I moved to Los Angeles, California right after graduation from High School. I moved in with my real dad. All my life I had wanted to be close to him, get to know him better and build a relationship with him. After all, he was my father and up until moving to California, and moving in with him and my step mother, I really had know idea what kind of man he really was. He had moved to Los Angeles about ten years prior to find better work and create a better life for him and his wife. He left all he knew and his family and us two kids behind, my sister and I. We were very upset about this because I knew that we were not going to see him at all anymore. He promised that he would come back up for holidays, but that was one of his, or should I say, another one of his broken lies to my sister and I. There were many broken promises with him and many disappointments that came along as well.
A little bit of a background with my father I and the relationship that is or is not that makes us father and son. He married my mother when they were just seventeen and eighteen years old, and my mother was eighteen. Ironically, the two of them actually grew up within a mile of each other and did not know it until they met after high school. They fell in love and got married and soon after, had me in 1971 and then my sister a year and a half later in 1972. My dad had a sister himself and it was only the two of them and my grandparents. My dad's mother is the niece of one of the most notorious mobsters of our time, Don Vito Genovese. He was my Great, Great Uncle and head of the Gambino family back in the 1930's and 1950's. I love my family's history. It is so fascinating to belong to such a part of our Nation's history.
Anyway, my father and I have always had a rocky relationship. It started back when I was a child, when I was old enough to understand when my feelings were being hurt and when I was also old enough to realize when I was being disappointed and let down by the things he would do. My parents divorced soon after my mother had my sister, maybe a year or so after. They had been having problems for some time leading up to the divorce, including all the violence and my dad cheating on her. My dad had a very bad temper that my mother would always blame it on him being Italian, and that all us Italians are hot headed and have bad tempers. Well, it's not completely true. Believe it or not, I think I do remember some of my parents fights, and my dad going through the house, kicking holes in the wall's and beating on my mother. My mother told me later in life that he would hit her while she was pregnant with me and even kicked her in the stomach while being five or six months pregnant with me.
Time went on and as we got older, my sister and I would spend weekends with my dad and his new wife. We were still very young, no more than five years old. I remember dad taking us to the lake with him and his second wife and her kids. She had been ten years old than he and had already three kids with her prior husband. All of kids were pretty much around the same age so it was so much to go spend the weekend with my dad them especially during the summer. My dad had bought a boat and would take all of us camping and I loved going in the boat. I remember driving in his huge 1967 Chrysler Newport convertible with the huge boat behind it. I loved that car. It was so huge and was cherry red and was bigger than some of the biggest Cadillac's back then. I remember being so proud to be with him. I really felt that he loved us back then as well. When I look at the photos of us with him when we were little, it looks like he really cared and we had a lot of fun together.
My dad and his wife ended up getting divorced too, and the stories my mom would here from her about my dad beating her children because they got bad grades was just horrific to me and at the time I did not believe it. I had a hard time believing all the stories, or so I thought were stories at the time, until I was old enough to experience his true personality when I moved to Los Angeles and lived with him. My dad remarried soon after that divorce and started a new job and became restaurant manager of two of the most famous restaurants in Spokane and busiest. That is where he met his third wife and soon married her. I really like her and as well as the one before. They really took to my sister and I. We were great kids and well behaved and mannered. My dad started to do very well for himself and bought a new house on the north side of town and it was one of those very old, very large homes that were built in the late 1890's to early 1900's. He bought a brand new corvette, cherry red again of course and I loved that car and again, use to love to ride in it, especially when the top's were off of it. I love it when he would come and get my sister and I for the weekend and my cousin's were at my house visiting and I would show off that my dad had this amazing bright red t-top corvette. He was a fan of the color red, as I am too.
My disappointments started with the marriage of my dad and his third wife. My sister and I had been so excited to go to the wedding. My mom even went out and got the both of us new outfit's for the wedding because we were going to be in the wedding. I was the ring bearer and my sister was the flower girl. We were all ready to be picked up for the wedding early in the morning, looking so very cute in our clothes. We waited and we waited all day for him to come and get us. I was sat on our couch, staring outside of our living room window, hoping that he would be coming up the street anytime. I sat there on that couch for six hours. He never showed or called to let us know that he was not coming. I believe I was only six or seven years of age at the time and I was completely devastated by this. I was looking forward, not only to be able to see my dad, but to also be a part of his wedding for him and his new wife. A couple of days later he came over to explain, or make an excuse I now see it as, why he never came. He told us that he did not want us be upset with him getting married to someone new. We had know about this wedding for weeks, so for him to say that just pissed me off and my mom was so mad at him for that. It was one of many times he would do this to us. He always made promises to me and never kept them at all, any one of them. My mom felt so bad and tried to keep her opinions to herself so that we would not build up a hatred toward him, and I give my mom so much credit for that, because she could not stand what he was doing to us kids.
He was always late with the child support and would always complain about it every month when he would send my mom the check, the $250 for the two of us! He had a lot of money and was doing very well and could not take the extra to spend on his own kids, not for Christmas, or our birthdays. We were lucky if we got a card. So many promises, so many opportunities to be with his kids, to enjoy the time with us. To be able to watch us grow up and just to be a dad, a father. He was never around in that respect. I sometimes think he regretted having us by some of his actions toward us. Even being divorced from my dad for several years at this point, my mom would sometimes be in tears because of the pain she would see us go through.
The last time I believed in one of his promises was a weekend he wanted to take us horse back riding. He had promised the weekend before that he would pick us up the following and we would go riding because his boss had a ranch with horses and he said that he could use the ranch anytime my dad wanted. So, being as young as we were, I could NOT wait to go horse back riding. Good grief, it was like it was Christmas and I could not wait to open all my presents. That is how excited I was. The weekend finally came and I was all ready to go and packed the night before because he had said that he would be picking us up very early on Saturday morning to get us and to go riding. I don't think I slept the entire night! I was ready to go ... and once again, as like the wedding incident, I sat in on the couch for a few hours staring outside the front living room window waiting for him. I finally went out to the sidewalk curb and sat down by the street and waited for the rest of the entire day. I finally had to go into the house because my mom wanted me to come in. I got up, turned and walked toward my mom as she was standing on the front porch watching me walk up to her with my head and shoulder's slumped down and I was crying and all she could do was just embrace me tightly and say that she was so sorry, again. I went up to my room without even eating dinner and cried the rest of the night.
No comments:
Post a Comment