From “Walk with Me: A Journey through the Landscape of Trauma” by Ellen Corcella
My mother’s resentment brewed under this facade of success, and parties reminded her of those stifled ambitions. Required by social convention to sit in the same room with their wives, husbands sat in the stately rooms to talk about their professions, careers, and the weighty matters of the world. With her children in elementary school and her nursing career deserted, she drank to fill her loneliness.
When my mother’s wrath boiled over, my father left. He did not tell us where he was going or how we could reach him – he just left, abandoning us in the very hell he, a trained psychiatrist, could not tolerate. Maureen, James, and I were confined in our beautiful home with our raging mother whose ire did not diminish because her husband left the house. My father had returned by the time we woke up in the morning, starting the charade over again: breakfast on the table, my father off to work, and the children gone to school. He never asked whether we, his children, were okay.