I appreciate you, Grampa.
When you’re young, you look around you for people to emulate. You don’t start life looking to be like someone you see on television or hear on the radio. It is typically those closest to you who form the first impressions of life and what you want to do and be when it comes to your own. If you are lucky, you have one or more good role models to choose from.
As a young boy in the early 1980s, I was looking for someone like that to show me the way. I needed someone to be the guiding light, to teach me how to live not just as a boy but all the way up through life as a man.
I looked to my father. My first memories of him are not those of a parent, nor those of a male role model. My first memories of my father are of a man who acted more like an older friend. He had funny jokes to share. In fact, he taught me a lot of what would later become my own wacky and sarcastic sense of humor.
He taught me about the Three Stooges. He introduced me to Foreigner, Steely Dan, Kate Bush, and, for some reason, called every cat he ever saw ‘Goot,’ which was the name of his cat when he was a teenager. I loved my cat Tigger when I was a teen, but don’t call every cat by that name, so it’s a bit odd.
We had cookouts on Sundays. Sometimes we’d go on trips to local playgrounds. Christmas and Easter dinners aplenty. It all sounds great, right? When compartmentalized, it does, but it was window dressing. The one thing my father never taught me was anything about how to be a man. The one thing he never showed me was love outside of awkward handshakes and pats on the back.
I saw him once or twice a week for most of my childhood. He and my mother had gotten divorced when I was very young. He was not interested in being a parent. Oh, sure, he enjoyed what creates a child, but couldn’t wrap his head around being there for said child.
The final straw came when he passed out on the couch and allowed me, as a toddler, to wander out our front door after dark wearing only a diaper. My mother, coming home from work, spotted me with my blanket walking under a streetlight. Sure, mistakes can happen, but the lack of responsibility from a parent was staggering.
That’s not to mention the times he would leave my sister and me, as toddlers, home alone so he could go out. Neighbors would tell my mother they’d hear my infant sister crying from her room.
There was the time my mother gave him a professional portrait of my sister and me, and he proceeded to tack it up to a corkboard at a bar. My aunt found it and called my mother. I found out when I was in my 40s that my father offered to waive all parental rights to get out of paying child support.
You read that right. He wanted to disown his children so he wouldn’t have to pay his fair share to help support the people he helped to create. What stopped it from happening? My mother told him my Nana would then not be able to see her grandchildren. This stopped him from disowning us, but didn’t make him care enough to pay full child support.
He would quit jobs abruptly when child support came calling. He would make plans with us kids and stand us up to go to a bar. Of course, none of this was wrong in his mind, and my mother was evil for daring to hold him accountable again for the children he helped to create. I was too young to see what a rotten excuse for a father he was.
As I got older and started working, my father was right there to be the first to ask for money. It is an odd feeling to have someone who is a parent in name only constantly wanting to use you as their own personal ATM. It was nearly every time I was in the car with him, he’d say his typical 'Do you got any dough?’ line. Still wanting his approval, I loaned him, sorry, gave him, money that likely ended up being somewhere north of $2,000 in total while in high school. He would tell me he’d pay me back, but I likely recouped little more than half of what he got.
Giving money to help out a parent who supports, feeds, clothes, and houses you is not a big deal. Doing the same for someone you saw a handful of hours a week at best was a damning indictment of what I thought a man was. He neglected me unless he needed money.
The older I got, the more I learned that my father had shown me a blueprint of how not to be a man. He was lazy, selfish, immature, a drunk, and a professional victim who, to this day, cannot accept that the fact that his children and grandchildren want nothing to do with him is his fault alone.
So I could not count on my father to show me the way as far as being a man. Hell, I had openly wished either of his two brothers had been my father. I then looked to his replacement, my first stepfather.
The first memories I have of my stepfather were confusion. I wondered aloud where my father was when confronted with this new man. I am not sure if my resistance to him caused immediate resentment toward me. He was around more and more. It became obvious that he was going to be in my life whether I wanted it or not.
When he was first around, my new stepfather was in the throes of alcoholism. He did give it up, and that is to be commended, as I know all too well how hard it is to slay that demon. However, that is where the commendation toward him ends.
