Full Blown: Me and My Bipolar Family. David Lovelace

when I came into the kitchen and slung a sack full of dressed squirrel into her sink. She was standing over the kitchen table, fretting over her calligraphy. ‘Hi, dear,’ she said, and looked over. ‘Oh, David. That’s a good pillowcase, dear. I could have given you an old one. What’s in there?’

      ‘Mom, I’m making up a surprise for dinner,’ I told her. ‘I need onions and carrots.’ I pulled the recipe from my back pocket. ‘Let’s see. I need chicken stock. Do we have any chicken stock? I’m making a stew.’

      ‘All right, dear, use bouillion – those cubes up in the cabinet. Just look at that pillowcase.’ It was filthy and spots of blood had soaked through the flowered cotton fabric.

      ‘I’ll wash it. I promise.’ I peeked in at the sadly diminished squirrels. Bits of thread and fuzz stuck to their shiny, sinewy bodies. ‘Never mind, Mom. Just don’t worry about dinner.’ I pushed her out of the kitchen.

      By this time my mother had seen just about everything. She wasn’t worried about my surprise; she’d find out soon enough. Mom had enough concerns. She dressed us, got us on the bus, cooked our meals and washed our clothes. She periodically wrested the chequebook from my father and pleaded for budgetary management. She kept our family presentable, even with snakes in her spare room and dead squirrels on her stove. And yet, banished from her kitchen, she just stood in the hall at a loss. There was nowhere for her to go. The front of the house with its sonic-boom speakers and Dad was off-limits, their bedroom was dark and small, and the family room smelled of snakes.

      Dinner was horrible, of course, a shocking, watery mess with the rodents floating up out of the boil. My sister began crying immediately. I myself was racked by guilt and nausea but recognized I must eat squirrel or admit to wanton slaughter. My mother made toast. Only my father tucked in with gusto. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Not bad. Better than eating frogs.’

      Mom cleared the table and made me promise to throw the leftovers, my entire stew, into the woods after family devotions. Every evening, my father shut down his music, read a passage from the New Testament or Psalms, and asked our opinions. I always had opinions and Dad always followed them with his own, longer and more coherent, commentary. After that came the prayer.

      ‘Does anyone have something they would like to thank God for? Any prayer requests?’