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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2009 14:33:27 GMT
I've been writing quite a bit about my father lately, and at times it's hard to do. We had a very hate/love kind of relationship. Some of you might already know, I was raised by my dad, my mother left when I was nine years old. It was odd getting to know this man, (I met him for the first time at 5 years of age). He was an unusual person, had ties to the underworld, and was known to be ruthless to the extreme. And yet, there was another side to him, that only few got to see.
Anyway, it made me wonder how was your relationship with your parents? Was a good one? Or one you'd rather just forget about?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2009 17:51:43 GMT
I got my independent streak from my mother, which is one reason that it is all the more tragic that she is completely dependent now.
I had no complaints about my biological father up until the divorce. But from that moment on, everything that was bad about him bubbled to the surface and exploded. My mother had asked for the absolute legal minimum for child support, which was $50 a month per child at the time, but he unhesitatingly signed away his parental rights when my stepfather wanted to adopt us, so that he wouldn't have to pay anymore.
Naturally, there is more to this story, but that is more than enough for a place like this.
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Post by lagatta on Nov 16, 2009 18:17:00 GMT
Yes, I'm also rather averse to discussing such personal stories more than obliquely on public forums. I think relatively few people have had the ideal childhoods depicted in postwar readers, but parents were people too and a lot of them had been through utter crap - just look at the Home Child story on the Oceania board. And fewer had the choice we claimed not to have children unless we wanted to.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2009 18:35:15 GMT
Yes ofcourse, some things are too private to put up on a site. If my book ever gets published it will all be made very public anyway. But I'm okay with that, some things are best put out in the open.
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Post by rikita on Nov 27, 2009 23:49:43 GMT
well with my parents while of course there were arguments and problems, generally my relationship to them was good. well, my dad was a bit the type that was interested in other things than kids and family, so he tended to withdraw and leave my mom alone with us, with the result that i always wanted to get his attention. now that i am grown up that is different though, i suppose a grown up child is more interesting (though he spends more attention to my little brother now) - but he never was so extreme that he'd be like a stranger or something. and i suppose in part he was just copying what he had grown up with, with his father usually being in his study and all... with my mom i have the usual arguments, and had them as a child too, i suppose - i guess as a daughter things are sometimes a bit more complicated than as a son, in that my mother with me seems to try to make me more like her, and is annoyed when i am not, while with my brothers she accepts that they are different from her. but again, nothing extreme.
so all in all pretty normal i'd say.
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Post by spindrift on Nov 28, 2009 17:07:14 GMT
My dad was 30 years older than my mother so they didn't have an easy relationship. I was born when he was 64. He already had 3 children as old (or older) than my mother. I inherited my independent character from my father and gentleness from my dearest mother. My dad died when I was ten and my mother married an Irishman and took me back to live in Ireland. I had two more Irish stepfathers after that one and I have few kind memories of any of them. They all died one after the other as quickly as anything.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2009 21:35:09 GMT
That sounds quite suspicious, Spindrift.  Miss Marple might have something to say about that. |
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