Before I was born, “It was a very good year. It was a very good year for small town girls [mother] and soft summer nights” [dad got her pregnant in October]. Mom and Dad hid the pregnancy from everyone by getting married in November, 1947, before it became obvious she was with child [a big scandal back then]. Immediately after, they moved from Minnesota to Lawndale, California.
After 8 months of pregnant pauses, I was born on the 9th of June 1948, another very good year for small little boys just entering the world. My mother’s sister told me about 40 years later, that I was supposed to be half of a set of twins, but sometime during the 8 months prior to my birth, the other half was spontaneously aborted. No one knew why, but I do. The first reason was two in the womb is very crowded and there was no privacy. That fact combined with the second reason ("The Other" was a straight homophobic bully) was justification for me to kick him out of my wombicile. Some may call this fratricide but I call it interior remodeling. Thus, I was born an only child. So like Harry Potter, I was the boy who lived.
The next seven years passed quickly. Mother reported all my shenanigans to my dad who was the disciplinarian in their relationship. I got lots of spankings as I was rather headstrong. So, after stresses became too much for them to handle, my parents decided to divorce in 1955 without telling me or me being aware of the impending disaster to be fall me. At the beginning of the summer of 1956 just before my 8th birthday, I was sent to live with my mother’s parents on their farm in central Minnesota. In the summer of 1957 I turned 9 and my mother came to Minnesota to attend the wedding of her sister. I thought she would take me back home to California but she would not/could not. In December at Christmas vacation from school, at age 9 ½ my father came to Minnesota for one week during Christmas and New Year’s Day. The night before he left, without me, he told me of the divorce, that mom had remarried, was pregnant with twins due to be born any day now, and I had a step-brother age 14 ½. In May, 1958, Mom and my step-father brought the twins to Minnesota to show off to my grandparents and to finally bring me back to California in a new home and family situation.
My step-brother, Gene, and I got along really well considering the difference in ages. We could talk and play together well enough. We never argued or fought. We took turns caring for the twin babies as they grew until he had to go into the Navy. He was on the USS Ticonderoga, the aircraft carrier involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident which propelled President Johnson into escalating the Vietnam (undeclared) War.
Gene survived the Navy experience and led a normal life. He married and fathered a daughter. He worked hard, unlike me, and passed away about 5-years ago.
The twins also grew and we talked, played, and had fun together. I loved them a lot. They both grew and prospered in the normal ways. Dale also went into the Navy and survived and eventually married a woman who had four nearly grown teen and a preteen girls. He never had children of his own. He passed away four years ago. Gale is still alive and living in her home in South Lake Tahoe. She had two children who spawned several kids of their own and she now has about 10 grandchildren. All of my siblings and I went to school at South Lake Tahoe. (Gene for 4-years of high school, me from 5th grade to first year of college, Dale and Gale from K-12th grades.)
Of course my children and grandchildren are all siblings to each other respectively. One daughter is currently working for McDonald’s at their headquarters in central Chicago in the Computer Security Department for a 6-figure salary. The next daughter is working for a law firm in the Denver Tech Center area. My son is married and working somewhere in New York but lives in New Jersey. He has two children, a boy and a girl. My youngest daughter is in the Air Force in Tucson, Arizona. She also is married and has four children, three girls and one boy. All of my children are very close and are frequently communicating with each other. Family life doesn’t get much better than that.
© 10 December 2018
I was
born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in
Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years
old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County,
Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.
When united with my mother
and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at
South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in
the summer of 2010. I find writing
these memories to be therapeutic.
My story blog is: TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com
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