"a skill no child should ever have to learn"

Patrick Stewart-- yes, that Patrick Stewart-- has a harrowing but brilliantly-written piece in the Guardian about growing up with an abusive father:

One of the very last men to be evacuated from Dunkirk, his third stripe was chalked on to his uniform by an officer when no more senior NCOs were left alive. Parachuted into Crete and Italy, both times under fire, he fought at Monte Casino and was twice mentioned in dispatches. A fellow soldier once told me, "When your father marches on to the parade ground, the birds in the trees stop singing."

In civilian life it was a different story. He was an angry, unhappy and frustrated man who was not able to control his emotions or his hands. As a child I witnessed his repeated violence against my mother, and the terror and misery he caused was such that, if I felt I could have succeeded, I would have killed him. If my mother had attempted it, I would have held him down.

Read the whole thing.

[To the tune of Cocteau Twins, "Pur," from the album Four-Calendar Café (I give it 2 stars).]