Those were the first cracks in my image of him. I was after all the little girl who was left behind with the manic mother. My hero did not rescue me. 

 

Yet decades later, I find myself face to face with my own imperfections. My child has a condition that renders logic obsolete. Autism hijacks his ability to calm down in a storm, or when the computer crashes. So when I mentally go away, albeit only in the next room, I remember the image of my father slamming the car door. For him, leaving was a better choice than duking it out with a woman in an altered mental state. I can forgive him for that crack in his armor, and it helps me understand what I could not fathom at the tender age of twelve. He was human, and had reached his breaking point. 

 

I had expected to be a perfect wife and mother, one who had unlimited resources of patience and compassion. But that dream did not come true. I have said and felt things that I never would have predicted, and faced my own shattered image.

 

Yet I suppose the cracks in an eggshell are the only way the chick can come out into the sunlight.