Sometimes I think it would have been better off if I had a shot at a different set of parents, but then again, what made me the person I am today is because of how I grew up. (Still not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing!) I do have my share of issues, hence why I ran away and hitchhiked cross country at 17. It's tough when your own father has uttered "I have no children" when he has five of them. You need a license for a dog, not kids. Go figure.
When I was younger I was at my mother's home and my older brother had called. I answered the phone for her and he tried to disguise his voice and said, "Is your mother there?". I tried to talk to him, but he wanted nothing to do with me. When I griped to her about what he said, she actually defended him and said, "well maybe he didn't know it was you". I said, "he sure as hell knew we had the same mother!!" Mom never was too quick on the uptake of things.
My mom cherishes her husbands kids, and always has. I'd try to invite her out to dinner for her birthday and she would say, "I don't like going out to eat". My step sister would come to town and my mother would boast about how my step siter took her to a nice restaurant for dinner. I flat out told her, "don't you dare tell me how much fun it was when you told me that you don't like to go out!". She shut up real quick after that.
But I guess the hard part is that when she needed some free artwork she would ask me to do it, then when she didn't need anymore I didn't exist. I once created a flier and entered it in one of her quilting club competitions, and they chose my design over all the others. When she had that show at the convention center, I was downstairs at a computer art conference. I went upstairs and tried to visit and couldn't find her. Her quilt group asked who I was and I said, "I'm the one who designed your logo and flier for this show". One lady said, "oh, you must be Marty". I said, "no, I'm Michael". She said, "Oh. I haven't heard of you before". Yeah, that stung a little.
Funny thing is that as a child when she used to get beaten I would cry for her, and hated that she had to go through that. When she left, even though she left to be with another man, I was happy for her that she got away. Even though it meant that I became 'mr. mom' and had to take care of the three youngest and take on the brutality that she endured, I didn't care. I never held it against her for leaving us with him.
Then at my grandmother's 95th birthday, Grandma told me that when my mother left Grandma offered to take all of us kids in to get us away from our abusive father and my mother didn't want to do that. She wanted her apartment so she could have her affair - her boss/boyfriend was married at the time with three kids close to my age. Kinda changed how I felt about her when I realized that her new family was more important than her own family.
I guess this is one reason I really hate the holidays..
