Posted by Ted on August 17, 2002, at 0:48:11
In reply to Re: screwing up our kids - Dinah, Beardy, posted by .tabitha. on August 16, 2002, at 23:52:35
> My mom once told me what her childhood was like. It sounded barren, lonely, and loveless.
My parents didn't talk about their childhood at all. Well, my mother did minimally, but not my father. My mother's dad abandoned the family in 1931+/- when my mother was 1 year old, and her mother died when she was only 3. As a result, she was shuffled around among aunts & uncles who raised her, often separated from her brother.
My father was for all practical purposes excommunicated from the family because he married the wrong woman. My dad was a Quaker and my mother wasn't -- that was reason enough. After they married, they moved 2000 miles away and only visited home 4 times in 25 years. My father didn't even go to his dad's funeral.
Another similarity: My father was the youngest of his siblings, my mother was the youngest of her's and I am the youngest of my siblings. Go figure.
As a result, I have gathered genealogy materials and stories from relatives, including my dad's 92 year old brother, to piece it all together. The story gets clearer every year.
>I was thinking wow, that's *exactly* what mine was like.
I fear my family is turning out all too similar. Not for any of the above reasons, rather from the fact that the above circumstances made my parents very distant with their families, so they didn't know whow to raise a cohesive family themselves. I hardly know my brother -- he doesn't even answer email I send.
>I really felt sad for us both. :(
I always wondered what it was like to have a close family. I'll never really know.
Ted
(golly, now I'm getting all teary)
poster:Ted
thread:28600
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020813/msgs/28818.html