I messed up, I really did plan on having the Curran thing up for you guys yesterday. I have been plugging away at it, but I am as Ilona says a little under the weather. Like most men I turn into a bit of a baby when I get sick. The other thing is that it is a difficult scene to write. Curran and Mahon have a knock down drag out. I am told that at some point a lot of young guys will try to take on their dad. I wouldn’t know, I never really had one. So to placate you until I finish, I give you my sad dad story or as Ilona calls it my pity post (You may also want to listen to Father of Mine, by Everclear while reading, makes it so much more dramatic).
My mother and biological father were married, just not to each other. My mom was very close to her dad; sadly he was an semi-functional alcoholic. I don’t know what my grandfather saw or did during the war, I never had the chance to ask him. He served in the Pacific, and when he came home, he never was the same. He was good with his hands. He built the house my Grandmother still lives in. But he drank, a lot. Sometimes on Fridays if my grandmother was not quick enough to stop him, he would drink away his paycheck by nightfall. He is the model for Rose’s grandfather in On the Edge. When my mother was 16, she found him dead in the bathroom. It devastated her. Looking on it as an adult I honestly believe that she never emotionally matured after that. She spent the rest of her life finding and attaching herself to men as screwed up as my grandfather.
I wish I could say that she loved well but unwisely. In reality she married young and chose badly. Her first husband was by all accounts a violent psycho who tried to strangle her on their honeymoon. Unhappy in her marriage she sought comfort in the arms of a much older but charming Irishman. I am the result of that illicit union. Her first husband was tall, dark and of Italian heritage. When I was born, I am afraid my pale skin and fire-engine red hair gave her away. Soon after fearing for her life, she fled. She just took me and split. Later she never would say where she went or what she did during that time. My aunt and grandmother had no idea and thought her husband may have killed her. My Uncle Gene was the homicide cop assigned to the case. That is how my aunt & uncle met. They fell in love and later married. So something good came of it.
After a few weeks or a month, she showed up and with little or no explanation left me with her sister and took off again. I was very small. Until I was 3 or 4 I thought my aunt and uncle were my parents. They never said any different and I guess they hoped she would not return. I wish that she had not. Maybe if she had stayed away, I would have lived with them, been happy and maybe not so weird. But she did show up and had her new husband in tow. Imagine my surprise, here was this strange lady who was telling me to call her mom and that we were going away to live in California. My uncle was away at a law enforcement convention, which was good for her, because had he been home there was no way she and her new husband would have left there with me. To me, Randy seemed like a giant. In reality he was six foot five inch Nam vet who was only violent when he drank, unfortunately, that was pretty much every day. I am told that when I was younger he would routinely use me as a punching bag during one of his drunken rages. I don’t remember. Honestly, there are whole chunks of my childhood that I simply don’t recall.
I was unhappy and acted out. I was a very difficult child. When I got to be too much to handle she would send me back to live with my aunt and uncle. This was exactly what I wanted. This continued for many years until finally at 15 I was sent to live with my aunt and uncle for good. I was very fortunate in that I always had a home with them. Without them I would have no doubt just been another kid on the streets. Gene and Janie were very strict but they loved me and in their home I was safe. I call them my aunt and uncle but for all intents and purposes they are my mother and father. I would not see my mother again until many years later when I was in my early twenties and was attending college on the G.I. Bill.
I never thought of fighting with my Uncle Gene. He was and is still the toughest man I know. He grew up in rural Texas during the Great Depression. His father was a mean drunk who often beat his momma and left the family when my uncle and his siblings were very young. Sometimes he would come and get them to work in the fields, he was supposed to give their mom the money they earned but would often keep it for himself. When Gene was 12, he ran away from home and drove a dump truck. When he was 15, he got his mom to lie about his age and joined the United States Marine Corp. He fought during the Korean War but will not speak of it. Upon retiring from the Marines, he joined the Orange County Sheriffs department and became a homicide and robbery detective. If he is in a good mood he will tell you some stories that would shock you.
As I said it never really occurred to me to take a swing at him. He was strict but fair. No matter how mad I may have been at him for some punishment or chore I always knew he loved me. Plus there was this one incident that occurred when I was still a child. Gene had a son from his first marriage, before he met my aunt. Mike was a lot older than me I looked up to him. He was a medic in the Navy and seemed like a pretty tough guy. He also butted heads a lot with my uncle. Once while they were arguing I guess he said the wrong thing and my uncle hit him. Hard. Mike was a big guy and I remember him flying across the yard. It wasn’t even a fight, more like a first round knock out. I knew right then and there that I didn’t want any of that.
No, he was never the star of my revenge fantasies. So the scene with Mahon is a slow going. But never fear, I will get it to you eventually.
