A (Happy!) Story From My Youth
Tonight was a night for deep, painful, sometimes gut-wrenching conversations with people and during them a lot of stuff from my childhood came up. On the one hand, parts of my childhood were bright halcyon days of love and joy and friendship and family. On the other, many parts of my childhood were dark and upsetting, with more than a little poverty, trauma, pain, and abuse. So much so that as I was recounting some of the more pertinent issues with a friend, I felt the need to back up and assure her that, yes, these all really did happen, much in the span of a single summer.
It's like a Lifetime Original Movie, except it'd probably be scrapped for being too far-fetched.
Because of these conversations, I'm probably going to go back and recount some of that stuff (all properly cut with warnings and whatall), but for tonight, I wanted to share a happy story with y'all (and apologies to the quarter or so of you who have heard this story as nauseum) I thought I'd written it down here before, but if I did it's not tagged properly and I can't be arsed to go searching back to 2005 or thereabouts for it.
So, until I was eight years old, I had no idea that the man I called 'Uncle George' (and Daddy, actually) was actually my real, biological father. My mother and father were, well, calling the high school sweethearts is infusing the story with way too much romance, so they were probably closer to friends-with-benefits or whatever it was called back in the dim, misty days of the 70's.
At 18, my mom got pregnant. She and my dad talked about it, realized they didn't want a kid, and mom got an abortion. Then, at 20, it happened again. This time, however, mom realized she didn't want an abortion. That she might not have entirely wanted one at 18, either. Knowing the warm bundle of joy that she was carrying would one day be me, she clearly had no choice but to keep the baby so she could share the wonder of my existence with the world. Or something. Long-story short, she was keeping me.
However, she knew that if she told my father she was having his baby, he'd talk her into an abortion, so instead, she lied. By the time she had to start admitting the obvious to people, she'd had a story thought up. She told him she had also been sleeping with this other guy, Ralph J. Manna, who had died in a car wreck a few months after my conception. I was his baby and hers, and therefore she was the only one who could choose what to do with me. My father was hurt and angry and fucked off to Florida for a few months or years (I don't remember that time), and eventually I was born and all that good stuff.
I grew up thinking that my father was a dead man named Ralph J. Manna. His obituary was in my baby book and I would read it, thinking about this man I had never met. According to the article he'd had two daughters (and possibly a wife? I don't remember) named Nicole and Rachel, who were my half-sisters, whom I had also never met. I used to imagine meeting them in my grandfather's back yard, near the hedges that lined the edge of his properties from the neighbors, the Collars. I always imagined them pretty and well-dressed, six and eight years old, because that's how old they were in the article, even though by the time I was old enough to realize all of this, they'd be well in their teens.
Sometime within this time, George came back from Florida. I don't remember when; he was just always there. He and mom rekindled their friendship (not sure about the benefits) and, back then, they really were friends. I remember that. The genuinely liked each other back then. Mom had other boyfriends, of course. Randy, who I don't remember well because he was in jail and when they visited I had to play quietly; Butch, the leather-wearing, tattoo'd motorcycle guy who was sweet and awesome and I genuinely liked; Dennis, who lived with us for awhile and I also really liked, possibly because he brought his Nintendo with him and introduced wee!shadowravyn to video games, and of course, Michael.
Dammit. What's the HTML code to add loathing? Humph.
Anyway, through it all, George was just there, a comfortable presence that wasn't an asshole and made my mom laugh and though I was just about the smartest kid on the planet. By the time I really start to remember things, Michael was hanging around more and I didn't like him at all. I'm pretty sure it was because my aunts didn't like him, but I remember sitting at the table, coloring, and he decided to help--without my permission. And he sat down next to me and started coloring a set of stairs in the background of the picture and he decided to color each stair a different color.
I think I was four, maybe almost five. I also remember HATING THIS MAN WITH ALL THE FIRE IN MY TINY HEART BECAUSE HE WAS FUCKING UP MY PICTURE. Isn't it weird, the stuff that stays with you? I can't remember my PCP's name, but I can remember details of dreams I haven't had in decades and hating a man for coloring the stairs wrong.
Turns out I am an excellent judge of character, at least when it comes to coloring, but that's a story for another day.
Anyway, the more Michael came around, the more I looked to my Uncle George, who was tall and funny and didn't fuck up people's pictures. I was totally in love with him and was gonna marry him because my mom was too stupid to do so and Uncle Dennis hadn't shown up with his awesome Nintendo quite yet. He didn't come around as often when Michael was there, because he thought Michael was a douchebag, too, which probably also played a role in me hating Michael with a passion that burned. And then I started kindergarten and I realized that out of all my classmates and friends, I was the only one without a Daddy. Because my Daddy was dead of a car crash and I had two half-sisters I was never going to meet, but all of my friends had Daddies who were alive and in their house and not a parade of uncles, some of who were fun and some of whom were hateful and some we couldn't mention because they were in jail.
