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What? I’m not witty?
Whatever.
Today is Monster’s first day of preschool. We have been talking it up all weekend to hopefully get him excited about it and make him feel like this is the coolest thing ever. He already knows the teachers and many of the kids because he is with me every day to drop DramaBoy off. He usually wants to stay as well because there are trains there. Heh. So, I figured his transition to the first day of school where he gets to stay would be easy!!
Wrong.
He is sick. No fever, just an upset tummy. And, he made a point to tell DramaBoy and me that he is scared of starting school so he is sick. His words.
This means he has developed the odd issue that I had as a child. Whenever something big was going to happen, be it a family trip, or a Girl Scout trip (yes, I was in Girl Scouts, shuddup) or something else exciting, I would wake up in the morning sick.
My parents used their incredible deductive reasoning skills to figure out that I would get so worked up about the upcoming events that I would make myself sick. It was a mind over matter thing, my dad said. I never had a fever… just an upset stomach. At some point my father taught me how to overcome this by using the mind over matter technique and it never happened again.
Now it seems I have passed on this ridiculous idiosyncrasy of mine to my son. He has my grace, my motor mouth and now my stoopid mental disorder that causes illness whenever something exciting or new is about to happen.
School doesn’t start until 12:30 and it’s only 9am. There may be still time to see him recover, but since I just ran into the living room to see him throwing up, I doubt he will be better by the time school starts. Poor little boy. He looks miserable.
From this point forward, there will be no mention of school. Not one word. If DramaBoy even says the word school he will be grounded. If I have to duct tape my own mouth shut, I will. I don’t even want the word school to be thought by anyone!
Maybe he can start tomorrow. I wonder if he will want to stay this time or if he will start crying when he sees that I’m leaving like he does when I have to drop him off with friends. He is, oh, how do I say this? He is my velcro baby. Since the second he was born he has been stuck to me. I am convinced it is because of the three months he spent sleeping on my chest because of his colic and unwillingness to sleep anywhere else. He loves cuddling with me and is always bugging me for one reason or another. When he crawls into my bed at night (2-3 nights a week) he sleeps touching me. He has to. Even though we have a king bed and hubs has usually been kicked out by Monster, literally, he still sleeps tucked tightly next to me.
So, I surmise that even though Monster wants to stay at school every time we drop his brother off, when it comes time for him to actually stay, he will refuse. Only time will tell and it looks like I won’t get to test my theory today.
“The Crazy Burbs” post is on hold till tomorrow…
My dad died on June 21st, 1994. He was 54 years old. Since approximately Fall of 1997 his ashes have resided in an urn inside of a family heirloom…. an heirloom that my father actually hated, for reasons unknown. The ashes have remained inside of this very old cedar chest since around the time my mother remarried. My mother didn’t put them in there because she stopped loving my dad or that she was trying to hide him from her new husband. She just wasn’t sure what else to do with him and she figured that continuing to display the urn inside of our entertainment center was not a good idea.
My sisters, my mom and myself all enjoyed the irony of it because of how often my father complained about “that damn cedar chest”. We got the last laugh.
Now, my sisters and I have a conundrum. My older sister from Minnesota and myself were supposed to fly down to Arizona to see our younger sister at the end of February to spread the ashes. However, it turns out the my sister from MN cannot make it down until summertime. I could easily hold off on going down there until the summer but my younger sister in AZ is having a baby any day now and I will not wait until summer to meet her!
Today, I told my younger sister (who was coordinating all of this) that maybe we should just forget it all anyway and leave his ashes alone. I told her that I was never comfortable with spreading them anyway. I just went along with everything because my sisters and I are rarely together in the same place and because my younger sister wanted to do this. Now that it’s falling through I am kind of glad because I would just rather leave his ashes alone.
My reasons for this avoidance are a bit fuzzy. But, I think part of the reason is because of the lies and oddities that came from my dad that we didn’t discover until after his death. Another part of the reason is because it’s been almost 14 years since his death… something like this should have been done a long time ago. So, together, these two reasons make me feel like spreading his ashes somewhere would be hoaky and phoney.
