care. I learned how to give. I learned how to prioritize what matters and what doesn’t. And above all else, I learned how to love, truly and selflessly. I watched a boy become a man, and then a father. Today, as I escape to that stretch of coastal highway somewhere in the back of my mind, suddenly the thought of becoming one myself doesn’t seem so scary after all.