And one night, when Uncle George was tucking me in, I asked, "Will you be my Daddy?" And he paused and looked uncertain, and finally said, "Yes," before kissing my forehead and telling me to go to sleep. And I said, "Okay, Daddy," and snuggled down into my pillow person, Sweet Dreams and held Bah-koo and didn't go to sleep because I was a smart girl and I waited for Mommy and Daddy to start talking or watching TV or whatever they did and I stole Daddy's keys and hid them in my...pink jeweled snail creature, which I think was some Rose-Petal Place tie-in (EDIT: It was a Keyper?) and HOLY FUCK am I getting nostalgic. Must be cause my birthday's coming up. But anyway, I hid them in my snail so he could never, ever leave and crawled back into bed and thought about how awesome I was until I fell asleep.
The next morning guess which awesome girl got to go to the office and talk on the phone like a cool kid? This one. Mom was frantically searching for Daddy's keys because he had to go to work, but after getting her to promise that he'd come back for dinner, I told her they were in my snail so they 'wouldn't get lost.'
And then I went back to class, thinking about what a cool and smart kid I was, for coming up with that lie and securing another evening with Daddy. I'm fairly certain I got grounded when I got home, but, for some reason, I don't remember that as well as I do my SUPER-AWESOME TRIUMPH!
Anyway, Michael went away (\o/) and then Dennis moved in and he and Daddy were really cool, so Uncle Dennis brought both a Nintendo and my Daddy back and I decided I would marry Uncle Dennis instead because Daddy was now daddy and that's just gross. And then my brother was born and I realized that instead of a baby brother, I'd really rather have a puppy could we trade please--especially since having the brother meant I had to give up my cat Nicodemus who was never quite right after some incident and liked to sleep in the crib and my mom was afraid he'd suck Josh's last breath, which would have at least shut the colicky child up, is all wee!shadowravyn was saying. No one appreciated wee!shadowravyn's logic, even though it was sound.
By the next summer, I'm pretty certain that Uncle Dennis was gone and Michael was slowly sniffing around again. But for awhile, it was just me, mom, and the baby, and Daddy would come over a lot and visit, or take us places and hang out with his friends. (His roommate at the time told him that I really was his daughter--I resembled my dad a lot, especially in certain expressions--and Daddy was all, "No, No, Frankie [my mom's childhood nickname] would never keep that from me." Shows what you know.) And one day, Daddy got permission to bring me camping with a bunch of his friends and their kids and Josh couldn't come because he was too little (\o\ /o/ \o/) and it was gonna be me and Daddy and Uncle Nickerson and Aunt Cathy and Damian, the boy I was going to marry (who was at least close to my age) and his sister whose name I don't remember because, well, I wasn't going to marry her, was I?
...It should be noted that by this point, I had has a succession of boys I was going to marry, including Shawn Astrowski, who I called Shawn Across-the-street-ski, cause he lived across the street; Kevin, from day-care; Shaun Burns, from kindergarten; Timothy Zerrick, also from kindergarten; and Ronnie Giantonio, from first grade; and Jon Whatshisface from second grade. But Damian was my summer love, so it was okay. But, I digress.
And that night, after tucking me in (and making sure I really was asleep so there wouldn't be another key incident), Daddy went down to talk to Mom and said, "You know, Frankie. If God could guarantee me that I would have a child just like shadowravyn, I wouldn't be afraid to have kids anymore." And of course my mom burst into tears and confessed it all, "She's yours, George! She's always been yours!" And after he calmed Mom back down, he went back upstairs and pulled my covers off and really looked at me. "My nose, yup. My chin, yup. Those are definitely my knees, yup." And when he was done taking an inventory of those features that he could claim as his own, he covered me back up and went back downstairs. To do what, I don't know, that usually gets left out of the story.
A few days later, off camping we go. And though he'd promised Mom he'd wait until we were all a family, that night before I fell asleep in the tent, he told me that I actually was his daughter, that he really was my Daddy, and that we were a family. And then he held me when I cried because I was so happily and didn't wince too much when I lacerated his eardrums with glee and demanded we go tell everyone right now. It was a good night.
The next morning, every other adult we were camping with got arrested for outstanding warrants and Daddy and I were kicked out of the state park, I broke the cherry button off my purple jumper with the fruit buttons, leaving me with an orange, an apple, and a banana, all vastly inferior buttons (this was greatest tragedy of the day), and Mom had to find a baby-sitter and a car to come get us, and then we had to scrounge up money to bail out Cathy who had the fewest warrants, and then we had to go to Child Protective Services to get Damian and his sister because they'd been taken there when their parents were in jail...
