I can only imagine what my mother---who had enough issues as it was when I was growing up (and never quite comprehended just what
she was doing wrong in enabling a wild-out younger brother at her older son's expense, among other things)---would have had to contend
with if my growing-up years were now and my father had still died when I was ten, as indeed he did (at age 39) in 1966 when I was ten.
And when my father was alive, I already had to deal with the nightmare of an ego-bruised father who believed a) his son should have known
at birth what has to be taught to a boy, and when I didn't the punishments were the most violently abusive; and, b) that it was acceptable
(as did my mother, unfortunately) to punish simple human mistakes that children invariably make even more violently than they did genuine misbehaviour
or disobedience. (I did manage to have fun when I was growing up [I've written of it elsewhere]---mostly when I was out of my own house.)
Then, again, figure this one if you will: It was my father who encouraged me musically (he got me my first super-cheap acoustic guitar a few
months before he died) while my mother thought music was a waste of time. (My mother never seemed able to let me know what she hoped I might
become, but she made no bones about what she thought I had no business trying to become.) But because they were so contradictory and abusive
otherwise (they wanted children in the worst way possible only to discover they had about as much patience for children when they did finally
have two sons as a piranha has at mealtime), I spent too many years trying to please ghosts who couldn't be pleased. Outside my home, I was as
close to normal as possible, but unfortunately my grandparents and my favourite aunt and uncle, God rest their souls in peace, weren't my
parents and their homes weren't mine. And---I also learned this the hard way---in those years, you didn't talk up about being abused, because
it was liable to get back to your parents and the consequences would not be pretty.
