The funny thing, the sad thing, is that I know people who had it far worse than I had it. I didn't live in fear. 364 days of the year (365 on leap years) I was a pretty ordinary kid in a family which, while it was stressful in a lot of ways, was no more abusive than most families. It was that 365th day that was the doozy.

This day happened when I was seven years old. It was Saturday night and I had a friend over to spend the night.

Her name was Leanne and she was my white trash friend - she lived in a two bedroom house with her aging parents. Her dad was on disability and her mom ran an unlicensed daycare out of their house for extra money.  They had a pet raccoon which lived in a cage. Her house was the first place I ever ate bologna with little flecks in it - bologna and mayo on white bread for dinner, with a side of canned corn. Her dad gave me a Bible tract which taught me that wishing upon a star was idolatry and would make you go to hell. 

My house, two blocks away, might as well have been in another world. My dad was an architect and  engineer who often traveled to other countries to supervise the startup of new factories. My mom was a college professor. We never ate white bread or things out of cans. We had two show-quality Siamese cats and a Basset Hound who loved me more than life. My parents were technically Episcopalians - my mom had a copy of the Book of Common Prayer which had belonged to her great-grandmother in 1875 - but we rarely went to church except on holidays. 

Leanne and I loved each other. We wanted to be sisters. We made up whole worlds together. I think, looking back, that I probably rode rough-shod over her, not physically but mentally, because she let me. Even though she was older, I was the one who decided what we were going to play next.  I wrote plays and she acted in them. And that made her happy, and it made me happy.

Her parents were stricter than my parents. She married young, desperate to get away from them. I have her wedding invitation in my treasure box.

It's really the treasure box which is the subject of this post. Did you have one?  Mine was red leather lined with white satin and it had originally held a set of miniature silver goblets with the crests of various cities in Italy. I've had it since forever, and a few years ago I pulled it out and went through it, laughing at myself because even then, the things which were important to me were a writer's things. The play I wrote when I was seven. An impassioned essay on women in love written when I was twelve. I wrote about everything, and I kept the things I thought were important.

I kept this, a sheet of unlined paper with jagged block letters, the pencil almost stabbed through the page:

YOU SAY YOU ARE RIGHT BUT YOU ARE NOT RIGHT AND I WILL NOT FORGET,

I WILL NEVER FORGET.

And it's true, I haven't forgotten. I remember exactly what happened, word for word and moment to moment. I was seven then - the date is on the paper.

My family ate in front of the television set. It wasn't that we liked TV - it was that my dad had a temper, and after one too many dinners that turned into fights, my mother decided we were eating in front of the TV from now on. We ate on red plastic trays in the den, which was a 1970's den, wood panelled and three steps down from the kitchen, opening onto the patio.  Those trays could be tricky;  glasses tended to slide around on them. When I picked mine up that night, I spilled my milk.

My mother yelled at me and said that I hadn't been paying attention because I was showing off for my friend, and I said, "I didn't do it on purpose!"

And my father said, "Don't talk back to your mother," and cuffed me on the side of the head.

Cuff is a word you don't hear too often today. A cuff is not a slap and it's not a punch;  it's a solid strike with cupped hand, upside the ear. It makes your ear ring and it knocks you over. I fell over and my father yelled at me to get up. I didn't get up, so he kicked me. I remember scrambling away from him and falling down the short flight of stairs into the den. I remember holding my arms over my head to protect my head while he kicked me in the head. I thought he might kill me but honestly I wasn't afraid;  I was sickened and ashamed, because I could see Leanne's pale face, her mouth open in shock, frozen, trying not to do anything that would make it worse. The dog was barking like his heart was going to explode, but he didn't know who to side with.

And then we ate dinner. Sitting silently in front of the TV. We had barbequed pork chops, white rice, squash with bacon, and a salad of fresh summer tomatoes with Italian dressing.

Leanne came from Circumstances, as they say, and so she knew just the right way to be so as not to make me feel bad. She didn't try to comfort me;  she knew I was mad as a swatted hornet. She didn't denounce my parents because she knew that tomorrow morning I would still have to live with them. She was calm and quiet. She sat still while I wrote furiously. And then we talked and talked, long after the lights went out and we were supposed to be asleep. 

My treasure box contains other similar "treasures" about other similar incidents. One is a poem in which I summon forth a magical prince who will carry me to another planet. There's a written summary of the time when I was 15 and I threatened to call the police after my father gave me a black eye and he pulled the phone cable out of the wall and held a gun on me for two hours in the kitchen while my mother pleaded for calm. There's one a little earlier than that, a letter from my first boyfriend, who noticed me because I was putting on purple eyeshadow, not to hide the purple bruise on my eye but to accent it. Oh yes, I told people, I told and told. And I was told:  If you think this is bad, you can't imagine what it's like in foster care. A spoiled, upper-class wimp like you would just die. He only hits you one or twice a year, what do you have to complain about?  What do you want me to do, get a divorce?  And live off what money? You love him, don't you?  After all he's done for you, how could you be so selfish as to want to see your father in jail?

I didn't, for the record. Want to see him in jail. I wanted to see him with my boot on his throat. I wanted him to stop, but more than that, I wanted him to understand. I wanted a really big brother (when I was five, I imagined my big brother was Superman and I loved Superman comics more than anything) who would take my side and stand up to him.