When I told my younger sister that I thought we should just leave them alone she responded in her typical smart-ass fashion and said “What, do you want to share custody of his ashes? Each of us will get him 4 months out of the year?”
With that said, what the hell would we do with the ashes? What should we do? If you need a deeper understanding and need to figure out why this is such a dilemma you might want to read some other posts under the “My Father” category in the categories section of my sidebar. It will give you some history about my childhood and why things were so messed up and why we still don’t know the truth about him or his life.
I would just love some suggestions.
Last year I began telling the story of my dad.
Obviously, it’s a long story. I have neglected to continue on, probably because I wasn’t sure where to go next. Also, writing all of those things out brought up a great deal of emotions that I had not felt in a long time. This time, my father will be the subject in a less direct way.
In recent months a lot of changes have occurred within me…revelations, new perspectives and maturity. At 31 years old, I’m still growing. I’m starting to realize why people in their 30’s are so happy and at peace with their lives. A lot of things happen in a person’s 30’s that really affect their mental state in positive ways.
Most recently two things that have been said by other people have opened my eyes a little bit more, in regards to my father. One was from an anonymous commenter (I am not sure if I know them or if they just kept up with my story or if they are a stalker and know more about me than I’m comfortable with.. LOL!). This person mentioned my alcoholic background (hopefully they meant my father’s because I’m not an alcoholic myself) and said it could explain my need for control, since I did not have the control growing up. That was a huge “AH HA” moment for me.
The second thing was mentioned by a girl in one of my classes. There was a discussion question for this week regarding critical thinking and how it affects us as readers and writers. In my answer I explained that until recently, I was not a critical thinker. I took things at face value because I figured the media and authors were smarter than I, so why should I question them. This girl said that this can sometimes be the result of overbearing parents. If parents don’t encourage free-thinking in their children and simply expect them to think and feel the way they do, a child will not learn to think for themselves. Yet another “AH HA” moment.
What does all of this mean? Well, this means that I can place all of the blame on my father for being a controlling idiot! Okay, not really. But, yes, really. What I’m trying to say is there is apparently a reason for me needing to be in control of things. There is a reason why I never really thought for myself, but actually road the coattails of other thinkers. This is a great epiphany, thanks to two complete strangers.
My dad was overbearing. As I mentioned in the first 3 parts, he seemed to demand perfection from me. The harder I tried to make him happy, the more I failed. I had a very difficult time trying to balance my life because I had to make sure I pleased my father no matter what. My dad was opinionated and a strong personality. He tried to encourage me to always know who I was, to be strong and to think. Somehow it backfired or it never sunk in because of him trying to control me. Maybe I was afraid to think differently than him. Maybe I looked up to him so much that I thought he was right no matter what. Whatever it was, I grew up never really questioning people.
Nowadays, I’m more cynical, distrusting, I think more independently and best of all, I feel smarter. Being cynical and distrusting are not bad things. They represent free thinking. I’m not saying that I am a negative person now, I just question things and don’t necessarily believe things that I’m fed. I have gone from being naive to being a little more discerning of the truth.
This transition is by no means complete. In fact, it is just beginning. The funny thing is, my dad would be proud! If he were here right now, he would be the first one to tell me that I have wasted all these years listening to other people spew bullshit and just went along with it. He would be the first one to tell me to start thinking for myself. I honestly don’t think that he ever intended for me to do what he did and believe everything he said. That is just how it happened because of his strong personality and intimidating demeanor.
Daddy, it took a long time, but here I am, 31 years old, raising two boys and I am finally growing up! I am finally proud of being who I am and will tell anyone to f-off if they don’t like it. I am finally realizing that people have hidden agendas and are probably feeding me bullshit. I am finally strong like you wanted me to be.
Along with this transformation is another side-effect that I couldn’t be happier with. I am more socially aware then I have ever been. Not that I never cared about social issues before but there was always something else to worry about. Now, these social issues are what I need to worry about. They effect my children, other people’s children, our world and everyone else. I have always been an empathetic person, but now I feel empowered to actually do things to help.
