As I continue sharing My Life in Posts, I know some entries will be lighthearted—stories about sports, friendships, childhood adventures, and the moments that shaped me in joyful ways. But others, like this one, reach into deeper places. Not everything in my adolescence was simple or fun. Like many people, I walked through adversity. But these years, painful as some of them were, helped shape the person I eventually became.

To fully appreciate this story, I must take a few steps back and provide some context. I was born in 1958 and grew up in Aurora, MN. In 1968 at age 10 we moved to Winona, MN and I switched schools between 3rd and 4th grade. I switched again between 4th and 5th grade when we moved from one side of Winona to the other. During 5th grade, two of my brothers and my father went to live in New Richland, MN for a year while I stayed home with my mom. My mother insisted on finishing her 4 year teaching degree at Winona State in her late 40s. I switched again between 5th and 6th grade when we moved to New Lisbon, WI. My father was looking for a new job every year. Why?

Prior to high school, I had taken a vacation with my parents to South Dakota in eighth grade. This is probably my first memory of learning that my father was an alcoholic. For a week, we were in close quarters in the car and the motel so it was hard for my mom to continue hiding this secret from me. Each of my four older brothers interacted with my dad at different stages of his drinking and they each have their own memories and experiences while living at home. They were aware of his addiction long before I was. I had seen my father inebriated at other times, specifically at my little league games in Winona, but at age 11 I didn’t fully understand the problem nor his addiction.

When I entered high school, the house felt emptier than ever before. My closest brother, Chuck, was four years older, heading off to college just as I was stepping into freshman year. All my older brothers had already moved on—already working or studying elsewhere. Suddenly, between ages 15 and 18, I found myself the only child left at home. It was just my mom, my dad, and me.

During my freshman, sophomore, and junior years, both my parents were still alive. My dad passed away in July of 1976, the summer between my junior and senior year, at just 52 years old. But the years leading up to that moment carried their own challenges—moments I rarely spoke about, even to close friends.

Those three years alone in the house were the years I had to face my dad’s alcoholism directly. When he was sober, he was intelligent, hard-working, and a good provider. In many ways, he was a man with tremendous potential. But when he was drinking, he became a completely different person—verbally abusive, unpredictable, and deeply wounded in ways none of us fully understood. Some of the words he spoke in those moments are things no teenager should ever have to hear from a parent. Even today, although I have done a lot of emotional work, some of those memories still surface unexpectedly.

Yet while all of that was happening behind closed doors, I was still trying to be a “normal” high school kid. I studied hard and did well academically. I loved football in the fall and basketball in the winter and put my whole heart into athletics. Looking back, it still surprises me that I never played baseball in spring during high school. I loved baseball—I played Little League growing up and adult ball after graduation—but for some reason, during those particular years, I never stepped onto the high school diamond. It remains one of those strange blanks in my story that I still can’t fully explain. I did go out for golf in the Spring of my senior year.

I also had a girlfriend during those years, Sue Ann, who brought comfort into a chaotic season. We spent a lot of time together, and she became one of the few people I trusted with small pieces of what was happening at home. She was someone who offered stability during a very unstable time.

My mom—God bless her—was the glue that held the family together. Raising five boys would have been a challenge under any circumstance, but raising five boys while navigating the emotional landmines of an alcoholic spouse required a level of strength and courage I only fully appreciate now as an adult. She tried everything she could think of to help my dad: having him seek professional help, hiding / removing the alcohol, rationing it, negotiating with him in ways no spouse should have to. But addiction is bigger than willpower, bigger than clever strategies, and certainly bigger than one woman’s exhausted attempts to keep peace in the house.

My dad was incredibly resourceful in finding ways to obtain alcohol. Creativity fueled by addiction can be a powerful force. My mom, worn down from teaching school all day and managing the household, could only do so much. I didn’t understand it then, but I now realize how overwhelmed she must have felt—how trapped, how responsible, how determined to hold everything together for us.

At age 15 I became my mom's protector. I wish I would have done more back then, but I was instilled “respect for your parents” at a very young age. I can still remember nights sleeping on the small landing between the two flights of stairs in our house. I had told my mom to sleep in my bed and I would keep my father away from her so she could be rested for work the next day. This happened far too often when my dad was inebriated and looking for more to consume.

We had also set up a way to communicate if he was drunk when I came home from school. A sock on the door handle means something entirely different for many of us. For me, a sock on the door handle between our garage and house, meant that my dad was drunk and DO NOT bring any friends into the house.

There were at least two times he went to rehab that I remember clearly. The last one was right before the Fourth of July during America’s bicentennial year—1976. When he came home, he seemed different. Hopeful. Sober. Changed. I wanted to believe it. I did believe it. But later I learned that he had been drinking on the bus ride home from treatment. He simply became better at hiding it.

Two weeks later, he died of a heart attack. I was the one who carried him from his bed to the car while he gasped for breath at 4:30 in the morning. I was the one who drove with him laying motionless in the backseat, and my mom in the front as we sped toward the hospital in Tomah. He died later that morning. That moment, and everything that came with it, has stayed with me all my life.

Most people had no idea what was happening inside our home. I didn’t talk about it—not to friends, not to teachers, not even to people I trusted. Only Sue Ann knew fragments of the truth. Many years later, during class reunions, I began sharing small pieces of my story. People were stunned. But as often happens, when one person opens up, others suddenly feel safe enough to do the same. That’s when I learned that several classmates had lived through similar experiences—parents struggling with alcoholism, households full of chaos and fear. So many of us were walking around carrying heavy things no one could see.

Growing up in that kind of home shaped me emotionally. I became someone who kept my feelings to myself. “Big boys don’t cry”—that was the unwritten rule in our house. With no sister and a mom forced to stay strong for all of us, emotions weren’t something we expressed openly. My mom had feelings, of course—she was human—but she often had to hide them behind her role as the stabilizer, the protector, the one who kept our family from falling apart.

My inability to express emotions outwardly ended up affecting every relationship I was in. It created distance I never intended and made it hard for people to truly understand what I was feeling. Looking back, I can see how much it shaped the way I connected with others. It has taken decades of work to improve in this area and I am the first to admit I am still a work in progress.

There were moments of deep embarrassment too—times when my dad, while drunk, said things that made me wish I could disappear. People would look at me and ask, “Whose dad is that?” And I didn’t have an answer. Or maybe I didn’t want to say the truth.

During this time, the safest place I could find was my bedroom, door closed, stereo on. Music was my refuge. I escaped into songs, into sound, into a world where things made sense and my dad’s anger couldn’t reach me. I spent countless hours listening, imagining, escaping.

Just this morning, while stretching with Pam, a Poco song—Little Darlin’—played. And suddenly I was 16 again, sitting in my room, leaning on music to survive another night of uncertainty. It was songs like this (Little Darlin’ came out in 1978) that had brought me peace during my adolescence. But instead of pain, what washed over me was gratitude: gratitude for the refuge those songs provided, gratitude for how far life has taken me, gratitude for healing.