I heard the screaming, the shouting, the pandemonium, as shock took over my body for a few moments, wondering what on earth I might find as I went upstairs. My mother was crying, “No! No! No!" as if she had found my father dead. In a way she had.

I had a very uneventful childhood, or at least so I thought up to that night when, aged sixteen, the marriage of my parents came to an abrupt end. Up until then we had all been asleep. Except my father. He has been either awake or at least dreaming of a new life of being awake.

So often he would come home from work and have his dinner separate from us, then retire to his chair, the one that had its back to us, and escape his monotonous life with his family by wearing headphones. My mother would often shout at him and bang on the floor to grab his attention; he'd very reluctantly raise one headphone off his right ear and exclaim “What now?"

The night he told my mother he loved someone else and wanted to leave us changed the sleepy, cruising course of all of our family. It impacted so many of us, including my uncles and grandparents. It felt so abrupt yet as the immediate years passed, we came to see it was actually where we'd all been heading all along.

As I sat on the bottom of my parents bed, I could hear my mother’s crying in another room.

“So what’s her name?” I asked my Dad.

I did have a bit of a temper when I was a kid, but mostly only when I felt incredible frustration with my brother and his teasing or aggravating. I just wanted life to be peaceful and wanted to be loved. I so wanted to fit in, particularly at school and amongst friends. (A very typical enneagram type nine, by the way.) When I think now of that boy who detested any kind of upset or violence, I feel a great empathy. Things certainly went awry after that night but, up to that point, I suspect I was the most grounded of our family. The thinker, the observer, the lover. I remember many times pondering if I was perhaps the second coming, if I was in fact Jesus and was here to bring love. My mother tells me she allowed herself to enjoy my childhood more than any of my siblings. The others brought the steep learning curve of a firstborn, followed by the arrival of twins two years later, which meant ‘busy' was simply how my mother breathed. I arrived after a three and half year break and we had lots of time together alone as my other siblings were at school.

I was the one who brought peace.

“Joan,” my father told me.
Joan. The name of the woman who would refuse to allow me to speak to my father for many years. Joan. The name of the woman who would drive a stake in-between my father and his own parents and have him disown them until after his own father was dead and buried.

“Joan. I thought you might understand,” he said.
“These things happen,” I said. “I think you have to do what you want to do."

As we all settled down for the night, a million movies playing though our minds of how things might be, I lay on the top bunk bed of my and my brother’s room. I slept in his bed as he was staying the night with his girlfriend and my mother lay on the bottom bunk.
I allowed a hand to drop over the side of the bed and invited her to hold it.

“It’ll all be okay, Mum,” I told her.

The next fourteen years were at least as traumatic as the previous had been seemingly uneventful. My old school pattern of being a loner had me compromise in relationships, jump into a crazy, abusive marriage, play with drugs and lots of alcohol, attempt suicide and dive into depression. So many experiences, but ultimately not very loving times. When I look back at them, I don’t even recognise the guy who was living them.

My mother reinvented herself after that night, and I’m happy to report that it was without doubt the best thing that could have happened to her. She found herself and her own self-expression, and built a life with a wonderful, attentive and loving man who epitomises peaceful living. They have been happily married for over twenty five years.

The grounded love the sixteen-year-old boy showed that night may have marked the last time for a while I was truly myself. When I consider him now, I see how I neglected him during my late teens and throughout my twenties, how I ignored him and lost him. Fortunately, the earth tremor and jolt of my marriage finally collapsing meant I started to really look into human behaviour and how I personally had behaved, and after much exploring, I've gotten him back. I've gotten me back. The grounded observer, the peacemaker, the lover. That sabbatical into a crazy wilderness brought me many incredible lessons and much wisdom, but the journey since those crazy times has been so much more beautiful. The lover loves more.

In writing this, I have realised we don’t love for reward. It’s not something I had even considered until now, but I notice how I see that what happened during the fourteen years of my life after my father left our family was nothing to do with how loving I was on that night, or any other time. What happened whilst I got lost doesn't have to have any reason or meaning. It just is. Or rather, it just was.

There is no balance sheet for love.

We love because we are love. It’s who we are. And if you would like someone to hold your hand whilst you reinvent yourself and your life, I know just the guy. Grounded, observant and loving.