But I didn't care. I had a family.
Thank you, O Wise Google, for helping me find images of my snail creature and Sweet Dreams, my pillow-person.
EDIT: And many thanks to ddrpolaris for reminding that Jon's last name was Palmer. Jon Palmer, second-grade crush.
It's like a Lifetime Original Movie, except it'd probably be scrapped for being too far-fetched.
Because of these conversations, I'm probably going to go back and recount some of that stuff (all properly cut with warnings and whatall), but for tonight, I wanted to share a happy story with y'all (and apologies to the quarter or so of you who have heard this story as nauseum) I thought I'd written it down here before, but if I did it's not tagged properly and I can't be arsed to go searching back to 2005 or thereabouts for it.
So, until I was eight years old, I had no idea that the man I called 'Uncle George' (and Daddy, actually) was actually my real, biological father. My mother and father were, well, calling the high school sweethearts is infusing the story with way too much romance, so they were probably closer to friends-with-benefits or whatever it was called back in the dim, misty days of the 70's.
At 18, my mom got pregnant. She and my dad talked about it, realized they didn't want a kid, and mom got an abortion. Then, at 20, it happened again. This time, however, mom realized she didn't want an abortion. That she might not have entirely wanted one at 18, either. Knowing the warm bundle of joy that she was carrying would one day be me, she clearly had no choice but to keep the baby so she could share the wonder of my existence with the world. Or something. Long-story short, she was keeping me.
However, she knew that if she told my father she was having his baby, he'd talk her into an abortion, so instead, she lied. By the time she had to start admitting the obvious to people, she'd had a story thought up. She told him she had also been sleeping with this other guy, Ralph J. Manna, who had died in a car wreck a few months after my conception. I was his baby and hers, and therefore she was the only one who could choose what to do with me. My father was hurt and angry and fucked off to Florida for a few months or years (I don't remember that time), and eventually I was born and all that good stuff.
I grew up thinking that my father was a dead man named Ralph J. Manna. His obituary was in my baby book and I would read it, thinking about this man I had never met. According to the article he'd had two daughters (and possibly a wife? I don't remember) named Nicole and Rachel, who were my half-sisters, whom I had also never met. I used to imagine meeting them in my grandfather's back yard, near the hedges that lined the edge of his properties from the neighbors, the Collars. I always imagined them pretty and well-dressed, six and eight years old, because that's how old they were in the article, even though by the time I was old enough to realize all of this, they'd be well in their teens.
Sometime within this time, George came back from Florida. I don't remember when; he was just always there. He and mom rekindled their friendship (not sure about the benefits) and, back then, they really were friends. I remember that. The genuinely liked each other back then. Mom had other boyfriends, of course. Randy, who I don't remember well because he was in jail and when they visited I had to play quietly; Butch, the leather-wearing, tattoo'd motorcycle guy who was sweet and awesome and I genuinely liked; Dennis, who lived with us for awhile and I also really liked, possibly because he brought his Nintendo with him and introduced wee!shadowravyn to video games, and of course, Michael.
Dammit. What's the HTML code to add loathing? Humph.
Anyway, through it all, George was just there, a comfortable presence that wasn't an asshole and made my mom laugh and though I was just about the smartest kid on the planet. By the time I really start to remember things, Michael was hanging around more and I didn't like him at all. I'm pretty sure it was because my aunts didn't like him, but I remember sitting at the table, coloring, and he decided to help--without my permission. And he sat down next to me and started coloring a set of stairs in the background of the picture and he decided to color each stair a different color.
I think I was four, maybe almost five. I also remember HATING THIS MAN WITH ALL THE FIRE IN MY TINY HEART BECAUSE HE WAS FUCKING UP MY PICTURE. Isn't it weird, the stuff that stays with you? I can't remember my PCP's name, but I can remember details of dreams I haven't had in decades and hating a man for coloring the stairs wrong.
Turns out I am an excellent judge of character, at least when it comes to coloring, but that's a story for another day.
Anyway, the more Michael came around, the more I looked to my Uncle George, who was tall and funny and didn't fuck up people's pictures. I was totally in love with him and was gonna marry him because my mom was too stupid to do so and Uncle Dennis hadn't shown up with his awesome Nintendo quite yet. He didn't come around as often when Michael was there, because he thought Michael was a douchebag, too, which probably also played a role in me hating Michael with a passion that burned. And then I started kindergarten and I realized that out of all my classmates and friends, I was the only one without a Daddy. Because my Daddy was dead of a car crash and I had two half-sisters I was never going to meet, but all of my friends had Daddies who were alive and in their house and not a parade of uncles, some of who were fun and some of whom were hateful and some we couldn't mention because they were in jail.
