I wanted to write about him for Fathers Day next weekend. Then I thought it might be better to do it now and not cloud anyone else's holiday. I do not want to talk about my father as a father though. I think I may have said enough about what he did to us for now. I want to talk about the little boy my father once was. My father never talked much about his early life. He never really talked about his life much at all, so this might be brief.
My father was born in 1934 during the great depression. His mother was a full blooded Native. His father was mixed blood, Euro-American, Native and possibly Mexican. I say possibly because he only told me that once and he was drunk when he said it. the thing that I remember most about when he said that is that he seemed to be ashamed of it. He was born in a small town in Kentucky. He had an older sister my aunt betty(not her real name). He was about three years old when his father left the family. He said he had very little memory of his father. His mother, my grandmother whose name they never told me, died of tuberculosis when he was seven.
Apparently he had some extended family, but they were Natives so he was not allowed to stay with them. Instead he and my aunt were split up and he was sent to a "Christian" orphans home. I have no idea what happened to my aunt or where she went. I do know that she married my uncle Dave at the age of sixteen in part to get out of the situation she was in, and in part to try to give her brother a home. He and his sister did manage to keep in touch.
At the "Christian" orphans home life was pretty bleak. Food and clothing were scarce. The education there focused on teaching a trade to mostly Native and mixed blood children, who they obviously felt would be servants and manual laborers, and not real education. My father finally got a copy of his birth certificate when he was fifty and that is when he found out they changed his name. He believes that they changed his name so that his family would not be able to locate him. You see this was during the infamous boarding school era, when tens of thousands of Native children were stolen from their families so that they could have their culture educated out of them. they would beat it out of them if they had to. He got the full cultural reprogramming treatment. He was not allowed to speak his mother's language. His hair was cut off. His name was changed.
Punishment at the home was almost always corporal. And there was a lot of it from what he said. There was something else too. Sex Abuse. I do not know how much or who or anything other than that my father finally ran away at the age of 11. First he tried to find his father, who he thought was in Arizona. then he tried to find his sister. At some point the need to survive on the streets became so difficult he turned to prostitution to survive. My 11 year old father sold his body to strange men to survive. Eventually he found his sister and stayed with her. I don't know how long that took or how long he stayed with her. It was at this time that he started getting into trouble with the law.
That is all I really know about my fathers early life. I understand completely how he got to be the abusive asshole that he was. What I have never known and have always wondered about was that little boy he used to be. There are no happy childhood memories he shared. I do not even know his parents names. I do not know for sure what his fathers race was. I wish I had known that little boy. I mourn that little boy and the man he could have become in a kinder world. I wish I had know my father before they killed everything good in him.
This Week: I have been suffering from a mild depression. I have been getting that I want everyone to leave me alone and I wish I lived on a desert island by myself feeling. It is a lonely feeling. My dear friend, I'll call her Heather, has continued to tell me things about her childhood. She is the friend who told me about being raped at the age of thirteen. This happens to me sometimes. People seem to tell me things they do not tell others. Heather was adopted as was her older sister. Sometime after the adoptions her mother was able to conceive and bear a child. She said she asked her parent repeatedly why they adopted her if they did not want her. When she was eight years old she developed rheumatic fever and was paralyzed for a time. she actually woke up on Christmas morning paralyzed. Her mother didn't believe her and it apparently took hours to convince her that something was really wrong. That is all she really said at the time. I think I will hear more though.
I finally had a talk with the man in my life about these diaries. I have permission to talk about him a little. He does not want any strangers knowing about his life. He is paranoid schizophrenic and bipolar and I am going to call him Ben. Ben is the best father that he can be to his daughter, the younger of our two girls. I have permission to talk about our relationship a little and that is about it. I can say this. He is in his late forties and is aging out of many of the most severe symptoms. He no longer believes that the government will come kill him for being disabled. His very bad episodes are much briefer than they used to be. He no longer accuses me of tricking him or messing with him when he is like that.
Next week: In honor of fathers day I will write about the good men in my life and the good fathers I have known.