45 Reflection + Profile of a Place: “Party Patio”
Reflection
Brittyn Johnson
English 1003
Dr. Johnston
21. March 2023
Dear reader,
Writing this paper was perhaps one of my most difficult writing experiences yet. I had not believed at first that simply profiling a place and its history, or rather, its history with me could possibly be so open. So woundingly, shockingly vulnerable. I was rather hesitant to even take such a chance. Many times in the writing process I would think to myself, “Let’s scrap it,” and “There’s a nice local coffee shop i saw before… Maybe that would be easier.” To put it bluntly, I was absolutely shaking in my boots at the mere thought of spilling my guts so heavily, baring my open heart on the page. People always say that writing, though, is a far cheaper therapy. If I’m going to hurt, I ought to get something out of it, right? A grade. That is the idea that kept me pushing, as awful as it may seem now that i write it out. My plans were constantly shifting, twisting, and changing, but even through it all i had one consistent thought ringing in my ears. A spiteful little murmur urging me to finish this mushy piece, if only to finally put my demons to bed. While i can’t speak for the future, at least as I am tonight, I can say theyre snug as a bug in a rug.
Profile of a Place
“Party Patio”
It’s six in the morning when my father comes in to kiss my forehead, announcing he’s off to work. He knows I’m still up, never one to rest in the night. “Nocturnal,” he jokes, I’ve heard that a thousand times. It’s three in the afternoon, and he should be back home. I sit in the living room and I wait. Five, and I am still waiting. I feel like my dog and I are one and the same, tilting our heads at the door he told me to lock up tight. I text him I’m worried. There is no reply. I make my dinner, I settle in. It is nine at night when I hear the murmur of company and the laughter of a man three or so cans gone. Just outside, settled at the beaten roundtable with ‘Uncles” I’ve grown too old to recognize. He hadn’t cared to mention he was home. I move from the door, and I sleep. Without a doubt, when the next morning comes, I will be met with an inquiry. “Why didn’t you say ‘Hello?’”
Tracy Johnson, my father, is a man aged 49. From an outsider’s perspective, one might describe Tracy as your typical suburban man. He’s community-oriented, with a keen sense to lend his hand wherever it may be needed. The sort of person who “rallies the troops,” with an open door policy that welcomes all for a game and a drink. People say he’d adopted the attitude from his own father, Niel, who owned the famed “Party Palace” prior to his passing in 2013. He’d died right in the office of a sudden heart attack. As such, to put it crudely, this home carries the ghosts of generations past ache. Despite its lively interior, cozy lived in nature, its walls seep with grief and anguish only a man who’d lost his hero and a young girl left behind could know. I wondered often if, perhaps, he could still feel it the way I do. If when he wanders the empty back hall, and peers into the office doorframe left agape, he feels the sadness or swirling, leaden dread that sinks into one’s very core. Does it hold him down the way it holds me? That striking feeling that you are completely, utterly alone within a space that used to be full of familiar voices just a few years prior? Certainly. It must be the reason he spends so much time away, out on that patio. Why he left me to rot inside as that sinking feeling festers on. Unlike him, I am unable to drown my own ache in a bottle of Crown.
That old patio, his safe haven, is one I’ve only witnessed through blinded windows and on lonely nights when the music is low and the company is dozing around discarded cans. I recall vividly the nights I would peek from the glass pane upon the door, peering dead on at a rusty roundtable mere feet away. Around it rests four equally beat up, rickety seats, folding chairs off to the side because more would inevitably come. Behind it, the radio. Upon pushing further out, one could see the full scope of the bar-ish decor. A long sectional sofa separated from the drinking table by a large, sturdy heater at the center of the patio, overlooking an in-ground pool just a few paces away in the sun-soaked concrete. Behind the seating areas behind a small corner resides the refreshments. A small, barely hanging on, kitchen fridge that was moved from the main home long since we arrived, and can crushers.
Tracy’s patio, perhaps when the day is fresh and warm, and the company sober would be cozy. Homey, people say. I was, and still am, never given the opportunity to step into such a safe haven with him. Relish in the blissful buzz of drink under the skin, and join in the laughter of guests whose inhibitions are torn away. Rangarajan Sripriya states in their research, “…There is sufficient evidence to suggest that parental alcoholism disrupts parent-child relations.” I know that I’m inclined to agree, even without a scholarly article to tell me so. I’ve been left an observer of the rawest, most vulnerable bits of my father and his company. The good, bad, and extraordinarily ugly. Picking up the slack, playing the role of caregiver where no child should. It is an isolated, crushing existence. Spripriya continues on in their work, “Ginter and Whipple (1987) concluded that individuals’ perceptions of their communication with parents is intimately linked to how they perceive their familial environment (e.g., conflict, control), implicitly suggesting that influence originates in perceptions of family communication.” This means that without a stable, safe environment provided by one’s parent, the communication between parent and child, and thus, their relationship, suffers greatly. This is my truth, first hand.
“It’s unfair,” Brandi, my mother, and Tracy’s ex-fiance states, “That a child receives less of her father’s courtesy than, what, somebody he knew back in high school?” Brandi Boggs, all things considered, admits herself that she “Had no intention of staying with him, (Tracy)” and knew from the very start the relationship they’d had would inevitably come to fizzle away. She’s a woman who values her family above all else. Someone who strives to provide, to support, to care in any way her already full hands can manage to outstretch. She was subjected to his habits long before I was born. When asked to describe her observations, she had this to say: “He just never took anything seriously. Never took raising you seriously.” She couldn’t seem to meet my eyes as she continued on, “There were always more important things like– I remember there was one time, you were itty bitty then-, it was your father’s weekend. He refused to pick you up and insisted I bring you to your Mawmaw, instead, so he could watch the game. I was fuming, Britt.”
These habits only seemed to persist after the passing of Niel. It felt as though i was watching my father’s entire world crack and crumble, worsened only by the grief-ridden halls of the home he’d died in. The home Tracy moved into. Tina Lundberg elaborates on this phenomenon in her study of young adults experiencing parental loss. “The young adults in our study reported higher levels of anxiety and depression scored by HADS compared to 585 Swedish young adults from the general population…” and “…young persons can be frightened of exposing themselves and more often seek support from their own social networks..” which I can only be certain is the reason he clings to that old patio like so.
My father and the world outside these hollow halls are specimens I will never be able to truly grasp, but I am content. While the wounds he has inflicted upon me still ache and bleed in his blind spots, I know that his do, too. Where we differ, however, is in the fact that I will stitch myself up. I will leave that ghastly home and abandon those rusted tables, the crushed cans, and the slurring company he traps himself with, and I will heal. One missed weekend at a time.
Resources
Boggs, Brandi interview
Lundberg, Tina, et al. “Bereavement Stressors and Psychosocial Well-Being of Young Adults Following the Loss of a Parent – A Cross-Sectional Survey.” European Journal of Oncology Nursing : the Official Journal of European Oncology Nursing Society, vol. 35, 2018, pp. 33–38, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejon.2018.05.004.
Rangarajan, Sripriya, and Lynne Kelly. “Family Communication Patterns, Family Environment, and the Impact of Parental Alcoholism on Offspring Self-Esteem.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, vol. 23, no. 4, 2006, pp. 655–71, https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407506065990.