I am becoming the person my dad always wanted me to be, but for some reason never was. My parents would be the first to say that I was a little “slow” on the uptake. My dad might not be so proud of the fact that I’m becoming more of a “bleeding heart” since he was such a strong Republican though. But, I would be the first to tell him to f-off. He would laugh, we would bicker over politics and clink our beers together, if only he were here, right now.
To say that my childhood was normal is to say that Michael Jackson is sane, still black and completely fits into our society. Exactly. He isn’t any of those things, and my childhood was not normal.
Yes, I had two incredibly loving parents who did not divorce and we always had a roof over our heads, food on the table and clothes on our backs. We didn’t struggle for things despite only one parent working and there was never a lack of discipline and love. In those terms, we were very normal.
But you never know what happens behind closed doors, do you? The normalcy stopped at the door. My father was not your typical father not just because he stayed home with us and had serious health problems but because he wasn’t right in the head either. At least, that is the conclusion I have drawn from all this. The other option is that he was completely sane and really was who he said he was and, if that is the case, well, maybe I shouldn’t be writing about it.
But, back to the lack of normalcy. Just to add more into the mix, we moved a lot. I counted the number of schools I attended one time. The number is 10. 10 schools in 12 years. 3 of those schools were in a year and half’s time. I still don’t know why we moved so much but we did rent a lot. I think we only owned 2 homes while growing up. We lived in Minnesota, then Florida, back to MN, then to Illinois, then back to MN and finally to Arizona. I realize that is only 4 states but I’m not counting the number of times we moved within those states. When I mention to people how much I moved they always nod and say “oh, you were military weren’t you”. Then I have to say “nope, we just moved a lot” and watch the look of confusion on their face.
Now, how exactly is a child supposed to feel secure and safe and like a normal kid when she moves constantly and watches her father go through numerous heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, alcohol rehab, survive 2 strokes and surgeries on the main arteries in his neck (both sides) and live in and out of the hospital every year? How does she enjoy her childhood when she has to adapt to new towns all the time feel like she has to grow up so fast? It’s simple, she doesn’t. She lays in bed at night scared that her father is going to die. She daydreams of living like her friends do with regular parents and family trips where dad isn’t drunk and growing up in the same house until she leaves for college. She dreams of feeling secure like she knows exactly where her life is going to go… graduate, college, marriage, babies. In that order with her daddy being there every step of the way. But, it’s only dreams.
In reality, packing and moving happens every couple of years. Daddy is sick, always sick… and drunk. He is unpredictable just like her life. Mom is always working. Coming home always rattles her nerves because she doesn’t know whether she’ll see an ambulance in front of the house or not, and if not, will daddy be in a good or a bad mood or will he just be drunk? And the chances of daddy being around to see her graduate and get married are slim to none.
Predictability can be boring, I know. But kids need that because it provides a feeling of saftey and security. When kids are growing up and going through so many changes on their own own they need a fairly predictable and normal life that will at least provide that sense of stability. I never had that. The only stability that I had was the constant instability.
Sure, my life could have been 100 times worse. I didn’t grow up in poverty or surrounded by drugs and danger. I had food, clothes and loving parents. So why am I complaining? Well, I’m not really complaining. I’m just telling about my life. I could never complain about my childhood. Never. I know beyond a doubt that I was blessed, regardless of the circumstances. I’m merely sharing the story of myself, growing up and the things I endured with my father. It’s not a “woe is me” campaign or anything of the sorts. It’s just an explanation of myself and why I am the way I am. Beyond all that, the story of my father makes for some damn interesting reading. Are you bored yet?
Well, have you ever woken up in the middle of the night to the sight of your father parked across the street from your house, slumped over the steering wheel? Then you see him move, get out of the car and you wonder why he didn’t pull in the driveway or the garage? Then he comes into the house, you get up to see if he is ok and he sits you down to tell you something. He takes your hand and tells you in a very grim voice that someone is going to come into the house tonight to kill him. He tells you that it’s just something that has to be done and not to be afraid, you’ll never know anything. He just wanted to say goodbye and he loves you.
