Reality, Mine

My father's high school graduation photo, 1941.

This is not going to be a soft, melancholy look back in life, remembering my wonderful childhood, idealizing my father. For most of my life this man got a pass from me. Not from my brother, who felt as much outrage toward him as he did our mother. I don't use that word for Kate, other than to introduce her. I call her Kate. My father was often fun, he could be highly creative and was talented in mechanics, building, figuring things out. He loved opera, he read and did crosswords. He did mostly what he wanted to do. He met Kate on her eighteenth birthday. He was twenty-eight. They married eight months later. Kate was an Oscar worthy manipulator and I'm sure she convinced this quite selfish man of her submissive innocence. I often wonder how long it took him before something in the pit of his stomach told him he was in trouble? Since the time when I have solid memory of Kate, she couldn't hold the illusion too long. Kate had a personality disorder. 

By the time I was ten every member of both sides of the family were out of our lives. My brother and I grew up without family, other than our maternal grandmother, the person my father brought in to keep Kate off his back. The person who eased my brother and my abuse somewhat. I haven't seen nor heard from that brother in nearly thirty years. I hope he has been able to shed the anger and hurt, the emasculation doled out to him and the contempt his father held for him because of it.

Happy Fathers Day