Kiss and Tell Read Online Free PDF

person. He had good reason to be angry: to him, it seemed that he woke up one day and his seven children and ranch were all gone, never to return. He now behaved like a very angry, confused child. He and my mother fought. There was no kissing anymore. No laughter, no hugs, very little hope. If I had been in my mother’s place, I would have killed myself. That was a lot for one woman to bear.
    I’m sure my parents had many anguished discussions, with my mom saying things like “I can’t do this alone—the ranch, the business, seven kids—what am I supposed to do now? I have to sell; I have to leave.” My father was dead set against it. It was his ranch, his whole life, and his livelihood that he had worked so hard to build from nothing. I can imagine that fight as an adult, but they were good about sheltering us from all the tension. As a nine-year-old all I knew was we lived on a ranch, Daddy had an accident, and now we were going to have to leave.
    My dad was only home for two weeks in a wheelchair before he had to return to the hospital for an extended period of time. It was now clear he would survive, and the doctors had to work on those bones not properly set when they were so sure he would die. He had a very long rehabilitation ahead, including months of strenuous physical therapy.
    The brain injuries my father sustained were similar to those of a stroke victim—he had to learn how to walk and talk and drive again. It was fascinating, in a scary way, to see his inability to hide any of his feelings after the accident. I believe that our family life might have been salvaged if he had been able to keep his emotions in check, but my dad could not stop whatever he was thinking or feeling from coming out of his mouth. He no longer had a filter. His personality had irrevocably changed. It was heartbreaking to see my strong, vibrant father turned into this angry, crippled mess in a wheelchair.

DONALD KEITH TWEED. PORTRAIT OF A BROKEN MAN: DAD AFTER THE ACCIDENT ON A VISITATION DAY.
    All these abrupt changes were devastating to me and, I’m sure, to my siblings. I was the only family member my dad would tolerate coming near him when he came home for his visit in between operations and rehabilitation, and he needed a lot of help. He wouldn’t allow anyone else to take him to the bathroom or help him walk. He was so heavy. I remember him leaning on Mom and me—he clung to me, and I couldn’t understand why. I was just an ordinary little girl, one whose daddy was now gone—there physically, but his essence was gone forever. However, there was something about me he liked and things about some of the other kids he now hated and verbalized. The outbursts were due to the brain trauma, but it was incredibly hurtful, especially to my brothers, to have their father not like them anymore and say cruel things to them. My brothers were careful to never get too close. The whole thing was bizarre and emotionally upsetting. I knew he didn’t really mean his harsh words, but it made me cry all the time—for them, for him, and for all of us.
    For a while after my dad’s accident, my mother, friends, and the ranch hands managed, but it was the sixties in rural Canada, and the banks took a dim view of a woman’s ability to run a ranch and refused to lend her enough money to keep things going. Nor did my mother’s parents offer any real financial help. They were prosperous motel owners, but I believe there was a bit of bad blood in the family history—some bitterness left over from years before, when my mom had left Saskatchewan as a young woman and gone off with my father to some godforsaken place to raise mink. There was nothing left to do but sell the ranch.
    During all this, of course, I still had to go to school every day and carry on, as much as possible, with my regular routine. I developed a very intense crush on my fifth-grade female teacher. I can’t remember her name, but I can still see her so clearly: she was young,