No? You have never had that happen? Well, I have. I was 12. At 12 years old I believed that someone was going to come into my home and kill my father, because he told me so. The next morning he was still there. Alive and well. I don’t recall what happened or if he even remembered what he told me. I don’t even remember whether I mentioned it ever again. But what I had to endure that night was something no 12 year old kid should EVER have to hear or feel. Ever.
To be continued…
I have nothing else to say today so I guess I’ll continue on with a bit more about my life and subsequently, my dad.
If your parents are still alive and well, no matter how much they may drive you crazy, if they truly love you and are in your life, cherish it. Because one day they will be gone. Say what you need to say now. Make sure they know that you love them. Don’t be left with regrets after they are gone.
Today, I’ll give you a different view of the story. Growing up, my dad was always sick. Apparently he was 37 years old when he had his first heartattack. It went downhill from there. I don’t know whether he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes before or after that heartattack. I would have to check with my mother on that… and at this point, I’m not sure I would get the truth. Yes folks, due to the circumstances surrounding my father, I’m not sure I can trust my mother to get the truth. She could very well be hiding things or, she may have been lied to as well. I just don’t know. I love her dearly, truly. But I can’t quite trust her answers 100% and there are things she will never tell, I’m sure. But she’ll play the “I just don’t know honey” card.
Anyway, after he was struck with his first heart attack he basically retired. I guess when I was born my dad was working for some big companies (I still have no clue which ones or if that was all true) and just left the workforce on disability and my mom took the reigns and went to work. So, I had a stay-at-home-dad. He raised my sister and I and as we got older we took care of him as much as he took care of us.
As a result of his poor health, I ended up walking on those proverbial eggshells throughout my entire childhood because I never wanted to upset my father and have him end up in the hospital because of being angry with me. Do you have any idea how that would feel? Let me put it this way, in my mind, I believed that if I upset my father enough, I would kill him because he would have a heart attack and die. My stomach is turning as I type those words. I have said those words before but they always resonate strongly in my body.
The diabetes he had made his moods volatile as well. I would dread coming home because I never knew what to expect from him. He could be happier than anything and take us to lunch and go shopping and other times he would be furious over a dirty fork left in an otherwise spotless kitchen and I would be screamed at for it. Little things would send him over the edge on his “bad days”. He took naps every day. Our family plans would always be cancelled last minute because he wasn’t feeling well and we never knew what to expect from one day to the next. Being let down and living in fear of him was just a part of life my every day life.
No matter what though, I never walked out of that house without giving him a kiss and telling him I loved him. He could have just spent an hour yelling his head off at me but if I was leaving that house, I would go over to him, kiss him and say “I love you daddy” because I believed that the one time I didn’t do it, I would come home and he would be dead. And, I truly loved him, no matter how much he yelled at me and no matter what nasty things he would say to me. It was like I completely understood that he didn’t mean them and I knew that in an hour, he would come into my room, hug me tight and say I’m sorry and I love you. That happened all the time. He would blow up and in an hour he would apologize. He was my daddy. He would have done anything for me and despite everything, he was wrapped around my finger and I was wrapped around his.
In my first post I said that I was not writing this story for therapeutic reasons or any reason other than to tell my story. What I did not expect is the flood of tears streaming down my face right now as I type. I guess this particular angle of the story is more painful and heart wrenching to me because I’m remembering my daddy… not my father who lied to me. I’m remembering the man that I tried to take care of and the man that would spoil me and tell me how much he loved me. I miss him so much. I know, that if he were here today he would be proud of me. He would be there whenever I needed him and I’m pretty sure I would have never moved away from him. Never.
He was my world and every day I tried to please him. I really did. I never liked disappointing him and I was a good kid. But, the harder I tried, the more I screwed up. I wasn’t good enough sometimes. I didn’t get into trouble like a lot of other kids, I wasn’t “cool” in school so I didn’t have parties and drugs in my face. I was too scared of my dad to screw up big like that. But he demanded perfection from me, so it seemed. If I didn’t meet expectations he would be furious. So even though I wasn’t a bad kid, I would screw up because my grades weren’t good enough, I didn’t clean the bathroom, I didn’t do the dishes or I didn’t remember to give him a phone message. That was how I got into trouble.
