April 15, 2013 Greetings My Friend, Tax day is today. Twenty one years ago today Dad died. I can’t believe he has been gone that long…..strange. I miss him and yet I don’t. I love him and frankly I am indifferent as well. It is strange. I am more like my Dad than my Mom but…..Dad was hard on us. Dad was a kid raising his kids. He left home at age 14 and never returned home again. In many ways Dad was a kid as he raised us. I understand this at my age. As a child and young adult I did not. I did not like being pounded on and I hated it. It took me years to look beyond Dad’s ways to see the stuff he grew up with and then I’m amazed at how well he did. Add polio to the mix and yet again I am amazed. Dad survived polio when the Doctor’s thought he would not. Dad taught himself to walk again without aids. The Doctor’s also told him he would never walk again. That in itself is amazing. I remember Dad’s gait often. He used his back muscles to walk. He looked like a drunk really but it was the way he could walk and he did. In many ways I feel the same way about Mom. Mom often ignored things so she did not have to deal with them. She let a neighbor take us in the car and expose himself to us and put us back in the car after we told her he was doing that. Mom often read a book instead of dealing with Dad dragging us around the house beating on us. Mom didn’t know what to do so she pretended she didn’t see things. It was how Mom coped I get that now. In general though my parents amaze me, Dad had polio. His parents walked out on us. Mom and Dad got back to MI after he was well enough to travel. Grandma C took care of us giving us a home, some meager income and food. Grandma’s work in a hospital cafeteria often sent home food so our family could eat. If it wasn’t for them, we would have ate many less meals. We could not get aid because we did not live in the state long enough. So we struggled. One day the minister that married my parents heard we were back and he came by. He gave us food, clothes, a back brace for Dad and later on helped Mom get a house loan when women did not get those loans. That church was our life line for years and as we got on our feet our goal was to give back. I did that as an adult as well. I brought my children up in that church. I did not how to enter into a personal relationship. For some reason I never got the message. After my divorce I did learn how to relate to God on a more personal note. I am still walking with God in that way. I would have ended up in a Looney bin without my personal walk with God. I was able to meet and marry Junior who is so good for me. I asked God to help me to choose my next mate and He did. As I look back at my parents’ lives I again am amazed. I guess Mom went to church as a girl. Grandma insisted she go but would not go with her. When she met Dad she said it was a must. Dad agreed and went as well. I believe in my heart that on some level my parents walked with the Lord even though they did many things wrong. That sustains me. At church everyone was in awe of what my parents endured. They acted like my parents were awesome people and did not see the abuse. I struggled with that. Later on after my divorce I began attending another church and I learned how to walk in close relationship with Jesus my Savior. I love it to this day. I asked God to let me marry again and this time I wanted my husband to take his faith seriously. Junior does. Rough men are what I know and Junior in his own way is rough. Junior is the first man that has also shown me how tender they can be. It is a marvel to me. My first inkling that not all men were cruel just to be cruel was my son. He could be tender but he also could be rough. The first thing I felt after my divorce was for my children. At that point I realized how awful our home life was for them. I cried and cried. Then my minister at the time told me that I could not do a “re-do” so I needed to get myself functional and that my children would follow. That has been my goal and frankly there are days I wonder if they will overcome the abuse. My son and his wife are good friends. They are very active raising their children. They do things I had wanted to do but did not know how. My grandchildren are into travel league sports. I barely could convince their Father to help me get them to their events. My heart tells me that he has in some ways moved passed the dysfunction of his growing up years. In many ways I moved passed the dysfunction of my growing up years and even further I see now that Dad moved passed his dysfunction. It has taken a good three generations but abuse does not appear to be part of the family line any longer. To me each generation had to learn lessons and then the next was able to move passed that. I am not sure what type of environment Grandpa lived in. I know very little about him. I know a bit more about Grandma and my heart often goes out to her even though I did not know her. She was the youngest of 11 children. Her Dad died leaving Mom with no money or income. Mom then started renting out bedrooms to support her. Grandma took up valuable real-estate. So she was often shipped off to one of her siblings’ homes. Grandpa came along when she was 14 and he married her. To her he was her ticket out the door into her own life. I relate to that feeling often because I married my first husband for about the same reason. He was my ticked out of the craziness of home. Some days I am so sad that my children and I don’t relate better than we do. That said…..I am so happy that there is not any abuse from what I can tell. I live with the effects of dysfunction. If it has left the family line….I am ok with it. May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet