One day on a beautiful summer morning when I woke up everything was great for me. It was nice and quite and warm in the house, breakfast was on the table and still warm, and the sun was just coming out from behind the hills. I opened the curtains to get some light into the house and it felt so good to get up early and see the sun reflecting off the ponds of water and to see the swallows swoop through the air. As I sat down to eat my breakfast and watch the birds my mom woke up and said, "Good morning, boy!" She decided to have breakfast with me and told me about her dream. I found her dream pretty funny. As I enjoyed having a conversation with my mom, I decided to turn on some good slow country music. It made the whole morning even more relaxing. After I relaxed for a while I realized that I needed to do some cleaning outside the house. I went out to pick up a couple of pop cans and get some logs from the pile of wood.

When I went back into the house my mom was pretty upset. I asked her what was wrong, and she said that she just got a call, and dad was in jail! I didn't know what to say. I wanted to ask her if she could bail him out but then I knew she wouldn't because she was mad. But he was my dad and I didn't want him to stay in jail. He was shopping in Nome and I guess he just wandered off to a friend's place and decided to drink.

Not only did he get arrested for drinking, though. He also got arrested for criminal trespass and assault in the 4th degree. And this time my mom didn't want to put up with my dad's nonsense. She was tired of telling him not to do this and that, so she decided to divorce him. It really hurt me and my sisters because all our teen years they were the only family we had.

After my dad got out of jail, he came back home but never stayed with us again. My mom hated him for what he did. And she didn't want to go back to him again. Half a year later my dad moved somewhere else and we don't know where he is now. He still calls us to see how we're doing, though. And we still love him as our father, although in a way we hate both our parents for how they made us feel like we were no longer a family. Everything wasn't normal anymore the way it used to be. We just wished that we could reunite and go back to being a family again. It also made us so uncomfortable because everyone knew what had happened. It was hard to live without a father.

By: Jackie Paul George