I don’t want to use the word “traumatic” to describe my childhood but it’s close. There are things about my childhood that I do not remember. There are things that I see as “dreams” but don’t really know if they actually happened and no one can tell me. It’s as if there is a mental block, or my memory really is just that bad. To me, when I think of growing up I see flashes of certain events, certain things but that is it. There is no flow to it. And most of what I see is sickness, hospitals, yelling, fear with the occasional happy day thrown in the mix.
My dad and I “butted heads” more as I got into my teens. Because that is when I apparently got very selfish and didn’t think about my family enough. That is when friends became more important than him and he couldn’t deal with my teens. That is when my grades slipped because I didn’t “apply myself”. That is when our relationship turned into a daily battle. I wasn’t perfect. I chose friends over family. That just wasn’t tolerated by him and he didn’t understand that I was a normal teenager.
My father was also an alcoholic. That added an entiredly new dynamic to our lives. So, lets tally these things up so far….. diabetes, heart disease, alcoholism, hospitals, daily shots of insulin and syringes, nitroglycerine pills, knowing terms like “arterial damage” and “angina” at 10 years old, quadruple bypass surgery, rehab and AA were all just normal for me. My dad was moody, drunk and sick but he had some good days. Heh. My parents both smoked like chimneys too. I mean, road trips with them smoking and the windows cracked, kind of thing. It’s a wonder I don’t have lung cancer now but I sure as hell won’t be surprised if I end up with it some day. I remember being sent to the store with handwritten notes from my mom or dad allowing me to buy them their cigarettes! Yes, the convenience stores actually sold me cigarettes based on a note from my mother. Crazy times, eh?
Because of my dads health and moods, spontaneity was normal too. One time, when we lived in Phoenix, he said, “lets drive to Vegas!” at 9pm! We left within an hour. Again, that was normal to me. Those were exciting times but also very nervewracking for me because even as a kid, I worried and thought the worst. So on most of our road trips I was constantly watching the road for my dad, trying to calmly and subtly tell him things as he was driving so he’d pay attention and I always worried about accidents. Even now, as an adult, I like being in control of the car because I feel better. I don’t like not having the control. But that is besides the point.
As an alcoholic, dad drove drunk, a lot. He drove drunk with us in the car, a lot. And it was a joke in my family that he drove better drunk than he did sober. That was fairly true. He also loved taking us to the American Legions (he was an veteran afterall…. or so we believe) and neighborhood bars. He would drink, be fun, humorous and jovial, tell stories and we loved every minute of it. We would get a sandwich and some fries and sit there listening to my dad with pride. He was proud of us too. I think he liked showing us off, but he also loved to drink, so why not combine his two loves, right?
I’m starting to get random here so I’ll stop. More will come, if anyone is actually interested. I just need a break for today.
Yesterday I barely scratched the surface of a subject that is pretty remarkable in my life. I don’t mean “remarkable” as in wonderful. I mean “remarkable” is in outlandish, crazy, unbelievable and so on.
I’m not an author or a writer so my telling of this subject may be unorganized and sporadic but I’ll do my best. I’m not writing it for theraputic reasons and I’m not trying to release hidden aggressions or anything like that. I’m simply telling my story. I know I’m screwed up. I know why I’m screwed up and I still love and miss my father despite the fact that he is the very reason I am screwed up. I’m not really angry, I’m just left with a million unanswered questions that I assume will only be answered when I see my dad again, someday.
Maybe in telling this story you will find a greater appreciation for your parents. Maybe you will see that your disfunctional family isn’t really that disfunctional compared to mine. Maybe you will finally understand why I am the way I am. Who knows what you will get out of this if anything. Maybe you will just shake your head and say “what the fuck” over and over again. I find myself doing that a lot anyway.
