This is the story of the enigma that is the number 1170, and how it pertains to this family’s parent-child estrangement.
I’m a 1968 baby. It was the year of the Beatles’ White album. The Navy had stationed my father in Adak, Alaska, which he called “The End of the World.” It’s about 1,200 miles southwest of Anchorage, and 4,311 miles from Freeport, Texas, where I was born one August evening. His postcards home bemoaned the cold and the dearth of trees.
His deployment to Vietnam was next and the war had only been over for about a year when my only sibling was born in November, 1971. I am three years and a few months older than she.
Dad was the dedicated parent, a wellspring of safety, reliability, and love, even through divorce. Texas almost always granted custody of children to a mother back then. I can only imagine what dad went through in the ensuing years as his children endured abuse and neglect under his ex-wife’s roof. I was in junior high when our custodial parent informed us that she did not want to parent anymore, and subsequently left her two children and the house to Dad.
Her disappearance was neither her first nor her last, yet I learned to reframe this one as the most motherly thing she was capable of: Admitting that she lacked the interest and ability to parent us, handing us over to our father was the right thing to do.
Like my father, my first-born was also a boy, arriving in December of 2000. My adult life was already different than his had been, and when my son came into the world, I had an office job in Dallas. I drove my son home from the hospital via icy roads, and my boss surprised me by telling me to work from home for a couple weeks. I’ll be forever grateful to her for that.
My daughter was born in February of 2004. This meant that my son is three years and a few months older than his sister, just like me. She was a quieter baby than her brother but came into the world with personality. She could be a force of nature when determined to do something.
I was determined to give my kids a better, safer upbringing than my sister and I’d had for much of our childhood.
I can’t recall when I figured out that the length of time between their births is not roughly equivalent to the length of time between my birth and my sister’s: It’s exactly the same.
It’s not just “three years and a few months.”
It is 1,170 days in each case.
Uncanny.
And upon learning this, I could only wonder what to do with this information. No trumpets played. No emissary from the heavens appeared to explain it. But I chose to frame it as representative of my opportunity to set things right. It’s the spotlight on our family, our mindful undoing of what was once wrong.
Except that year before last, my younger child left in a flurry of emotion and misunderstanding, on both sides – hers and ours. We have had almost no contact since then. I seek solace in my spouse, my work, music, baseball, and PLACE.
Maybe 1,170 will come to represent hope or healing. For now, it is as enigmatic as ever.