If you look at it from a wide view, my life improved with my stepfather. He provided a roof over my head, helped with clothing, food, and medical care for my sister and me, despite us not being his kids. But the saying goes, ‘you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors.’ I know it because I lived it.
My stepfather was physically and verbally abusive to me, full stop. I don’t remember the first time I was hit or told I was nothing, but they became a part of my life in childhood up to midway through high school. Maybe it was when he had his own kids with my mother that he really began to look at me as an annoyance that needed to be kept in line. I don’t know what was in his mind and really don’t care.
I was an honor student. I never got in trouble. I did my best to be a positive example for my four younger siblings. Yet still I was routinely hit with belts, wire hangers, or just plain old hands when he was too lazy to grab something. I can only imagine my fate if I were a problem child. I guess in his mind, I was.
Things escalated when my brother and twin sisters were born. Now I was truly an outsider in his family. There was always favoritism shown toward my brother. If I told on him I got hit. If he did something and I didn’t tell on him, I got hit for letting it happen. There were times my brother got in trouble, and I got it too, maybe just to make sure I didn’t think I was special. There are times when I feel bad. My brother has caught strays in life from me because I hate his father so much, but that falls on his father and not me.
I was a witness to him abusing my mother when he thought the coast was clear. That night, she called the police. I, barely 10 years old, was hiding under the kitchen table. I listened to him deny things I saw. My mother was the one who always had my back, so I owed it to her to have hers. I stepped out from under the table and told the police what I saw, in full view of my stepfather.
I don’t know if anything came of it as far as the police went. I do know that I became his target after that. It came to a head in the basement, likely a few days later. The door was closed, and I was handed a miniature basketball. My stepfather said all I had to do was score one basket in my basketball hoop stuck to the wall. It was not so easy.
I was kicked, hit, tripped, and shoved by a grown man twice my size. Why? Because I dared to call out his spousal abuse to the police. Once I finally scored, he smugly said to me ‘nice shot.’ Then he left me in a puddle of shame and embarrassment on the basement floor. In his evil, warped mind, he likely thought he was teaching me to be a man. In reality, he taught me anger and hatred like nothing I have ever felt before or since.
For years, I was beaten down physically and emotionally. I was told my feelings and my problems didn’t matter. Things that meant the world to me were meaningless according to him. I learned the only way I could safely navigate life in that house was to make myself as small as possible. There are too many other incidents to speak of. Just know that most of my childhood was a constant fight or flight loop that made a day where I only got yelled at feel like I was getting an award on stage in front of adoring fans.
These things from childhood remain issues for me to this day. My confidence and self worth, they are tied to two men who are poor examples of that word. A father who didn’t care, and a stepfather who abused me.
Eventually, my mother had had enough, and my stepfather was kicked out of the house. It was one of the best days of my life. Where I kept giving my father the benefit of the doubt for decades too long, I was all too happy to begin erasing the memory of my stepfather. However, my simmering rage wanted revenge.
I began working out at sixteen. I had weights, a bench, and a heavy bag. I vividly remember scuffing up my knuckles, hitting that bag with all my might until it came crashing down from the beam. All I could see was my former stepfather’s face.
Sure, I could say I was working out to possibly play sports, but that was not the main reason. I didn’t want to feel helpless anymore. I wanted to gain strength to feel confident. I wanted to gain strength so I could get my revenge on him.
The bottom line is, I wanted to do as much physical harm to my former stepfather as possible. If I ended his life, so be it. He deserved whatever came to him because of what he did to my mother and me. He is still alive today. I did not follow through with any bad thoughts. It was my second stepfather, my current stepfather, who was able to get through to me. It was he whom I first confided my anger toward that former stepfather.
By this time, I was eighteen and could have been arrested and tried as an adult. It was that fact that stopped me. It was my new stepfather who showed me through words and actions that it wasn’t all men who were evil. I was just dealt a bad hand with the first two ‘most important’ men in my life being neglectful and/or abusive.