I’m an open book. Too open. I bare my heart and soul as if it’s show and tell time in class. I don’t hide many things. So, I have never kept the subject of my crazy father under wraps. The only reason I wouldn’t say anything is because it wasn’t the right time to bring it up. But, if the subject of my ethnicity or childhood ever came up in conversation, the person asking would get an abridged version of the subject or I would hit some highlights, enough to wet their appetite, and then say “Someday I’ll tell you everything”.
“Crazy father” is quite a derogotory term for my dad. When I speak it the guilt consumes me immediately. But I know he’s up in Heaven nodding in agreement, smiling and probably saying “You’ll have your answers someday honey…. I know it seemed I was crazy… it’s ok”. I don’t say “crazy father” to be disrespectful to my dad. I say it because the entire story IS crazy and it’s the only term I can come up with. Eccentric doesn’t really apply, loony is too much and after that, I’m out of dictionary terms. I settled on “crazy”.
I can tell you stories, situations, factual data and events that happened. But I have no answers for them. Only questions. Even though I am left with questions that no one seems to be able to answer, I’m not angry. Just confused.
In the summer of 1997 my whole world was turned upside down. I was 21 years old and was basically told that my dad was not who he said he was and subsequently everything I knew was a lie. Even my own ethnicity. I was raised believing that my father was Italian and his parents emmigrated over to the U.S from Italy. My mother was a hodge-podge of Irish and Scottish and northern European descents so I was raised thinking I was Irish/Italian. I even had my father’s “Italian” last name. Ha. That was not really his last name.
The mystery and confusion surrounding my father started well before I was born. His place of birth, date of birth, his childhood, his parents and everything surrounding those subjects was a lie. They aren’t all necessarily far from the truth, but they were none-the-less lies. I was able to find out his true place of birth and I know who is real mother was, but that is as far as I can get. His mother disowned my father and subsequently disowned his offspring. She apparently said she wanted NOTHING to do with my father or his children, ever. So getting answers from her was futile and she has since passed away anyway. She might have been the only person to give me any answers. The reason she disowned my father is still a mystery as well. But it would have to be pretty bad to disown your own son and his future kids, don’t you think?
My father claims to have joined the Navy at 17. That would explain the birthdate confusion. If he joined at 17, like he claimed to have and had to lie about his age, then falsifying his birthdate makes sense. I have seen records with one date on it and records with another date. I still have no clue which one is correct and furthmore I don’t know what his real birth year was and therefore don’t know how old he really was when he passed away.
He always told us that he was assigned to submarine duty and got out after his 4 years was up. After he died I found out that he was in for a bit longer and was given a psyche discharge (or whatever they call mental health discharges). Then, sometime in his young adult life he changed his last name. I have no idea when or why but it was changed. I have a picture of him as a child with one last name on the back and yet I was raised with a different name. His own family doesn’t even know why he changed it. Furthermore, after my dad died and I confronted a few of his family members about it (only two cousins and an aunt and uncle of my father’s that he actually remained close to, the rest of his family was never in our lives, he didn’t speak to anyone) and they had no idea about any of this. They didn’t know he claimed to be Italian (an my father most certainly looked the part, too), they didn’t know that was how he raised us, they didn’t know when/why he changed his last name or why he lied about his birth place and parents.
As I sat there talking with them one day, we compared stories. I told them things my dad had told me while growing up and they would tell me similar stories that he had told them. Everything was paralell but my father was telling us one side of the story from one angle and yet his family would get the same story, only from a different angle. It was an insane conversation and only left us all with more questions. The only answer I got, and still can’t be 100% about, is that my father wasn’t Italian. His parents or at least his mother was Czech. The country of Czecholslovakia has since fallen apart and is now the Czech Republic (how symbolic and paralell to my own life, eh) and Slovakia so I really have no idea what I am. I just say, for statisitical purposes that I’m Czech and a pot purri of pasty eurpoeans.
My maiden last name, my ethnicity, my father’s life and my “legacy”, if you will, is all in question and what I used to know isn’t what it is. What do I tell my children? What do I say about their grandfather? What do I tell them they are? “Boys, you are half mexican and half I don’t have a fucking clue?” That doesn’t roll off the tongue very well.
This is just the beginning. I will go on with the story later.
