My Life – Part 7: Family

If you’d asked me twenty years ago what I expected out of life I’d have told you that I didn’t expect to live to voting age. Such was the blackness that enveloped my outlook. My mother, as you may no doubt suspect, was a very negative person and kids pick up on such things pretty easily.

From early in our relationship, my wife was very outspoken on a number of topics but chief among them was that she wanted to have five kids. She was the youngest of three while I was the only and worst mistake my mother had ever made so we came from opposite ends of the stream in that regard. I’d been told all my life that kids were the bane of married existence so when my future wife said she wanted five kids I for once had the good sense to keep my mother’s ‘wisdom’ on that topic to myself.

Despite my silence, I had a secret and hidden dread of being a father. I was an only child after all. What would I possibly do with an infant or a child of any age for that matter? Those things are breakable and need care and feeding far beyond anything a mere mortal man can possibly provide. “If she wants to have a baby,” I thought, “then that’s HER business.”

As with all the stupidest plans of man, my plan to not have children fell by the wayside. I will not lie and say, “The moment I saw that cute little baby I just had to hold it and knew that I would love it forever.” That’s bullshit. I saw that little baby and thought, “Uh-oh. Now what do I do?” Luckily for everyone involved my wife asserted herself and told me what to do. Before we had a daughter we each revolved in our own separate orbits. We lived in the same house; we ate the same food but we weren’t really a family. When our youngest came along we had to pull together and work as a team to raise this tiny child. In this way my mother was dead and completely wrong. Children save marriages and make families out of couples, not destroy them.

As of this writing our eldest is seven and every inch of her on the outside her mother. Every cubic inch inside her cranium is her father. She writes bestiaries in her spare time complete with illustrations and I’ve a mind to start her on recopying the encyclopedia as I did at her age. Our youngest is a true toddler character and the reverse of her sister. Outwardly she’s a miniature version of me while inside she’s a daredevil like her mother.

My wife’s parents live next door and despite all the Ray Romano references that may come to mind they’re the nicest people I’ve ever met. For example, not long after Kathy and I met I went home with her one weekend to visit her parents. While there I availed myself of the use of the shower and through some idiotic circumstance I managed to break off the soap dish in their shower. Since I had practically just met these people I was utterly horrified. Instantly my mind went to how I would somehow get back to Purdue. Was there a bus station close enough that I could walk and get a bus ticket? Perhaps I could hitchhike. Anyway, long story short I wasn’t kicked out of the house and I didn’t have to buy a bus ticket anywhere. I did apologize about 73 times and they even eventually consented to let me marry their daughter. I hope I can be so magnanimous when our daughters bring home their gentleman friends.

In addition to being simply nice people, my in-laws are unique characters who should publish their own life stories. My wife’s father came from a tiny town in Southern Indiana and has a plethora of anecdotes to share from his childhood. This was always most refreshing since my own family tended to sit around in sullen silence most of the time. His accumulated experiences and wisdom are something that I hope he’ll share with his granddaughters as the years go on. My mother-in-law is the proverbial bundle of energy. She’s the only person I’ve ever known who has worn out a piece of exercise equipment. After an hour a day for 10 years her treadmill seems to finally be showing signs of just plain giving up. These two are finally on the verge of retiring to well-deserved lives of travel and leisure.

My own parents, if I recall at all correctly are approaching the 25^th anniversary of their divorce. My dad was out of my life for the majority of my adult years due to some relatively threatening stance taken by my grandfather during my teen years. I had on many occasions expressed a desire to ‘go live with dad’ but having no way to traverse the 20 miles into town found it to be a difficult impulse to actuate. After college I didn’t seek him out on the theory that since he hadn’t contacted me then he must not be interested. It was not until my wife, ever diligent and wise, sent him a Christmas card and we reestablished contact with each other. Even now we rarely speak as he’s busy working at a group home for the developmentally disabled. Ironically, much of our contact actually happens through my stepmother. If ever there was a lively character, she is one. She’s the only person that I’ve ever met more assertive than my own wife and that is saying a lot. I sometimes think that if God himself walked up to her back door, opened it and walked in her first words would be, “Well you could have at least knocked!”

My mother, on the other hand, is exactly the opposite. Never in my life have I known anyone with less self esteem or more deflated ego. My relationship with her began to fall apart when I heard from my dad again. When she found out that I was talking to him, she instantly began to devise all these grand theories about how often we talked and what horrible things we said about her and how we were out to get her. Then when her father died she somehow got it into her head that I was also in league with her brother against her. She lives in a miasma paranoia and self-doubt that is completely unparalleled. The last time I spoke to her was a couple of years ago and the first words out of her mouth were, “Just checking up on me to see if I’m dead, huh?” Despite my protestations to the contrary, she refused utterly to believe I had anything but malevolent intentions towards her. She ended the call by saying simply, “Don’t call here any more. Can’t you just leave me the hell alone?”

I have honored that request since but I do sometimes think about her and wonder what she’s doing. If she’s happy then I wish her all the best. If she’s still wallowing in the pit of her own despair then I wish her a quick escape from it. In the end, she really is the only victim in this prolonged diatribe. My father escaped and found happiness in a wife who is his perfect compliment. I found success and happiness in a way she could never even begin to understand. Even her father, who blackened her soul so utterly and caused her all this sorrow, found peace at last. She is the last tragic figure upon this stage and of all the players it is for her alone that I weep.