Sunday, September 01, 2013

Family Baggage/for my Son and Daughter

When I was 14, my boyfriend at Marian Catholic High School functions was a varsity fullback by the name Isaac Diaz. He was cool, suave, and popular with everyone except my father, who saw me give him a hug after playing a winning game. Dad caught me alone in the garage later that afternoon, and gave me an ultimatum: If he ever saw me hanging around with another Spic, he said he was gonna cut me up in little pieces and bury me in the backyard. And I believed him. He didn’t know it then, and still doesn't now, that he’s the one responsible for switching on my social conscience concerning racism, sexism, and Catholic bigotry. He was also the reason that I didn’t get to go to the Senior Prom when I was a Junior, because the only guy who asked me was the VERY exotic foreign exchange student from Brazil, Sergio something, who looked Portuguese but would pass as a spic to my father, so I didn’t even ask if I could go. He never caught us though, on our morning walks to the pomegranate tree on the next block, for a snack before classes started. I did manage to go to the Homecoming dance the next year and meet up with my buddy/friend Frank Concha, who was a Philipino who looked black, and danced like one. Thank goodness I found your Dad on the beach that summer before my Senior year, so I had a ride to my Prom in his white ’58 T-bird with a black landau roof, and power windows, only to be called swab-bait by my classmates. Your Dad proposed to me in that car, and that’s how I got as far away from my father as I could get. We did spend a year getting me acquainted with the Williams family, and getting me pregnant in Apollo,Pa. before we drove back to Calif. for a job at North Island NB, in Coronado, in a ‘62 Rambler that we had to trade-in for a yellow ’67 Mustang, because preggies me couldn't fit behind the wheel of the Pennsylvania car. After Boo was born I flew with you kids back to PA, and your Dad followed with Blossom,the cat, in a U-haul, towing a new 71 Vega station wagon that we bought to haul an early Sears minibike, but you know the rest of THAT story. Thought you might like to know that yer Mom had California car lust, and that I got married for that T-bird, which your Dad bought from one of my bridesmaid’s father, and he bought me the Mustang for having his baby, you. I didn’t like the minibike, but he’d gotten that for being a daddy to his Mother’s first girl. Anyhoo…back to the social conscience background. I heard about NOW on the telly when Title 9 was passed to promise equal funding for girl’s sports programs in schools, and went to a meeting in E.Washington, and fell in love at first sight with Gray. She was the first woman I ever loved, so she was my introduction to gay rights, even tho neither she nor I were gay, but I understood that issue too, and could relate to it. (when I told my father that I might wanna join the Navy and be a pharmacist to start medical training to become a veterinarian after discharge, he scotched the only idea I’d come up with in HS, because of the ‘lesbian threat’ in the Waves…he made it clear that I was being raised to marry and have catholic grandbabies. (You were so baptized, by the way.) Is it any wonder I became so radical as to take off on my own when Becky got to first grade, to join the Revolution, and change the World? Can you even imagine how painful it is for a woman with my IQ, to be raised and surrounded by people only close to average? I was so close to suicide by the time I left, that being alone was the least of my fears. And I’d bet that you hurt so bad, you never prayed for my safety. Any questions?