And one night, when Uncle George was tucking me in, I asked, "Will you be my Daddy?" And he paused and looked uncertain, and finally said, "Yes," before kissing my forehead and telling me to go to sleep. And I said, "Okay, Daddy," and snuggled down into my pillow person, Sweet Dreams and held Bah-koo and didn't go to sleep because I was a smart girl and I waited for Mommy and Daddy to start talking or watching TV or whatever they did and I stole Daddy's keys and hid them in my...pink jeweled snail creature, which I think was some Rose-Petal Place tie-in (EDIT: It was a Keyper?) and HOLY FUCK am I getting nostalgic. Must be cause my birthday's coming up. But anyway, I hid them in my snail so he could never, ever leave and crawled back into bed and thought about how awesome I was until I fell asleep.
The next morning guess which awesome girl got to go to the office and talk on the phone like a cool kid? This one. Mom was frantically searching for Daddy's keys because he had to go to work, but after getting her to promise that he'd come back for dinner, I told her they were in my snail so they 'wouldn't get lost.'
And then I went back to class, thinking about what a cool and smart kid I was, for coming up with that lie and securing another evening with Daddy. I'm fairly certain I got grounded when I got home, but, for some reason, I don't remember that as well as I do my SUPER-AWESOME TRIUMPH!
Anyway, Michael went away (\o/) and then Dennis moved in and he and Daddy were really cool, so Uncle Dennis brought both a Nintendo and my Daddy back and I decided I would marry Uncle Dennis instead because Daddy was now daddy and that's just gross. And then my brother was born and I realized that instead of a baby brother, I'd really rather have a puppy could we trade please--especially since having the brother meant I had to give up my cat Nicodemus who was never quite right after some incident and liked to sleep in the crib and my mom was afraid he'd suck Josh's last breath, which would have at least shut the colicky child up, is all wee!shadowravyn was saying. No one appreciated wee!shadowravyn's logic, even though it was sound.
By the next summer, I'm pretty certain that Uncle Dennis was gone and Michael was slowly sniffing around again. But for awhile, it was just me, mom, and the baby, and Daddy would come over a lot and visit, or take us places and hang out with his friends. (His roommate at the time told him that I really was his daughter--I resembled my dad a lot, especially in certain expressions--and Daddy was all, "No, No, Frankie [my mom's childhood nickname] would never keep that from me." Shows what you know.) And one day, Daddy got permission to bring me camping with a bunch of his friends and their kids and Josh couldn't come because he was too little (\o\ /o/ \o/) and it was gonna be me and Daddy and Uncle Nickerson and Aunt Cathy and Damian, the boy I was going to marry (who was at least close to my age) and his sister whose name I don't remember because, well, I wasn't going to marry her, was I?
...It should be noted that by this point, I had has a succession of boys I was going to marry, including Shawn Astrowski, who I called Shawn Across-the-street-ski, cause he lived across the street; Kevin, from day-care; Shaun Burns, from kindergarten; Timothy Zerrick, also from kindergarten; and Ronnie Giantonio, from first grade; and Jon Whatshisface from second grade. But Damian was my summer love, so it was okay. But, I digress.
And that night, after tucking me in (and making sure I really was asleep so there wouldn't be another key incident), Daddy went down to talk to Mom and said, "You know, Frankie. If God could guarantee me that I would have a child just like shadowravyn, I wouldn't be afraid to have kids anymore." And of course my mom burst into tears and confessed it all, "She's yours, George! She's always been yours!" And after he calmed Mom back down, he went back upstairs and pulled my covers off and really looked at me. "My nose, yup. My chin, yup. Those are definitely my knees, yup." And when he was done taking an inventory of those features that he could claim as his own, he covered me back up and went back downstairs. To do what, I don't know, that usually gets left out of the story.
A few days later, off camping we go. And though he'd promised Mom he'd wait until we were all a family, that night before I fell asleep in the tent, he told me that I actually was his daughter, that he really was my Daddy, and that we were a family. And then he held me when I cried because I was so happily and didn't wince too much when I lacerated his eardrums with glee and demanded we go tell everyone right now. It was a good night.
The next morning, every other adult we were camping with got arrested for outstanding warrants and Daddy and I were kicked out of the state park, I broke the cherry button off my purple jumper with the fruit buttons, leaving me with an orange, an apple, and a banana, all vastly inferior buttons (this was greatest tragedy of the day), and Mom had to find a baby-sitter and a car to come get us, and then we had to scrounge up money to bail out Cathy who had the fewest warrants, and then we had to go to Child Protective Services to get Damian and his sister because they'd been taken there when their parents were in jail...
But I didn't care. I had a family.
Thank you, O Wise Google, for helping me find images of my snail creature and Sweet Dreams, my pillow-person.
EDIT: And many thanks to ddrpolaris for reminding that Jon's last name was Palmer. Jon Palmer, second-grade crush.