In which there is twice the Litha.

I didn't make my entry yesterday, so there are two topics to cover, today.

3. My Parents

Hmmmm, I'm trying to decide whether this warrants sub-categories, or whether I should keep it simple and just talk about the two. The thing of it is, my father didn't really become my father until more recent years. And my mother has never really been my mother.

Explanation:
My parents divorced when I was roughly five. I didn't really understand it at the time, but it was nice for the yelling to stop, and I only made a token gesture of "When are Mommy and Daddy getting back together?" because TV told me that was what a child was supposed to say in those situations. My father admits that, at the time, he didn't really know how to be a father. I was his first child, and he was afraid of making mistakes, so, true to his fears, he made a really big one and left most of my raising up to his parents (who were very strict Depression era Catholics, for whom I was largely either a burden or an animal to be trained) who he and I lived with, after he'd moved out of the house on California Street.

Nonetheless, I did get some good things from him in those early years. He taught me how to bat well enough that I still only rarely miss, (so long as no one throws me a goddamn curve ball.) And I wouldn't know who the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Credence Clearwater Revival, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd or the Doors were, were it not for our half-hour drive to and from school, every day until third grade. I also still have a lingering respect for Clint Eastwood. ;-)

He became a little more of a father when I was around twelve, and we moved out of his parents' house to live with his new wife and her daughter. However, having only had his own father to learn from, it took him some years to work around that, so things were very strained for a while. Now that he has, though, we get along very well. He sees me--in so much as anyone does--and I hope he sees my little sister (technically half sister) as well, because when he does that he's one of the best people I know.

My mother... She's always been more like a screwed-up friend. She's never really lived in the realm of reality, and more often than not, I felt like a stand-in for this daughter she had in her head. Being as I wasn't that daughter, I never really felt like she was my mother. Bits were, but it was never a complete feeling. Nonetheless, spending time with her was better than being at my grandparents' house, so I tended to humor her. A lot.

I was rewarded for it with frequent trips to Brown County or Anderson Falls to hike, and I will confess that there's no better person to learn a certain amount of mental independence from than a crazy person. (The doctors say Bi-polar, my father says Borderline Personality Disorder, and I maintain that there's a dash of Schizophrenia in there.) She tended to run hot and cold, and could occasionally be very verbally abusive.

She got worse during her second marriage, as she decided that would be a good time to start drinking again. My mother tends to be a very loud and violent drunk. (Those years contained the only night she ever tried to hit me, but she was so drunk that she missed.) It wasn't helped by the fact that my step-father was drinking as well. (Sweet guy, but he never did learn how to deal with her.) So, things were bad for a few years. What bits of my mother I considered mine died during that time. She never really recovered what emotional stability she had, even after she stopped drinking again, and living alone after her husband's death didn't improve matters.

I lived with her for a few years, after that, to help with the bills, being as she was unemployed and had spent herself deep into debt, ordering things from the QVC. It was very unpleasant, and after a while I started really living at my father's and just dropped off some money every paycheck, for a while. She admitted to her illness only long enough to get on permanent disability, and now says it's only because of her back problems.


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4. My Sibling

Little sis! :-D She is a ninja panda vampire pickle, light of my life and the closest thing I'll ever have to a daughter aside from my cat. ^_^ We speak the same language. She is one of the very few members of my blood family who I truly consider family. We can hang out and talk for hours. She's going through the teenage thing, right now, and hates driving as much as I did back then. She loves animals (so long as they're not wild--those panic her and she insists that they all have MANGE) and Japan and art.

*pounchugglecuddles the kid*

And in point of fact I need to get off of here and pack. I'm visiting her this weekend. Apparently we're going to the zoo, Monday...