Memory and Reality

I never really knew either my paternal or maternal grandfather. (There is also my older brothers grandfather who I also call grandfather, but isn't in the technical sense. We'll leave him out of this for now). My mother's father died when I was a teenager over fifteen years ago now. My father's father passed away just a couple years ago. My memories of these men are primarily a child's memory. I remember funny talking old man who laughed loudly. I remember one always in a white t - shirt and often with an oxygen tank. I remember the pouches of chewing tobacco at my other grandfathers house downstate. I remember the places they lived (for some reason the meory of space, rooms furniture doorways that sort of thing sticks with me). As a child all I ever knew was about these funny old men was that they were family and that they loved me.


Then you grow up.


Now my parents have no problems telling me tales of their youth and the kinds of problems these men had. Apparently both men were heavy drinkers. Mom's father was a tavern man and dads father was a sit at home with a couple cases of beer type of guy. Both men let the drinking affect their family lives. My mother still deeply resents her father. My father doesn't tell many tales of the bad times, but he is one of eight children and not all of them share the same aversion. My fathers father would get into the occasional fight. Then there is the wonderful story where he kicked the my father out on his sixteenth birthday and said don't come home till you get a job (which he did the same day fotunately).

Apparently one time after we moved to the southside my mothers parents decided to stop in unannounced one Sunday morning. My father offered them coffee. My grandfather told my father to sit down, as he had worked all week and then proceeded to tell his daughter, my mother, to get off her fat ass and pour him a cup of coffee. At the time my mother worked nights and was going to nursing school. She kicked her parents out of the house.

I don't remember these men, these womanizers, these chauvinists, these drunks. Still my opinions and feelings for them cannot help but be colored by what I learn about them, and especially the resentment and anger felt by their children. This is not a reality that I want, it just the one that happens to be.

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