1965

In July 1965, my mother was 23 years old. I was her sixth baby born alive.

She did not have a high school diploma, I don't think. She had no training to speak of in the world of commerce or business, and in the 1960s in Massachusetts, a woman had very limited options. Many did not work outside of the home. Certainly not while the children were little, unless they were in the care of a grandmother or old auntie. I know of no such support system for my mother back then.

My mother was married, but her husband had left for parts unknown after presenting her with three daughters. Divorce, like birth control, was illegal back then.

After he had left, she met another man, probably someone she thought would take care of her and her babies. But then he left, too, after giving her a daughter and a son.

Before too long, my dad came into the picture. Tall, handsome, fresh from the Navy with funny and wild stories, he and she were one day apart in age. My dad was a good-time guy who seemed good with her kids. She tells stories of him and her and the kids all piling into his Jeep and tearing through the sand dunes down on Plum Island. Today it is a wildlife refuge and nature preserve. Oops.

So in 1965, they were together, as much as a young not-quite-married-but-certainly-not-divorced woman with kids and a young peacetime veteran could be. And on the 16th of July, I was born. I do not know if there were celebrations or not. For my mother, I cannot guess. Would a sixth baby in her world at that time be seen as a blessing? I don't know.

My father was probably proud to some degree, but I am sure his parents were not. My grandmother was very conscious of what people thought and how others judged. Such a birth was shameful, scandalous even. But she would have pursed her lips and remained silent, denying its existence and thereby denying the shame that accompanied my diapered little bottom into this world. My grandfather was probably at sea and did not know of this development until much later. I have never met my mother's parents and know nothing of them, so I cannot guess what their reaction to my arrival was.

I don't know at what time my father and mother split up, but I know it was after I was born and before I was a year old. When I was eight months old, I came to live with my father, his sister and his parents. Primarily, my aunt and grandmother were my caregivers. I saw little of my father in those early years, and I think we both preferred it that way. But that is another post.

I think of my mother on this day each year. We did not meet again after our early separation until 1995, the year I turned 30. We are still not really close. It is awkward with us, bound by biology, but separated by decades of absence in each other's lives. I wonder what it must have been like for her, sweating in the July heat to deliver a baby into the world, unsure of so much, and with such odds stacked against us all. She had very few choices back then. I do not envy her that situation.

But I am grateful to be here. Even through the long, weird, circuitous path that my life has taken, I am glad to be here, to see what I have seen, to learn what I know, and to have felt what I have felt.

It is a good day.

Dads

This is not your father's Father's Day post.

See, I've been crazy busy of late - not of the making money crazy busy kind, just the guests from out of town, dinner party hosting gotta clean the house kind of crazy. I've been meaning to post, but life has been against me it seems. I wanted to respond to Mike about the book thing, which was very cool, but I had to face the sad fact that I had not ready anything for pleasure in months, and that depressed me. I have two books on workaholic/recovery things that my sponsor lent to me, but (I am not making this up) I have been too busy to open them. Ain't it just a kick.

So today we're out for breakfast at Cafe This Way, the best restaurant in Bar Harbor, and I am getting more and more irritated with the overwhelming number of children that seem to be in attendance and screaming. I make some kind of comment to R, my dear friend (and long-ago second-grade teacher) and she reminds me that it is Father's Day.

Well, crap.

You see, my father is a psychotic loon. I have learned through family friends that he has been diagnosed as paranoid, delusional, and lots of other not-so-nice things. He believes he is being persecuted and that the government is out to get him. He buys and swaps guns, off the books, across the kitchen table kind of stuff. He hates fags and niggers and liberals. He utterly missed the satire that was All In The Family and skipped right to loving Archie Bunker. Suffice it to say we don't exchange cards. I fully expect to learn of his demise on CNN when it televises an armed stand-off of some kind with law enforcement officials.

So Father's Day is an awkward time for me. Coming at the end of a week of frenetic activity, with a storm front playing hell with the barometric pressure and my moods, and the sudden letdown that happens when the work is done and the house is quiet, it has left me in a weird head space.

I think I would like to recognize the good Dads out there instead of focusing on the shell of a man who long ago gave me life but who has long since ceased to be anything resembling human.

The problem is, I tried to write that stuff and it sounded hokey. The truth is, I have no idea what kind of dads my men friends are. I am sure the guys my dad used to work with would have sworn him to be a decent dad, but he wasn't. He was a bully and a coward. He lied and cheated and stole and beat me when I got caught doing those same things. He was domineering and brutal and mean. I remember what it was to look into his eyes and see hate staring back at me. Hate and disgust. Those are powerful things to lay on a young girl.

I was nobody's perfect child, I will admit that. But what I remember most about growing up was just wanting to be loved and accepted. No matter what I did, it was not enough. The last time I got straight A's was in third grade. Before I went to live with him and my stepmother. That was the last year in my childhood that I remember as happy.

See, not everybody's dads are great. I wanted to be his favorite daughter, but even as an only child, I knew that was too much to ask. I was too clingy, too eager, too scared, too insecure, too much of a little kid. Only I was a little kid.

Because of the childhood I had, and the childhood that my father had, I have opted not to have children at all. There are times I see him in my behavior, in my moods, in my anger and my rage. I never want to inflict that upon a child, and I do not know for certain that I could change it, grow beyond it, deal with it, let it go or any other method of healing. I never want a child to look into my eyes and see what I saw in my dad's - that visceral hate that cannot be explained away by I was tired, I had a long day, I didn't mean it. He meant it. I saw it clearly.

So to those of you who have a dad that you love, hug him once extra today for me. And for my blog buddy Mike who seems to be a pretty decent dad, tell your daughter often how proud of her you are.