We come all the way full circle. I appreciate my Grampa because I was able to find the role model I needed. Where my father and first stepfather didn’t have the capacity as men to be decent husbands and fathers, my Grampa excelled. He worked hard. He stayed true to my Nina for over 70 years. He was firm but loving to his children. He was, and always had been, the example I was looking for.
It’s not that I didn’t appreciate my Grampa when I was growing up. When you’re treated well by someone for a few hours of cumulative time in a year, but the rest of your time is spent being ignored or fearing a heavy hand, the good times don’t make a dent. It wasn’t until I got out of my teenage years and my father and former stepfather became less relevant to my life that the light that as my Grampa started shining through.
Some could say that grandparents are naturally seen as angels compared to parents because parents are the ones who have to dole out the discipline. Grandparents are more apt to let the grandkids do whatever they want. That is usually true, but I’ll use my father as Exhibit A. He has three grandkids, and I guarantee he doesn’t know their birthdays or middle names. I am thinking he hasn’t seen them in many years, despite living relatively close to them all. So no, not all grandparents are made the same.
I felt seen and appreciated by my Grampa. He had genuine advice. He had genuine, kind words that made me feel worthy. In my 20s and 30s, it was my Grampa and my current stepfather, Serpa, who began to paint over my image of what I thought a ‘man’ was.
It was my Grampa who was at many of my author events, not my father. It was my Grampa whom I confided in about my struggles with self-worth and chasing my dreams, not my father. It was my Grampa who became my role model and the one I emulated.
I wanted to be at least half of what my Grampa was because I knew I could never be him, but if I was half, I knew I would have been a success as a human. I don’t want to be like my father. I don’t want to be like that first stepfather. They taught me what not to do.
I was devastated when my Grampa died 7 years ago this month. I reflected and decided that he had given me all of the lessons he could and that it was up to me to put them into action. Some days I feel like I get close. Other days, I feel like I am failing him in every way possible. But I woke up the next day knowing that anything is possible because he told me so.
I still have a handwritten note he gave me way back in 2015. It says, ‘it’s never too late to be what you might have been.’ Yes, the quote is from novelist George Eliot (real name Mary Ann Evans), but my Grampa wrote it for me when I was unsure of who I was supposed to be and where I was supposed to be going. So I will always associate it with him.
When I say that I appreciate my Grampa is goes much deeper than words or how he lived his life. He was there, setting the example for me throughout my life. I just was not ready to see it until I got older. Perhaps if I hadn’t had such terrible male role models in my father and first stepfather, I wouldn’t have found my Grampa to be the guiding light. I am glad I don’t have to wonder about that.
His teachings were never overt. He never said ‘here is how you act as a man.’ No, he simply lived by example. I saw his work ethic. He worked until he was 90. I saw his stability and love as a partner because I was witness to his marriage to my Nina lasting over 70 years. I saw his teachings as a parent through my mother, aunts, and uncles. I saw his importance to his friends and community. I heard the kind words people said to him, about him, when he was there, and when he wasn’t.
I don’t know who I would be without my Grampa. Would Serpa have been enough to break me out of that cage I was put in by those other two ‘men’? I don’t know. Maybe I would have been fine. Maybe I would have been so beaten down that I succumbed to alcohol, depression, or any other issue I have dealt with. You know, the issues that I’m sure that first stepfather would have said were ‘petty?’
I am still here, though. Closing in on 50 and trying to figure out my place in this world, but still here. When I feel like the answers are getting away from me, I look at that note my Grampa wrote me. I also just sit back and think of him, his life, his actions, and know that his DNA is in me.
Seven years have passed since my Grampa taught his final lesson to me. I will always keep his memory alive as often as I can. He deserves to be remembered, unlike other ‘men’ whom I will not shed a single tear for when they go. I put all of my energy into thanking my Grampa and Serpa, and while I’m at it, Uncle Eric, Uncle Bob, Uncle Steve, Uncle John, and Maui. Any successes I have in life as a man are reflections on you and your teachings.
I appreciate you, Grampa, and I appreciate all of those second fathers I just mentioned. You all filled the hole left by those other ‘men’ who let me down in every possible way. Thank you.
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