July 12th, 2010 | Posted in Personal | 5 Comments »
Every day I log in to Facebook and for some reason, perhaps subconsciously, I type his name in the search box.
I never hit enter. I simply type it, examine it, erase it, and go about my business. Strange behavior to say the least.
Facebook is supposed to be for staying connected with the people you know. Presumably, for the people you hold dear. Why would I go searching for someone I’ve never even met (but thought about countless times)? What would I even do if I found him?
My half-brother, D, is out there somewhere. He has my family’s last name. A few strands of my dad’s DNA. After one look at his high school graduation photo many years ago, I can say that he looks just like my dad too, even more than my actual full brother. Dark hair, thick brows, eyes that pierce straight through you. I know that if I searched for him on Facebook, assuming that he has an account, I could find him no problem. That’s part of the reason why I don’t do it.
My father’s early adult life is one shrouded in mystery, at least to me. Growing up, I picked up on things over the course of a few years, and at some points my dad would indulge me and let me in on a few secrets. He was married at 17 to a woman he got pregnant. His first child, a son, was born somewhere around 1965. Two or three years later, a daughter came. To my knowledge, they lived together in vicious discontent until his wife ran off with their two children to be with another man a short time later.
He’s never told me what happened after that, in any detail that is.
He graduated high school, lived and worked around his home town until 1976, when he met, fell in love with, and married my mother. My brother was born in ’81, and I came a short time later in ’88.
His first daughter, as I mentioned earlier, was actually in our lives for a short lived period of time. I was little when she first came around. She pulled up at our house one day in a beat up Chevy truck with a topper on the back where she kept what looked like everything she owned. We went hiking in the woods behind my house where I took a backpack full of ‘hiking necessities’ like my Barbies and a camera. She told me all about her time in the Air Force. I told her about how much fun it would be if she played popcorn with me on the trampoline. I think my parents still have pictures of this somewhere. When she left, she gave me a handmade photo album, with nothing in it except for a greeting card talking about the blessings that family provide. The outside was adorned with soft, pink fabric (apparently she had learned from my dad prior to her visit that pink was my favorite color at the time), and in the center, was a large gold letter ‘K’. It was beautiful. A gift from one sister to another. She gave me her heavy, camouflage Air Force jacket that swallowed me up at the time, said goodbye, and disappeared.
I haven’t heard from her since. To my knowledge, neither has my parents.
I’ve often sat back and wondered why things are the way they are with my dad and his first two children. Why doesn’t he even TRY to keep contact with them? And it makes me angry when I think about it. How can he sleep at night knowing that he has children out there and wants nothing to do with them? Why are me and my brother different to him? How could he abandon them and live his life as ‘father of two’ all these years?
But then I think, maybe he didn’t turn his back. Maybe they abandoned him. And that has to hurt a whole lot worse.
I’ve seen him write her letters. I’ve seen him call and talk to her. I’ve seen him send emails and get nothing back. Once, I asked him what ever happened to his high school ring. He told me he mailed it to D, his first son. And that was that.
They have never met the father that I have known my entire life. Loving, trusting, dependable, affectionate. To them, they’ve only ever known him as…absent. And that’s nothing that is worth rekindling. I get it.
But there’s something in me that wants to search for both of my siblings on Facebook anyway and see what I can find. They’re well into their 40′s now, probably have families…but I never click ‘search’ and look for them because I don’t want to be the ghost showing up from their past. I don’t want to start a fire that may or may not be easy to put out. Honestly, I don’t even know who those people are. They may as well just be a concept or a dream. I’m sure there was a good reason to them why they decided not to acknowledge our existence anymore. And I should probably just write this off and do the same.
I am just eternally grateful for the family that I have known all my life. For the person that I have turned out to be. My dad, as I know him, has forever been a sturdy rock for me. I almost refuse to believe that he would be anything other than that to the ones he loves. In fact, I know it. He has to have a door slammed in his face before he walks away from it.
Even though it would be nice to know them, not knowing them isn’t taking away from what I have with my dad.
I don’t know that I’ll type their names anymore after this.
July 8th, 2010 | Posted in Personal | 18 Comments »
I was recently tagged by my new blog friend, Erin to do this “25 things about me” type meme thingy. But before I get started I just have to show how incredibly pathetic I am by saying that I did a little dance in my computer chair when I saw that someone acknowledged my existence in this vast expansive porn pavilion called the internet, and tagged me for something. Yeah…
I know you’re foaming at the mouth right now waiting to read the facts!
It’s going to be hard coming up with 25!
1.) I’m a knitting hillbilly, as the title implies. I call myself that because a.) I knit shit and b.) I live in Kentucky in a trailer and eat grits for breakfast. Those are usually the only things someone needs to know about another person before assuming they are, in fact, a hillbilly. I embrace it.
2.) I was a hair away from never existing. My mother was 40 when a 2nd surprise pregnancy came along, and her doctor advised her to abort. Thankfully, she didn’t. I have to say that I am the most attractive of her two children.
3.) I have two much older half-siblings from my father. A half-brother that I’ve never met. A half-sister that mysteriously came into our lives for a little while and then, just as mysteriously, disappeared. My next blog post will go a little deeper into this subject.
