An appropriate title for our visit to the mountains would be "The Beginning of the End". It was the last weekend that our family would be together as a family for nearly two years. The end of innocence and trusting someone I loved to do the right thing, not for some ulterior motive that served nobody except himself. And it was the beginning of a nightmare that hasn’t ended.

We journeyed up to the campground together, Mike driving the rig and me in the station wagon. I was still smarting over the Last Summer debacle, but I was determined to remain calm. I wanted the trip to be fun, especially for the younger children. The mountains were getting chilly, and in November the pool would be drained until the following summer. And after the time change off Daylight Savings Time, camping gets a little tricky, what with kids in school, arriving at dusk and trying to level and set up the motorhome after dark.

We set up the campsite, and Mike and Ashley promptly decided to take a walk down toward the camp store. I fixed dinner, and they were still gone. We waited another 15 minutes but the food was getting cold, so I served to the younger kids. When Ashley and Mike finally ambled up an hour later, Ashley was mad that she got the leavings from the meal, and Mike announced he wasn’t hungry. They were only in the site for about 20 minutes when Ashley said she needed to smoke, so off they went again. The kids and I played cards by the fire until bedtime.

Ashley slept in way past breakfast the next morning. I planned pancakes, and I know she likes them, but the other kids had huge camping appetites. Besides, our motorhome rule is first come, first served, and sleeping until 10:30 is ridiculous. She finally awoke and, to her great sorrow, only two pancakes remained (although we had plenty of instant oatmeal and cocoa), so she was pissed. You would’ve thought she didn’t get any breakfast, the way she was carrying on. And when she complained to her dad, he probably would’ve forced me to make more but I’d run out of pancake ingredients.

The kids were already dressed, and I was finishing dishes when they announced they wanted to go swimming. We spent almost two hours at the pool, without Mike and Ashley in attendance much to the kids’ dismay. Eric and Emily had perfected their jumping and paddling and wanted to show Daddy- well, too bad. Ashley and Mike were too busy spending time by themselves, and for all they paid attention to any of us, they might as well have been in a different campsite, a different campground, a different state.

We had lunch at the pool, and the kids asked for icecream from the camp store. I went to get my purse off the bed, and my wallet was out of place. Five dollars was missing. Asking questions resulted in no admissions of guilt, until Mike noticed a telltale bulge in a jacket of Ashley’s hanging from the upper bunk and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She had stolen the money to buy smokes from the camp store. The pack was almost empty.

As the kids resumed their activities, I zipped my lip and waited for some kind of scolding from Mike. Here was a perfect example of Ashley invading my privacy, taking my personal property, and nobody could say I drove her to it. She was also breaking Mike’s smoking rules which I didn’t even agree with, and with the mostly-empty pack as evidence, it seemed she was smoking far more than even Mike allowed. Surely this was reason enough for some kind of discipline.

But no. Mike didn’t even say anything and started to walk away. I opened my mouth to protest, and he turned to me, snarling, "Shut up!"

I clenched my fists at my side. This wasn’t right. Ashley was plainly at fault, and I was the one being chastised? Off to the side she stood, smirking in triumph, once more getting her way. How could Mike be so blind? She was so out of control, and as a matter of fact, so was he. How could I maintain my role as mother under this strain? There was no way of keeping the family together in a healthy relationship if he was going to overlook her faults and snap at me in anger every time I tried to discipline her because he wouldn’t. And on top of everything, he was leaving the care and responsibility of the others to me.

The camping trip took a definite downhill turn from there. If Mike felt guilty for the disparity in the way he was treating Ashley vs. me or the way he idolized her and ignored the younger children, he didn’t show it. He went out of his way to keep us apart, buying her the barbeque dinner that night instead of eating with us, going on long walks and swimming with her at the pool while we played mini-golf. Ashley relished the extra attention, and I would catch her shooting glances at me that could only be called evil. And incessantly there was the smoking. He didn’t even take away the pack of cigarettes she bought.

I couldn’t figure it out. My brain was in a fog, and I know Mike’s actions were trying to tell me something I didn’t want to listen to. There was a definite power play for her love, loyalty and affection, orchestrated by her dad that I was beginning to be aware of, but no man in his right mind would be so desperate to work both sides like he did. No healthy father would want to be so manipulated by his child that he let her run the show and lord it over the rest of the family. But the missing element was something I wouldn’t find out until later: Mike wasn’t healthy.

****TTFN,

Julie