“And I asked my father if he would build me a dolls’ house....”

December 12, 2020 1:29 PM

In The Guardian, by the author Kate Mascarenhas: 'Dad was an alcoholic, and violent and destructive with it. But when I was nine, he painstakingly created a thing of beauty, which I have kept to this day.'
posted by Wordshore (16 comments total)

(Kate is also on Twitter, and has a thread of comments about her article)
posted by Wordshore at 1:38 PM on December 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

Well that was very lovely and sad. Thanks for bringing it here!
posted by saladin at 1:47 PM on December 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

I believe you mean Mefi's Own Kate Mascarenhas.
posted by kyrademon at 1:53 PM on December 12, 2020 [12 favorites]

This is a nice surprise!
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 2:08 PM on December 12, 2020 [35 favorites]

...partly protected by being the baby, and partly by the extreme caution I cultivated. partly protected by being the baby, and partly by the extreme caution I cultivated... Strangers said I was an aloof little girl, or called me self-contained. I underreacted to everything, careful not to challenge him (he hated to be challenged) and to limit any excess of emotion: no anger, and no excitement, either. I was watchful, as we all were, for the subtle changes in his bearing that signalled his bad mood. This spared me physical harm, but it didn’t spare me the atmosphere.

Yeah. Pretty much.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:15 PM on December 12, 2020 [14 favorites]

Oof. My dad and I built an elaborate kit dollhouse together when I was eight or nine. Today he lives at the bottom of a Fox News hole and we don’t talk about anything serious if I can avoid it, but I still love miniatures.
posted by nonasuch at 3:37 PM on December 12, 2020 [5 favorites]

That dollhouse has crown molding.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 4:31 PM on December 12, 2020 [4 favorites]

That was wonderful, and reading it was also one of those sudden-jolt-of-grief moments, because I think my mother would have recognized her own father in it, and she's not here for me to share it with her.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:14 PM on December 12, 2020 [6 favorites]

But there were other explanations for his mood swings and suspicion. His younger brother had schizophrenia, and he once told me his mother was bipolar. At 33, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder myself

I’ve seen it in my own family how the stigma surrounding mental illness or plain ignorance about the topic meant helpful treatment/therapy is delayed or completely neglected. Therapy is often an answer on Ask Metafilter and I feel grateful that this site reminds us about it’s benefits.
posted by mundo at 5:59 PM on December 12, 2020 [10 favorites]

This hits so close to home for me. Love always seeks for a way to get through, and it is altered forever by the way it had to take. Sometimes so much that it is not recognised until it's too late. Reading my father's letters after his death I was shocked how openly he talked about his feelings for us children to our mother. Why not to us? And so I will forever regret that he died before I was mature enough to tell him that we loved him still despite his addiction.
posted by hat_eater at 6:03 PM on December 12, 2020 [16 favorites]

Thanks for posting the piece and for these comments.
posted by Miko at 8:40 PM on December 12, 2020 [4 favorites]

I’ve seen it in my own family how the stigma surrounding mental illness or plain ignorance about the topic meant helpful treatment/therapy is delayed or completely neglected.

And then there’s the self-medicating,
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:49 PM on December 12, 2020 [8 favorites]

Wow. This is coming to me at a serendipitous but odd time, as just last night was the first time I had spent any real time at my father's house since I left home at 18. I had visited briefly once prior, a few weeks ago, and was shocked and sad at the state of his living room, a single office chair surrounded by boxes placed in front of the television and next to a single tv tray, covered in cigarette ashes, the floor littered with trash. He had always been so meticulous about the house being clean. For him, there was a right way and a wrong way to do everything. Any task. Any accomplishment or progress could be labeled irrelevant if it wasn't done the right way, even if the results were the same. The heft of his depression overwhelmed me along with the smell of cigarettes.

For us, my middle sister and I, it was fishing. Going fishing with him was always so special. He'd spend an hour after dinner cleaning his truck, packing us blankets, gathering equipment, and then we'd leave after dark in the summer. We sat in the back of his truck on low beach chairs, we counted the streetlights that were out. Even though it was pleasantly warm, we'd have blankets covering our laps, and we'd look at the night sky. At the beach we'd set up a little camp, just us. He didn't drink when we went fishing. The rocks under the overpass were a haven for crabs who would come out at night to feed. The water had bioluminescent jellyfish. The first fish I ever caught was a flounder, and he was proud of me.

He is sober now. We've been slowly building a relationship these past 15 or so months. At first it was just a lot of regret on his part. He'd go off on long tangents, berating himself for his bad choices, while I sat awkwardly. It'd devolve into rants about the state of the world. Now after months of prodding, he's started to wake up. Started to take car of himself. He's going to his doctor appointments. He's even seeing a psychiatrist. He doesn't go on tangents anymore, though last night he said he didn't know if the medicine his "shrink" had him on was working or not. It's a huge step from when I was a child, suffering with my own mental illness, both of my parents denying that it was real.

I'm lucky to have this extra time with him. I won't call it closure. It's opening up more and new things, too. Some of them good, some of them not. I haven't been in touch with any of his family yet. His younger brother, who he himself has cut ties with, is scizophrenic and deeply immersed in conspiracy now more than ever. His father, my grandfather, has Alzheimers. He's already gone. My last day with him came and went before I knew it. His mother, once a young Jewish woman, went through her own decades long battle with alcoholism, and came out the other side as one of those "Christians" who seem staunchly anti-Jesus.

I'm really thankful for metafilter bringing stories like this to me and offering my a place to process these feelings.
posted by FirstMateKate at 7:54 AM on December 13, 2020 [23 favorites]

I've ordered her first novel.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:58 AM on December 13, 2020 [5 favorites]

> "I've ordered her first novel."

You will definitely not regret having done so.
posted by kyrademon at 11:05 AM on December 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

Your father created something and someone beautiful. I am so sorry that mental illness took him from you too soon.
posted by zymil at 6:12 PM on December 13, 2020