4.) I’m a teen mom all grown up. I got pregnant at 15, married my son’s father (awesome guy, love him to pieces), gave birth at 16 and have been living happily with them ever since. My family is my everything.
5.) Every morning I wake up to my iPhone alarm, prepare to hit the SNOOZE button as always, and without fail I do a double take at the word. Maybe it’s because I’m still in my “half-asleep-borderline-zombie” fog when I see it. But it is a WEIRD looking word. It just never looks right to me. Sometimes I see it as it’s spelled and think it’s weird, other times I see it as SNOZOE or NOSOZE and don’t think it looks any better.
6.) I wrote a scathing email last year to the makers of Starburst asking them WHY oh WHY did they discontinue the sour flavors. I told them that I was angry now because they put 2 sour flavors in a pack with 2 nasty ass sweet flavors. I never heard back from them. I really really like Sour Starburst.
7.) I buy all of my clothes from Wal*Mart or second hand shops. I don’t have the desire or the money to be a fashionista.
8.) My taste in music is so strange because I don’t like any one particular genre more than the other. I have Loretta Lynn right next to Lil’ Wayne on my iPod. And I can go listening from her to him seamlessly.
9.) I often hoard the money that I make. Not to be mean or keep anything from my family (we are well taken care of), but I fear the struggling and hardship that comes with not having enough of it. That’s how I started living my adult life and I never want to go back to it.
10.) There’s a part of my brain, waaay back in the back of my mind behind the logic and reasoning zones, that honestly, sincerely believes that a zombie apocalypse is completely possible. When I find myself thinking about it, I can’t decide if I’d rather try to fight it out with all the guns and badassery I can muster, or just shoot myself in the face and be done with it.
11.) Unlike a lot of wives/girlfriends I know, I am completely 100% okay with and even excited about being home by myself. Not that I don’t enjoy spending time with my guys, but because I enjoy the silence and the time I get to relax and reflect.
12.) I once started tracing my family tree on Ancestry.com, then stopped for two reasons. 1.) I didn’t want to pay $20 a month for the service and 2.) I was afraid of what I might find.
13.) On occasion, I have horribly vivid nightmares about being murdered for no particular reason. Always in a different way. Once I dreamed that someone came along next to me in my car at a gas station and shot me in the head. As I woke from the dream, I can remember feeling the sensation of blood rushing in the back of my head and the shot ringing in my ears. Once my mind pulled itself back into consciousness, those sounds and sensations faded away and I regained myself in the dark silence. It’s terrifying. I don’t know why it happens. It affects me weirdly for the entire next day.
14.) I only write in cursive if I’m writing a check. No real reasoning behind it.
15.) Every time I leave my house, I say a quick silent prayer to God asking him to watch over me, my loved ones, and our homes. To protect us, keep us safe, and watch over us always. I’m not overly religious, but I feel close to God when I do it.
16.) I rarely follow recipes when I cook, unless it’s something I’ve never ever made before. My mother taught me to be a “taste cook”. I eyeball ingredients, taste, add something, taste, add something, rinse and repeat until I get it just right. Most of the time I’m awesome at it.
17.) I’m horribly bad at math. It was always my weakest subject in school. My favorites were English and History. Guess that’s why I blog and watch History’s Mysteries instead of solving quadratic equations in my spare time.
18.) I never buy eggs. My parents have free range chickens that produce OODLES of eggs on a daily basis and they give them away to everyone they know.
19.) I rarely drink alcohol. Not that I’m against it (my husband is a loyal Miller Light guy). I just can’t drink very much without feeling sick. And hot and sweaty. Not that sexy.
20.) At times I feel like my flaws define me. Petty, vain, insignificant physical flaws that mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. I don’t wear tank tops because I have freckled shoulders and a few faded stretch marks. Stupid shit like that. I’m hoping one day when I’m old and quirky that I won’t put so much value into things like that anymore.
21.) In MY house, toilet paper and paper towels roll over, not under. EVER.
22.) I’ve, been, known, to, overuse, the, comma. But I try to keep this habit in check.
23.) Since being an adult and having my driver’s license, I’ve only pumped gas one time. That’s it. We’re a one car family and that’s just something my husband has always conveniently done. The one time I did, I was driving my mom’s car to the grocery and absolutely could NOT make it home without getting gas. I almost panicked because it felt like everyone was watching me fumble around with the thing like an idiot. It sucked and I almost cried.
24.) As a child I took piano lessons, but not for very long. A year or 2 at the most. Now, I love the soothing sound of piano so much that I wish I had kept doing it. In my defense, my teacher was an eccentric old woman who gave lessons in a little windowless room in the back of a music store. She was nice, but I don’t think the material was stimulating enough to keep me interested. I want so badly to pick it up again and learn my own way. I have the potential. I just don’t think I have the patience.
25.) I’ve never changed a flat tire or had monkey sex with a gorilla.
WHEW. That was a tough one. But I DID IT.
I now tag these lovely people and I can’t wait to read their lists, should they decide to indulge me! Can they top my Freddy Kruegerish nightmares and lack of hot gorilla action? We soon shall see.
Carma @ Carmasez
Nicole @ Nicolisode.com
Melissa @ Melography
Catie @ Catielove.org
Erin @ Caotica and
Kasie @ KasiePea.me
