Emergency Preparedness

Emergency Preparedness Merit Badge

My Stepfather

My stepfather was a man that was prepared. He could get paperwork done, he ran a business, he was regarded in the community, and his children were well cared for, always with cars and clothing and safety. His ex-wife still relied on him.

His house was stocked with food, was orderly and neat, and well kept and charming, he had an extra refrigerator in the garage, stocked with soda and treats and ice cream.

Ice cream has a mythic and twisted history in my immediate family.

My father was given to eating ice cream by the bucket full and it was the highest treat for both sides of the family. Ice cream sundaes, coffee frappes, black raspberry soft swirl, or hard scoop.

The relationship between my father and ice cream was epic, mythic, wholesome, and pathological at the same time.

I was brutalized once as a child for eating ice cream without permission. I remember him screaming in my face as he held my arms and shook me. His face and his neck were bright red, his nose almost touching mine, his spittle hitting my face as he screamed at me.

My mother was on holiday somewhere, he had sent her and her friend to Cartagena, Colombia of all places, in the early 80s, I guess it had been cheap and the place was on the beach.

When my mother came home she found the bruises on my arms (I do not recall the bruises, or her finding them, but she told me of this years later) and she had told him to never touch me again.

My stepfather with his nice neat life and clean clothing and slow manner, and Italian largess. We didn’t know what to make of him.

But he had traveling bags and woolen blankets and boxes of food, and he bought my sister and me a gorgeous white VW Jetta to share. Gave it to us at his house with a red bow on top.

He cleaned the island house and mopped and polished the ratty vinyl floors himself, and was dressed in old jeans and sweaters when he was there.

In the mornings he went out and got coffee and donuts and cleaned the yard and fixed things. He put a real light fixture in the bathroom, where there had always only been a bulb on wire hanging from the wall.

It was like a miracle had occurred, and there was a freezer full of ice cream at his house.

He bought my sister and me each small lady-like tool boxes for our apartments, he helped us move, hang curtains, and put in window AC.

He got me a futon for my college apartment, he even offered to pay for my sister and I to finish college, but my mother wouldn’t allow it.

He did get us each a car eventually and would have them serviced for us, and we had triple AA and he even gave us each a credit card for emergencies, which we eventually had taken away, as we weren’t very trustworthy. Nothing extravagant, but the novelty of a credit card was too strong of a pull.

He always had bags, bags of bags, travel bags, trash bags, and plastic bins filled with bags. Tote bags, boat bags, leather bags, business bags, suitcases.

Emergency bags were put in our cars, in our apartments, in the island house. There were foot warmers and Windex and ice scrapers and shovels and twist ties and zip ties, extra gloves, and hand-me-down men's shirts and sweaters, (my sister and I always loved big men's shirts and sweaters to kick around in or use for nightgowns or beach coverups).

There would be maps and files and instructions, and candles and flashlights. Oh, how he loved flashlights and extra lightbulbs.

And finally, there were always extra rolls of toilet paper and paper towels. Paper towels were bought in 6-pack rolls and tp bought in 12 packs.

We had always lived on a roll here, and a roll there, certainly never any extra stacked rolls deep in the closets.

I can remember being very little and when my mother was raising us alone, I wiped myself after peeing with a bath towel on more than a few occasions before I could get to a store with any money of my own. I recall using coffee filters a number of times as well as paper towels if they could be found. (My sister has a similar recall)

To have the island house stocked with trash bags, and tp and paper towels, was a cinderella story, a prince had come.