Crushed Apple

“Let me ask you a question,” he challenges me. “Do you enjoy hitting your kids?”
“Yanky, you need to get help, or you’re outa here.”
I roll my eyes. I’ve heard these words from my wife, Rochel, countless times throughout the nine years of our marriage. I dismiss them yet again.
But Rochel isn’t done nagging me. “If you can announce in front of your kids that Mommy’s supper tastes horrible, and tell them that I’m ugly, then you need to leave this house immediately.”
“There you go,” I say, “making up stories again.”
Over the years, Rochel has locked me out of the house dozens of times, claiming that my behavior is unacceptable. Each time, after spending a night or two in my car, I come back, apologize, and promise her to improve, just so I can get back into the house. And then she lets me back in, until she decides again that she doesn’t like something I did. She likes to complain that I say insulting things to her, that I violently attack the kids, that I’m totally out of control.
She’s imagining things, of course.
But this time, I’m in for a surprise.
“Tatty,” my eight-year-old son, Shmuli, says earnestly, “you did say those things to us tonight. You told us that Mommy’s supper tastes horrible. And you told us that she’s ugly. You say that lots of times.”
I honestly have no recollection of saying such words. I’m a nice guy, after all, the type who would give the shirt off his back to a friend. I get along well with everyone in shul, at work, and on the street. Until now, it’s only been Rochel who accuses me of having an anger problem and behaving like a madman — and I never believe a word she says, because I know it’s not true.
Except that now, my own son is confirming her accusation. And, looking into his sad little eyes, I think to myself, for the first time, Maybe I do have an issue.
That’s how I find myself sitting in the office of a therapist, a fellow named Aron Fishbaum.
“From what I understand from your wife,” he begins, “your father abused you as a child, and, in classic post-trauma fashion, you’re repeating the same dysfunctional patterns of behavior with your own family.”
Abuse? Post-trauma? Dysfunctional patterns of behavior? These words sound kooky to me.
“I did have a strict father,” I manage to say, “but I think you have the wrong picture. My father is a pillar of the community, a highly respected askan and baal tzedakah. Ask anyone who knows him and they’ll tell you what a special person he is.”
Mr. Fishbaum gives me a funny look. “What people in the community think of a person doesn’t necessarily mean much,” he says. “It’s a person’s behavior at home, around his wife and children, that defines him.”
Many times, when I casually mention to Rochel something my father did to me growing up — like throwing me out of the car onto the street because I misbehaved, or hitting me until I fainted — she responds with horror. “That’s not normal!” she exclaims. “That’s crazy!”
“Nah,” I answer. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
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