The Other Side of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page B

people selling their plasma, but that seems a bit extreme.
    Dear Lord, help me figure this out. Help me. Help me. Help me
.
    I’m astonished to see that I’ve driven all the way across town. So focused on my monetary worries, I don’t remember driving past my own intersection. And now I’m approaching the neighborhood I grew up in. I remember how I used to go to my dad for financial help in times like this. But my dad passed away four years ago, and that door is firmly closed now.
    I feel a lump in my throat, wishing he were still around, blaming myself for not taking better advantage of the times we had together. Not that my dad and I ever spent much time together. He never did much with any of us kids—or my mom for that matter. She used to claim he was married to his job. Despite the fact that she nagged him for years to retire, he refused to give up his dentistry practice until heturned seventy-one. Within a year of retirement, he suffered a heart attack and died on his way to the hospital.
    But I still miss him. And even though we weren’t close, I always felt more comfortable with him than my mom, and occasionally he would come to my defense. I think he felt sorry for me. I think he somehow understood my plight. Maybe he’d been a misfit too. As I drive past their old neighborhood, I chastise myself for not taking the time to know him better. And I feel certain that if I could go to him now and ask him for help … I think that he, unlike my mother, would be there for me.
    Suddenly I am filled with indignation. What right does my mom have to make me feel this way? Like I’m not worthy to ask her for help when I really need it, when I know that my father would’ve been happy to reach out and lend a hand. Is it fair, just because he is dead and gone, that I shouldn’t ask for some parental assistance?
    I know for a fact that both my brother and sister have gone to our mother for money over the years. Who knows how many times? Lynette “borrowed” money for the down payment on their new home a few years ago, and Jonathan went to Mom for money to start a florist business—a business that’s still floundering, last I heard. And although I would never dare to inquire about my siblings or their debts, I feel fairly certain that neither Lynette or Jonathan has repaid the money or ever will.
    It makes no sense that I’m afraid to go to Mother for money, especially when it was Dad who worked so hard, literally worked himself to death, to earn their income. And it was his death, or rather his life-insurance policy, that made my mother so comfortable that she could afford her fancy new house and vacations in places where Dad never had time to travel to. So why is it fair forher to just sit there like some tight-fisted queen, denying me not only her love but any financial help as well? It is wrong! I pound my fist on the steering wheel. Again and again I pound it. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
    Then I realize I haven’t exactly asked my mother for help. Oh, I considered it last summer after I decided to put the girls in Christian school, but I just couldn’t bring myself to that humiliating place. Instead we used our savings—our nest egg, our cushion.
    I turn down the street toward the expensive subdivision where Mom lives. Maybe it’s time to humble myself and actually ask her for help. What could it hurt? After all this woman has already said and done to me, how could she possibly inflict any more pain on my heart? Surely I must be impervious to it by now. Her words should slide over me like … like water off a duck’s back. This is what I use to assure myself as I park in front of her house.
Like water off a duck’s back, like water off a duck’s back
.
    But my knees feel rubbery as I walk down the paved path to the oversize front door. I know she’s home since her blue Cadillac is parked in the driveway. At night she keeps it safely locked in the garage, but she must’ve already been out this morning.