Before he was an engineer, my father was a military man. His career was interesting in that he's one of the few people who's been a noncom, a warrant officer, and a commissioned officer. He has three Bronze stars. He walked down from a mountain in Korea when his unit was stranded behind enemy lines;  not too long ago I read an essay about his heroism in that incident in a book of classic war correspondence.   He holds an unbreakable world record in competitive shooting - the first to shoot a perfect round in a particular type of competition. He's taller than I am, stronger than I am. When I got a little older I used to fight back, and it was always a tactical error on my part. My mother used to tell me that I wouldn't get hurt so badly if I would just submit, but I never submitted.

I was fifteen the last time he hit me. We were both riding horses. I don't completely remember what my offense was - I think I said something snotty about his riding skills. He lashed out with his crop and hit me across the face. And that was a tactical error on his part - because he may outweigh me by twice but I am the better rider. I broke my riding crop across his thigh, his horse reared and dumped him, and he landed hard on his back on a pointed rock.

I dismounted and tied my horse, caught his horse. Then I went back for him. He was sprawling, confused - his hard hat had come off. He asked me to find his glasses and I kicked them further away.  My trainer came out to find out what had happened, and he was taken to the hospital. He had six broken ribs and a mild concussion.

And I was thinking, "Praise Jesus, MOTHERFUCKER!"

The broken ribs made it impossible for him to lift his arm high enough to shave. In the weeks while he was healing, he grew a beard. And with the beard, he grew a new personality. More measured, more thoughtful. He never hit me again. But more to the point, he never tried to interfere in arguments between me and my mother again. He never demanded respect from me as his due.

And, in time, he earned my respect. 

Now, here's the part where it's critical that you listen, because I'm going to say something that goes against the common, received wisdom. And every word is true. I've told this story before, and I was told, "Of course a sociopath will stop if he stops getting away with it, people don't change."

But people do change. They really do. It may not happen often, it may not be a good bet - and if you're being abused it's not a bet you should take, because it's your life you're betting - but abusers can change. I've seen it. The man I know today is not the man who kicked me when I was seven. If you had told me back then that today I would pray every night for my father's health and well-being, I wouldn't have believed you. But I do. 

My husband has never seen my father angry. He says he can't imagine what would make him lose his temper - he's the wisest, steadiest, most patient person he knows. And that wasn't true, before the beard. My father, before the beard, wasn't just bad tempered with me but bad tempered with everyone. He was cold and hot depending and he once slammed a trunk lid on a guy for insulting his first wife's parking skills. Now he's the man everyone brings disputes to when a reasoned voice is needed.

It was decades before my father and I were able to talk about what had happened. He says he had a blinding flash of insight that day - that if he kept acting the way he acted, no one would love him and it would be all his fault. He says he can't offer any excuse for the way he used to treat me, except that he reacted to me when I was seven the same way he would have reacted if a grown man had insulted him in a bar. He says I got it worse than his other children because he respected me more, because he literally forgot that I was a child. 

But I was a child. And I'm telling you, there is nothing on earth that a seven-year-old is capable of doing that deserves to be punished by being kicked in the head. 

I'm sorry that it took six broken ribs to give my father a blinding flash of insight. But I'm not sorry I hit him that day. I keep the handle of my riding crop in my treasure chest.

One more thing in my treasure chest that I'm going to tell you about. It's a report card. I went to a school that was using what was called "IGE" which meant Individually Guided Education. The theory was that we didn't have grades, merely plusses and minuses, and that we were allowed to work at our own pace. IGE was not really the most brilliant idea anyone has come up with - like turning a child loose on a buffet and watching them come back with soft serve ice cream and brownies for an entree - and in short order I was reading at a college level and not touching math at all. But that's not what my report card is concerned about. I have all plusses, in fact, and some double-plusses.

It's in the comments section:   Allie doesn't do her homework and nothing we can do seems to motivate her.

The report card has a date on it. Of all the things in my treasure box, it was the date that made me start crying at last.  It's dated three days after I wrote the angry letter about being kicked in the head.

See, I remember that report card. I remember being called on the carpet and told that if I didn't shape up, I wouldn't be allowed to attend CLUE, the gifted program which was my favorite thing in school. I loved the CLUE teacher and she was so disappointed in me and I stood with tears streaming down my face, and she asked, "Why?  Just tell me why you're not doing your homework."

And I said, "I don't know." And I didn't know. I knew that the homework was easy, cheesy, but I felt as if it were a great moral battle, that if I submitted, it would kill my soul.

But I know now. I have the box, and I can look back at the dates, three days apart. There was a little girl back then - she was seven - and her father kicked her in the head and this was her way of resisting. 

That battle, that's still with me. I feel it most often when I feel that someone else is trying to make me do something. Sometimes it's putting the dishes in the dishwasher. Sometimes it's getting my driver's license renewed. Sometimes it's something as small as picking up a piece of kleenex that missed the trash can. Something tiny, something doable, that becomes a mountain that feels like it will crush my soul. I spent a lot of years not doing things and not understanding why, but I'm getting better now. I can recognize that feeling when it starts, and say to myself, "You are not seven anymore. You're not oppressed and no one is kicking you. You don't have to fight anymore and there's no one to sabotage but yourself." 

It gets easier. Once I recognized my enemy, I could face it, and when I look straight at it, it melts away like mist. I'm glad I kept my treasure box. I have the usual things in there, love notes, pressed flowers - but the other things are treasures too.