The world I entered could only have been written for a morning soap opera. My mother was married to an Iranian, but living with (and engaged to) my birth father. Sometime after she was expecting me, her husband, in Iran said he wanted her back, and would accept me as his own, but she refused. She didn't want to move to Iran in the mid-1970s, I think that was very smart on her part. So, her husband in an attempt to get money from his parents, burned down their house, and trapped himself inside, accidentally killing himself.
When I was four months old, my mother returned to CA with me, because (I found out 30 years later) my birth father dropped me and she was scared. I think there may have been more to the story than that, because she did leave in a hurry and she was afraid he would show up on our doorstep one day, wanting me (never happened, I never did meet him, and have no idea if he ever wanted to know me)
I don't know if it was because I am 1/2 Puerto Rican, or if it was because I was born out of wedlock (that was still frowned upon in the 1970s), but when my mother's father died, he left her a very small inheritance, he chose to never meet me (I think I was close to 10 when he died-suicide becaude of Post-Polio syndrome), and she felt like it was evidence of disowning her because of me.
My mother was a single mom until I was 12 years old. How she did it all amazes me still, even more with my life in it's current state. She She worked full-time, went to school part-time, didn't drive, so we had to walk everywhere, we attended church every time the doors were open and went to every event the church had, I was in Girl Scouts and she was one of the leaders, and some how there was still time to play with my friends, play games with her and visit friends and neighbors in their homes. Pretty amazing.
But she had as her highest desire a dad for me and a husband for her. I managed to scare quite a few away, according to her, but one didn't scare off. In fact this December they will be married 29 years. They told me early in their dating that he was a convicted child molester. I had no idea what that meant. He said it meant he had hurt an 8 year old little girl, but he had served his time in jail, and he wouldn't do anything like that to me. And besides, he told me, I wouldn't let him do anything to me, right? That is how he worked with everyone he me. HE told them right away what he had done, then claimed he was sorry and wouldn't ever do that again. Well he did! for years, he had me frightened in to silence. Not because I was afraid he would kill me or himself as he threatened, but because I believed my mother loved him, and I didn't want to hurt her. Eventually she had the choice between keeping him in her life KNOWING he had done the things he had done to me, or having me and her grandchildren in her life... she has made her choice.
I had a few grandfather figures in my life who were good to me. Grandpa Hank, gave me his coffee when he didn't want it anymore, and Burger King was the place we went for lunch when my mother and grandmother went to play Bingo. Grandpa Cousin Bob (long story, but I knew him as Moe's Cousin, before my grandma married him), always took me on a "date" to the movies when they played Bingo. And the men at CBC, only two remain 25 years later, but they taught me to think and listen and helped me figure out what I really believe and why, and why it matters to know what you believe and why. The art of debate, and the beauty of banter with a dash of teasing, the best things the time spent with those men gave me.
But I never knew really what healthy love looked like. Oh, I have seen in in a few marriages over the years, and I had witnessed it as a teenager. But Those men who loved me in a right and proper and healthy way, I only saw for a few weeks a year, or a few minutes a week (at church between services). And when I moved to Oregon, it was almost like it was completely improper for me to speak to the men of the church, like I always had in California, it was strange.
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