Strolling around the ‘Hood with the little dog this afternoon, I chanced to cast my mind back over what my mother told me of her family(???) and upbringing in Upstate New York.
That poor child! What a horror show!
The tale as we have it is that she was born illegitimately to a rather swift glamor-girl. This woman abandoned her to her poverty-ridden paternal grandparents in rural New York state, who kept her until the grandmother died of diabetes — back in the day, an incurable and fatal illness.
At that point she was sent, over a judge’s best instincts, to the maternal grandparents, who lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Apparently this bunch was moderately affluent: they owned a large citrus orchard down the Coast. Result: her life changed radically. She learned to ride a school bus (!!! She’d never seen one before), went to California schools, and did OK there.
She married. Divorced. Married my father. Lived happily ever after. I was born to my father, apparently after several miscarriages.
My mother escaped the diabetes, a heritable disease. I have something called “prediabetes,” which apparently amounts to abnormal blood-sugar levels but is not full-on diabetes. My son’s blood sugar levels either are or are not in the normal level, depending on which quack you talk to and…jeez! far as I can tell, on the time of day.
So…apparently the ancestral horror show either is or is not visited upon my son…or may one day be. Or not.
Sure would be good to have some clearer understanding of that melodrama…but apparently none is possible.
Hmmmm…. Okayyy…what about the paternal side?
They were Indians. At least some of them were: Choctaw Indians.
It develops that my father’s father — my paternal grandfather — was a buffalo hunter of the gringo persuasion. He married a Choctaw woman. Hence: my father. So saith my uncle, his elder brother.
And if you looked at my father, you sure could believe that tale. He had almost black hair and blue eyes. Turns out Choctaw Indians can have blue eyes! How strange can that be, eh?
Far as I know, he wasn’t aware of this. He staunchly denied that he was anything other than Whitey-White-White. For sure: you never saw bigotry until you met my father! 😀 But you couldn’t look at him without suspecting some…intermixture. 😉
Fortunately, my father was very smart and contrived, without anything resembling a college education, to make a good living. He took us overseas — I grew up in Saudi Arabia — and later, after an interlude sailing out of California (he was a Merchant Mariner), he retired to Arizona, dragging me with him. Hence: three degrees from Arizona universities for me and a lifetime of work and residence in this garden spot.
Heh! My life has hardly been a horror show, that’s for sure. Not all sweetness and light…but mostly good. Certainly easier than his. Or than my mother’s.
Basically, he rescued my mother. She’d had a gawdawful childhood, and then had stumbled into a marriage that was quite the little nightmare, ending in divorce. After that, apparently she and my father met at a party. Fell instantly in love. Married. and lived happily every after. Who’d have expected it, eh?
So…the horror show ended when my father came along and found my mother. Certainly he rescued her. And our lives have been peaceful and moderately easy during my entire lifetime.
Well. If you consider ten years in Saudi Arabia to be “peaceful and moderately easy.” In fact, I would say that’s exactly so: we did just fine out there. And because there’s no place to spend money in those garden realms, they returned to the States comfortably set and in a position to build a pleasant retirement in Arizona, after a few more years of work in California.
So…here we are. Strange people. But I suppose all people are kinda strange, eh? It’s human nature.
Well…no. Maybe not.