I think that if I am going to write about being a father, I should start by writing about my past. My childhood, my parents and the framework that was laid for me, the good and bad.
I was born in 1980 to a mother who was going through a spiritual and religious awaking and change and a father who couldn't find his way out of a bottle. My mother and father had an extreme relationship for almost 20 years. They had five children with me being the last of them. It was full of good times and high points to the darkest days a marriage could go to that were filled with physical and mental abuse, dark secrets and alcoholism. They had split up a number of times and at some point before I was born and tried to rebuild their marriage. My mother was being pulled to the bible while my father couldn't leave his addictions behind him. Both of those extremes would damage me and at the same time, make me a stronger person.
By 1984, both my parents had remarried. My mother married a bible thumping truck driver with an anger and selfishness streak in him. My father had married another alcoholic woman that he could abuse. My oldest brother was just about to join the Navy. My oldest sister was falling into a lifestyle of drugs and all the things that came along with it. She would eventually run away and join the Air Force and get her life back on track and become one of my person heroes. My other sister, who was a year older than me, would move with my mother into my new step fathers trailer park.
As the years went on, my father would be in my life less and less until he disappeared all together. He chose alcohol over me. It took a long time for to realize that it just wasn't me that he was rejecting but it was life as a whole and I was just part of that. The pain of not having him around and in my life was something that still hurts today. Even though we have reconciled, there are times I look back at my life or look at the life of my children and I think, "Man, I could have really used a father then..." and it hurts. The only thing that helps is the fact that my sons will never look back on their lives and think that.
My step father ruled with a controlling fist in our new household. We couldn't watch certain programs and cartoons because they were evil. We couldn't listen to music other than christian music because it was of the devil. His parenting style was very old school. We got spanked and hit when we were "bad". We had to be quiet and only speak when spoken to. We took on some physical abuse from him which finally stopped when my mother told him that if he ever touched me again, she would leave him...I was 14. So it took her 10 years. By the time I was 15, I was already too big for him to hit and he realized that more than once when we got eye to eye and almost came to blows. Backing up, we went to church, A LOT. I don't mean, every Sunday. Sunday was Sunday school, church service then Sunday night was another church service. Tuesday was Boys Brigade (Christian version of the Boy Scouts). Wednesday night was Prayer Service. Thursday night was my sisters night at church with their version of Girl Scouts. The first Saturday every month was a dinner at the church. Oh yeah, the church doubled as a school. So, Monday to Friday was at the church.
Church was morning, noon and night. I was made to do devotionals every day. My mom and step father didn't want me hanging out with friends in the neighborhood because they didn't go to church.
My mother was a very hard woman. She never said she was sorry. She had a rough upbringing and had gone through hell with my father, It's not an excuse but their was a reason. She loved us but if you got her mad, she would hold it against you for a very long time. I don't mean a few days or weeks. When I was 16, she didn't talk to me for 3 months because she didn't like the girl I was dating. When I was 25, she didn't talk to me for 6 months because I decided to stay living in Chicago rather than moving back East and she didn't talk to me for a few month when I moved to Chicago a few years before. She didn't talk to my sister for 3 years. She could hold a grudge better than anyone else I've ever met. She has the same mindset with the friends who came in and out of her life. She has basically blown off relationships and friendships because those other people didn't live up to the level of morality that she set. The other side of her was just as hard. You didn't mess with her children. She was more lax than my step father. At one point, she realized that I had outgrown their control. When my mid teens hit, she realized that I wasn't into drugs or violence. I was just getting started into punk rock and hardcore and politics and she did her best to support that. She would give me money to go to a show. She would listen to some of the music I would listen to. She would let bands and friends stay with us if they were coming through town. She was a coin if I have ever met one. I do love her and everything good I thought about her would eventually become shaken and broken.
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