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Holidays have always set a somewhat apolocalyptic tone in my life. The word became synonymous with horror, cruelty and uncomfortable silence. While other kids were singing carols in preparation for Christmas, I was checking the listings to see what movie would provide my escape from the "festivities." Its really the best day of the year to go to the theater, by the way, for amazingly most people seem to spend that day at home with their families.

Easter is a holiday too, and perhaps because my family isn't especially known for celebrating it, I guess I forgot it fell into that category. And that's a shame.

When I was growing up, the only time I ever saw my father sober was in the morning before he left for work. Thirteen beers every weeknight, and more on weekends and holidays, set the stage for a daily transformation that never excluded the family. The rest of us existed as game show contestants on my father's bizarre network of cruelty and emotional abuse, where those who exhibited the most spectacular mental collapse were chosen as the "regulars." My sister was a regular, having had the fickle finger of fate pointed in her direction almost nightly, as my father stood in the doorway to our living room to select the evening's contestant.

Blessed with the ability to learn from my sister's experience, I became defiantly unaffected by my father's game show, refusing to react, refusing to cry, and therefore depriving him the satisfaction of having chosen me. This experience had a lot to do with the artificial hard shell coating for which I would later become notorious.

But I digress.

While other people looked forward to holidays and planned their celebrations, three out of the four inhabitants of my particular household were shoring up for what might be the worst, or last, day of our suffering. It was oddly exciting.

After so many alcohol-soaked holidays, it was a strange sensation when the first Christmas arrived after my father quit drinking. It was like padding up for game day and finding out the opponent wasn't coming. But it wasn't that easy to believe. Foolishly I expected that my father would become a different person when he stopped pouring alcohol on the fire of his private demons, and 27 years later, it is still devastating to realize that I had used alcohol as a crutch for almost as long as he had. I had blamed alcohol to dismiss his cruelty, while he used alcohol to justify it.

At Easter dinner this year, I heard a switch go off in my father's head. It was

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