Thanks Gordon for your post its nice to know that i am not the only one with revenge fantasies, my step dad sounds a bit like yours! It helps knowing that you have been able to come out the other side and be a great parent after the roller coaster of your childhood. My biggest fear is that i will screw up my kids simply because i didn’t know any better that and what they call ‘flashbacks’ . So thank you for your honesty and most of all your contribution with Ilona to my pile of escapism aka my precious books maybe you do understand just how much darkness they have helped me through! Cheers
It seems to me that as long as you are afraid you might screw up your kids, you most likely will not. I know it sounds strange but you are aware of the possibility and are avoiding it. I am more afraid of people who have the whole parenting thing figured out. You do the best you can and make sure they have it better than you did. We may be deeply flawed but we are better than what we had, and that is pretty good.
I had a therapist say this exact thing to me once. You won’t become that because you fear becoming it. Of course, having the head knowledge and recognizing it in your heart in the day to day when we actually have to face those demons…that’s the real battle, isn’t it?
My mother was obsessed with not letting me make the same mistakes she did. Unfortunately, instead of accomplishing this by teaching me love & acceptance of myself & others, she tried to do it by force. She policed every thought, every action. I was not allowed to think for myself. She tried to pound me into the mold she wanted me to fit into. I rebelled- strongly. In an ironic twist, I became a self-fulfilling prophecy for her. Our lives have scary parallels. It haunts me…how desperatley she wanted me not to be her…how much she failed…
I wish us all success in giving our children a better childhood then we had…and letting them be who they are, without fear of who we are.
I would totally agree with you. My granddad had a pretty brutal version of parenting (no need for drugs or alcohol, he beat his kids sober), but my mum shares your views. She’s a fantastic parent, we agreed to differ during my teens (I became human again eventually), when I had kids that was the advice she gave me. If I can be half as good a parent I’ll be happy!
Hope you are feeling better soon and word of warning about the Celtic ancestry. It can throw you some odd genetics, if you have dark haired grandsons they might have fire-engine red beards (I have a dad and cousins with this look).
Thanks for sharing, i guess screwed up families like the ones we come from are more common than i realize some times. Good thing there was always someone willin to give us a hand a love (like your aunt and uncle, or my best friends family) and the mix of that make us who we are today
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I am always in awe of the resilience of people. I think that is a wonderful thought – that human’s have the strength to overcome, manipulate, transform adversity into some positive, inspiring or beautiful. thanks Gordon for sharing your story – my father also overcame a drunken, broken childhood, to become a loving father and inspiring teacher!!
It just goes to show that it’s how a person wants to lead their life, if they let the past dictate how they act out or how they WANT to live their own lives that they can get through something like that. Both you and your uncle are rockstars for not letting your past dictate how you act now. Yes, it shaped you but you took it as a lesson of how NOT to live your life.
Just curious, but what part of this post refers to the “also Kid 2 is Awesome” part?
No part really, but as I was distracted she typed it into the blog post. She is odd like that. To appease her, I put it into the title.
Kid 2 is not odd (or if she is then I am as well). A co-worker and I read a radio ad for our company which we gleefully titled “Maria and Andi are Awesome.” When we’d receive our bill from the radio station we’d see Maria and Andi are Awesome listed about 30+ times. It was excellent.
Alcohol (and drugs) never make anything better, they only make bad situations worse. Coming from two families of violent, homocidal drunks, my parents always correctly warned us kids that we had no tolerance for any addictive substance. Alcoholism is a genetic gift that just keeps giving unless you’re very careful–or lucky. Unfortunately, not all of us escaped that curse unscathed.
Thanks for sharing your writing with us, both the fiction and the true life stories.
Colds/flu seem to be going around a lot right now here on your former coast. Hope you’re starting to feel better. Take care.
Your Aunt and Uncle sound like wonderful people. I’m glad you had them in your life to even out all the negative craziness your mom brought into your young life. I was really close to both my parents. I lost my dad in my early 20′s and my mom passed suddenly 7 years after my dad. But for the time I had them, I am thankful. I always think it’s great how some people can go through so much bad stuff and come out of it a good, kind person from it rather than wallow in the misery.
I met one of my closest male friends of 18 years from a college English lit class… he was the witty, wordy one and I was the quiet one that would rarely burst out with a few sarcastic cracks. Life is funny how it just puts people in each others paths and if you’re lucky you get it and realize they are special and just go with it.
Feel better!
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I agree with what everyone else has said, to conquer all that you have is a true testatment to your aunt and uncle and yourself too.
My grandfather was an alcolic and my mother was beaten more than she can ever say, well, when he wasn’t beating my nanna or his other 4 daughters. My mum has blocked most of her childhood out, she doesn’t remember much at all.
It’s effected her more than she’ll ever say, and I see those effects every day. She married a man who wasn’t worthy and subsequentlty ended up raising my younger brother and I pretty much on my own.
She gave us the life she never had and for that I’ll always, always be thankful, I just wish she hadn’t had to have grown up in a war zone.
I hope you feel better soon.
Everyone has a story and I give credit to those that are strong enough to share their own with the masses. It made you who you are today and we kinda like ya. Take care and speedy recovery.
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Wait a minute!!! Curran is only out of a coma a few hours and he takes on Mahan????
The First Ones must be supernatural!!!!