I was raised in a middle-class family, but not the usual middle-class kinda family. Looking back, both of my parents were kinda fucked up. I was born less than five months after my parents got married in late 1967. (Yes, I know, I’m dating myself, but that, in itself, tells part of the story.) Did my parents ever really want me, or did they simply decide to deal with the hands that they were dealt? The older that I get, the more that I think that it’s the latter, rather than the former. That doesn’t bother me too much anymore though, as I’m thankful for my life, and all that I’ve been able to experience while I’ve been here. It does, however, put my childhood into context.
My mother’s childhood was messy. Her parents were in their late teens/early 20’s when they were married – and only because my grandfather was going to be leaving to fight in World War II. I guess, like most men of his generation, he felt the need to get married and have sex before he was killed by the Japanese or the Nazis. I never really knew my maternal grandfather, though, as my grandparents had already gotten divorced by the time my mother was nine or ten years old. I did talk to him once though, just before he died. He called our house. I have only very vague, wispy memories of me with the phone to my ear and him saying, “I’m your grandfather,” before I muttered something to the effect of: “erm… okay,” under my breath before handing the phone back to my mother. I never knew the man.
My grandmother had gotten remarried, had two more kids, gotten divorced, and gotten remarried again all before I was born. I did get to know my grandmother’s second husband a bit better than my actual grandfather, however. My mother, sister and I would go visit him about once or twice a month where he worked. I liked him, but I never really got to know him either, as he – like other “snowbirds” – moved to Florida to avoid the Winters in the Northeast when I was about 10 years old. And that was the end of that. The guy who came closest to being my maternal grandfather was actually my grandmother’s third husband.
My oldest memories, in fact, are of me in my father’s arms visiting my grandmother and her third husband at Christmastime. For a husband, he always seemed to be deferential to my grandmother, as I remember – caving in to her whims. He was a nice guy – a man forced into the awkward situation of having to deal with grandkids from three children, that were never his own, as best as he could. Christmas was fun there, though, when I was a child! He did his best to carry on the tradition, even after my grandmother had died. I got my first handheld video game – Galaxian 2 – while spending Christmas at his house. However, that Christmas was the “last gasp,” as he moved out of that house not long after. I don’t remember my parents having much to do with him after 1981 or so.
My grandmother, as it turns out, had died from liver disease a couple of years before. I was 11 years old. She was quite the drinker, my grandmother, a personality trait that my mother seemed to inherit. In my memory, my grandmother is always laughing, but is never without that vodka and tonic in her hand. My mother’s relationship with her mother was also strained. My only memory of my grandmother’s funeral is of my mother laughing hysterically as they lowered my grandmother’s casket into the ground.
My father’s background is a little different, but no more ideal than my mother’s. He was born a twin. He and his sister were given up for adoption by a drunkard father in the mid-1940s. To this day, I’ve never met my true paternal grandparents, nor have I ever discovered why my true paternal grandfather decided to give up his youngest twin children for adoption, while keeping his other, older children. The people that I came to know as my paternal grandparents originally only wanted to adopt one other child. Their choice was my father’s twin sister. Apparently, my grandfather didn’t want my father, only my aunt. But my grandmother did not want to split up the twins, and she persuaded my grandfather to adopt both of the twins. From what I’ve learned, my father’s relationship with my grandfather was always strained.
Only bits and pieces of my father’s childhood have come to light, and only then in spurts, over the years. Apparently, my grandfather wasn’t a forgiving father toward his adopted son. It seems that my father returned the favor in kind, being a difficult and rebellious teenager. Regardless, my father followed in my grandfather’s footsteps and became an ironworker. One fact that I do know from my father’s childhood was that he always wanted to be a soldier. He finally got his chance when he volunteered for the US Army in 1964. Little did he know that, barely 15 months into his two-year term, the war in Vietnam escalated, and he would be sent overseas to fight. When my father returned, he wasn’t the same man, having witnessed and experienced things that he would never share personally with me; things that I would only discovered from my aunt. For years after his return, he would wake up in the middle of the night, sweating and screaming, not able to leave the horrors and terrors of an unwanted participation in an all-out war behind him.
Then in the late 1960s, this man with a less-than-ideal upbringing, trying to come to grips with horrors that no one should have to deal with, meets this woman, also with a less-than-ideal upbringing. The crucible in which I would be forged was forming. This couple would get married because of an unexpected pregnancy. I was on my way into the world.
To this day, I think that the only reason that my parents got married was because of my father’s Catholic beliefs. This was also before Roe vs. Wade. Would my mother have made that dreaded choice, had she had an option? Would my father have let her, had she made that decision? More questions which can never be answered. But, it worked out for the better, for a while: my sister was born three-and-a-half years after I was.
Why do I write so much about my parents, when this blog is supposed to be about myself? Again, this goes back to the tag line of this blog: “Adventures in the heart, mind and soul of someone who’s lost his way and is just trying to find his path.” Understanding my parents puts my childhood into better context. Writing this is therapeutic for me. The pondering of the topics herein forces me to try to think more clearly about the past and helps clarify things. I also get to tell my own story in my own words. But, in the end, I care little if these words are actually read by someone else or not – the act of just getting them down does wonders!
And, while I’m no longer dependent on my parents, and I no longer rely on them for answers, nearly everything that I am right now, and what I haven’t yet been able to achieve, is either directly or indirectly due to how I was raised and in the kind of crucible of life in which I was forged. Please do not misunderstand me: I do not blame them for anything. (Or, rather, I try not to blame them.) They were simply doing the best that they could with the unexpected future that was in front of them, using whatever meager means were available. They didn’t do a bad job raising me, but I do sometimes wish that they could’ve done a little bit better.
Barney G. Bunions 