Events form our destiny they say, or is it Destiny the forms our life?  Could it be another thing, like we are the accumulation of the events and our base family‘s reaction to them? Many ideas come to subject on this point, but I have grown to believe, we are all, what we are taught to be, plus, what events  we live through you see. Each Generation is different because each has its own events they live through and we have the cultural, moral and ethical bringing up of the base family.

       Take a look back in time, for me i have only lived 56 years and I don’t know how long I have left. But I do not my parents didn’t hand us things on a platter, they didn’t give us cars, electronics, money or fancy clothes. We didn’t get our music through them or anything else, what we got pure and simple was discipline, work hard, go to school and stay the hell out of trouble or we will beat your ass. If you dropped out of school in my family’s world you went to work and paid for your rent and for food, you learned earlier than later, you had to earn your way.

        Each family, no matter how many children they have, has favorites, the ones who can’t do nothing wrong and everything goes right for. In our family we ran into that problem not once but twice. My elder brother was mom’s favorite, she would help him through everything and he  was attached hard and strong to her apron strings. He was Mr. Perfect. the one who could do it all right and play sports and be the hero.  As we grew older he disappeared into his sports and the family, ran as hard as he could, to find his freedom and escape the step-father we had. Violence was indeed a way our parents controlled him and none of the five of us were ever immune.

       Many have asked me what my first memory of life was, and how far back can I remember. Well Doctors, I go back to the year, 1961, I was five years old. It was the day after Labor Day, the first day of school for me, I was awaken and told to get up at 6 am, like my elder brother. I was washed and  cleaned by mom and then told to get dressed. I put on the clothes given to me like a good little man and then came the tie. The 1960’s school system had dress codes, the Elementary School code was ties that year. Mom pull ed me close and wrapped the tie around my collar and started to tie it. I was five years old I fidgeting and moved, that was it for her, the next thing I knew I was smacked across the face, crying and told hold still or I would get it again. Hows that for a first memory in one’s mind and head?

      Families have their black sheep and I was it for mine I think. My real father, had divorced my mother and moved back home, I would not meet him until I turned 18 years old and took a bus to another state on my own. As my mother would say, I looked like him and I talk like him, so I suffered for that all my young life living at home. Nothing I could say, do, or try to do, would ever make my mother and I get along well, till the day she died.

        The third child was one of my younger brothers. He was the first one mom had from our step-father.  I watched as he grew older and more anger came out of him year by year, from being beat upon by our father. The beatings were crazy and at night or anytime he decided we did something wrong. This kid got so angry as he grew older, he stole all of his father’s tools and belongings he could and sold them on the streets to make money. He wiped his own father out in that way and then they had the confrontation in the basement. By now my younger brother had grown to almost a full-sized man, he stood his ground against his father in that basement. As his father beat him he fought back finally, and took a pipe to dad’s head. As Dad stood there bleeding across his skull, he looked at his first full son and told him get out or I will kill you, leave. The kid packed up at 16 and left the home never to return, he died at age 32 in California, under an assumed name from Aids from drugs. Sad huh!

       The next was my baby sister, God Bless her for coming along when she did. She took some of the sting and violence out of her dad and mom. They loved having a little girl for a change. Dad would never hurt his little girl physically, but mom well she would and did, and beat her down mentally too. As our dad would say till the day he died, and he told her many times to her face, woman you have no motherly instinct at all. It was true and us kids knew it too, we really did all our lives.

       The final piece to the puzzle that was our family, is one last boy. A boy we all loved as he was small, smart and funny. He would laugh well the little guy back then and he  loved life. Before I left home I would babysit the two younger boys and my sister daily thru my high school years as our parents worked each day.  The third child would beat upon his younger sister and brother daily unless I stopped him. Anyway the youngest was given everything like my elder brother was as the eldest one, the baby of the family thing set in. But for him the  bad part was he also got the worst of his father’s habits and ways, he picked up over the years. I remember when he was small teaching him how to draw from the Sunday Paper Comic Strips. Today he has a talent for drawing that is immense and I hope he is using it somewhere.  But like I said he got things from his dad too, paranoia and at times anger issues hit this child on and off. He is suspicious of everything and anything around him, sadly for him. My understanding is early in his life after I left for military service he was hit by a car and it changed him. Sadly that is the family puzzle that was us, in our house.

       So like I say, events in history, family teachings and what we learned young became all of us and becomes all of us through out the World!.