As I was growing up, it never occurred to me that my family-life
was different. I didn't think much about it, because it just was. My life.
It just was.
My mother and her family have been in America since the 1700's
from the state- Ohio. She has a large family. But, it was mostly
matriarchal.
My father though, is an immigrant. He arrived in America with
his mother when he was 12. Not knowing English very well, he
would read the comics section of the newspaper and had learned
English in about six months.
When my mother got pregnant, she was only sixteen and my
father nineteen. They married. Fifteen months after I was born, my
brother was born.
We had a decent homelife for most of my childhood. My father
was there with my mother raising my brother and I on their own.
Then, when I was ten, my babcia (grandmother) passed on. My
father was only 28. Here in the United States, still with just his
mother, now finding himself an orphan.
I am sure he has family somewhere, but they never came forward
after my babcia passed away. Even now, after 35 years, he lives
alone. Saddened by his lonely existence. No family but my brother
and I and his grandchildren.
I am told that he was born in a Russian concentration camp in
Siberia. When he was six, there was said to be an arrangement where
he and my babcia were allowed to leave, but not his father. He had to stay
behind.
From there(Russia), my father and babcia went to Poland. They
spent six years there as well.
My father says that his mother's parents were French Ambassadors
to Poland, before the second world war. That is all I know about her
family.
During world war II, my babcia was married to a Polish lieutenant.
They pulled them both from their home, shot her husband dead on the
front porch and shipped her off to Siberia.
I don't know much about my father's family and when my babcia died,
there was no one. No one came forward to help or comfort my father.
To this day, the only family I have known from my father is his mother.
To this day, 35 years and counting, no one has claimed my father as
family.
My mother left him four years after my babcia died. I dont know.
I dont know why they broke up. But, they did.
My father had no one to lean on. No family from his mom, no family
from his dad. And only his wife and children to keep him company.
Now that is lonely. But, he never complained. Never felt sorry for
himself.
Last Christmas I cried for his loneliness. "Where are they?!!" "Why?!!"
Why would they leave him like that?
And, I cry for my father now... Why? Where?
I will probably cry every Christmas, for my father must really feel
lonely. But, he'll never show it. That is just his way.