My mother came from a family of 19 children. Yes, I did just say... 19, in fact, 19 that lived beyond birth and from the same set of parents. I know... its hardly imaginable in today's society. It was even extraordinary back then.
The prompt for this post was inspired by attending one of my uncles funeral today. George Adair. I've often heard my mother speak of him and laugh at the memories she has of him. But I'll get to those memories later. I have a feeling this is going to be an awful long post.
To begin, I'd like to start with my own immediate family. I'm one of four children. My parents always tell me that I was the best surprise they could ever ask for. I always tell them to stop lying to themselves and just say that I was an accident. You see, my parents were near fourty when they had me. They had already raised a daugther and two sons, my siblings, all three of which were in high school when I was concieved. Actually, my sister Debbie had just graduated high school when I was born. No parent in their right mind will go from three adolescent children who are so close to leaving home back to changing diapers again, just so that they have another 18 years of going through the same thing that they just went through. Nope. I was an accident! A very happy and loved accident... but an accident none the less. And I say this with a shit eating grin on my face.
So, from the beginning, I was destined to have conflicting birth order characteristics. Such as... only child syndrom... and last born syndrom. I feel that the uniqueness of my family situation is largely what made me the odd ball of sorts growing up. I communicated much better with adults. I really had no interest in children my own age. I would rather sit and carry on a conversation as opposed to play outside or color in a coloring book. I had the most vivid and wild imagination as a child. I would day dream every chance I had. My head was always in the clouds and I always had such a different point of view on controversal situations than most of my peers. It finally evened out the older I got, when my maturity stale mated and my peers maturity started to grow.
Growing up I was always surrounded by people who wanted to hold me, love me, shower me with gifts, tell me how special I was. Yet, I was a miserable child. I was severely depressed through most of my elementary school years and even up through junior high and into the first year of high school. You see, my mother, who grew up with 18 siblings, was never happy.
Before I go off about my mother... let me just say that she really does have a heart of gold. She is the most amazing woman I think I have every known. The sacrifices that she has made over the years and all the psychotic bullshit she has had to over come from all the years of growing up in a house of at least 16 people at one time... I can't explain it very well. If I had to grow up the way that she did... I'd be in a nut house right now. She is a strong woman and she will give you the shirt off her back if you were in need of it... but... she is also the most complex woman I have ever known. She can be very nasty and not think a thing about it, she doesn't realize what its doing to you when she does it, she is the nosiest person I've ever met and has no concept of person boundries, and she can dish it out but she can't take it in return. She gets angry and pissy if you do the same thing to her that she does to you. Its her way of not showing that she's really hurt. I understand all that now as an adult, where as a child, I just hated her for it.
So, the reason for my misery as a child stemmed largely over the fact that I always felt nothing was good enough for my mother. Both my parents were miserable in a way and it came out on me indirectly. I was also over weight, the biggest kid in the class through all those years, and I was unmercifully made fun of.
However, I finally started to find myself during the later years of high school, as many adolescents do while they change from children into young adults. I realized how artistically inclined I was through music. The items I've posted on this site really do not do my playing or singing justice... antius777 can attest to that per he has heard me in person many times. I also realized how patient I was and how I made a really good teacher. I learned how to set up my own personal boundries and how to say no to someone. I'm told that I still do outrageous things for my friends and family, that I go above and beyond to be kind or helpful, but at least I can say no now, when I know that I'm at my limit.
All of these self realizations made me thing about where I come from, both biologically and circumstantially. I often think about genetics and if I was genetically predispositioned to have the personality characteristics that I have or if they were learned behaviors. I do believe that both play into who I am today, however, I find it very perplexing how much I am like my extended family. The extended family that I've hardly ever met.
That brings me back to the funeral today. Sitting there listening to the service made me think about my mom, her parents, her brothers and sisters, my dad, his parents, his brother and sister, etc. Every single person on both sides of the family has an ear for music. So, its no wonder that I'm able to manipulate my voice the way that I can. Every single person is highly intelligent, in different ways, but none the less I have a very smart family. Unfortuneatley they were never given much of a chance to further or better themselves with schooling due to financial situations. I'm the first one to make it through school and I have a BS in Educational Studies and a minor in music, and currently I'm going back to school for a second major in physics. My 'smarts' as you have it, are focused mainly on humanities, sciences, and arts. Spelling and grammar, as you have probably figured out by reading anything that I write on this site, are not my strongest areas schoolastically speaking. I also have a very conflicting sense of emotional intelligence vs logical intelligence.
Getting back to the topic of the funeral... I love listening to stories about my family that I barely knew. During the service some of my uncle's sisters wrote a few memories down about him. My mom goes on about how when she first married my dad and my dad was stationed in the airforce in Brahmuda how George, the uncle that passed away, came over to get her when she was 8 months pregnant with my sister. He wanted to make sure that she got back into the U.S. safely. He knew that they didn't have any money being so young and newly married. He hid fifty dollars (which we're talking 48 years ago almost) in a vase because my parents were too proud to accept money from him. After all, he did fly all the way there to be with my mom and take her home.
Another one of his sisters, my aunt, wrote about the memory of him coming home from his time in the service, and waking them all up in the middle of the night as soon as he got back. He had saved a ton of pennies while he was away in the service and upon arrival he woke them all up... let them all have a chance to stick their hand in the sack of pennies, and they got to keep as many pennies as they could grab. As you can imagine, with no government organizations set up way back then, how poor a family of 19 was. So, a handful of pennies, back in 1950 was like winning a fairly large scracth off lottery ticket today.
Another story was how this man, my uncle who I only met once, taught all of them how to drive. He had a mercedes bens at the time and they were all terrified of wrecking his expensive car, but he would simply tell them... "Its just a car, don't stop, don't give up, just keep pushing yourself till you get it right... because I know you can do it!"
He purchased their caps and gowns for them when they graduated from high school.
Even the one time that I got to meet him, which was just a bit over a year ago, he told me how he always wanted to show his sisters that there was more to life than a 3 bedroom house. That matterial things weren't something to treasure, but it was ok to have them as long as they didn't control you.
I really need to write down all the stories. My grandfather, my mom's dad, was an orphan. He ran away from the orphanage at ten years old and made his own way by helping out on farms, earning his keep. He met my grandmother on one of those farms back in the late 1800's. He was about ten years older than her. She was 15.
He was a proud man, my grandfather. My mom would say how her mother would receive a ham or a turkey from a neighbor around the holidays and how she had to hide it from grandfather because if he knew about it he would give the gift back. He would say that he didn't need charity because he gave to charity. He gave money to a Catholic organization per the orphange that raised him was based on that Catholic organization.
Around christmas time, my grandmother would bake. My mom said she didn't bake by the dozzen, she baked by the pillow case. She would fill pillow cases with the amount of cookies and fudge that she would make and then hide them in the house till the special occasion.
I could go on and on and on with stories about my family. About where these peole came from, the roots of their behaviors and beliefs. But the whole point of this blog is to say that I find it truly amazing how much I am SO MUCH like these people. Even the family members that I never really knew. And the stories and circumstances are extraordinary.
That's all I have to say for now.
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