Day 2: Let’s start at the beginning…
If you are a Southern in this wonderful country of ours, you will understand when I say that there are some things you just don’t talk about. Most people know about them, but you still don’t talk about them…at least not publicly. Some think that is ridiculous, if not hypocritical, but it is what it is down South, especially in the 50’s and 60’s. You just sort of grow up knowing the rules and you abide by them.
I have dealt with the feeling of rejection my entire life. I thought it was my father’s disapproval or disappointment in me as his son. It wasn’t until I was in my sixties that I found out the “dirty little secret” that everyone but me seem to know.
My father had gotten my mother pregnant in college before they were married. I doubt if he would have married my mother, but his father was, a Methodist Clergyman, so he made him do it with some help from my mother’s family as well…it was the decent thing to do right?
My father was a handsome, very intelligent, ladies’ man and I’m sure the LAST thing he wanted was to get married when he still had two more years of college to play around. My mother, one of nine children from rural North Carolina, was also very intelligent and from a family where both parents had gone to college, even back then, and all her siblings would go to college. Now, she had to drop out.
She couldn’t go back to her tiny hometown…too much scandal. She couldn’t stay in college, so the only place to go was with my father’s parents who were not very pleased with the situation that their “golden boy” had gotten himself into.
So why all this background? From all I know and all I’ve studied, I’m pretty sure I felt like and believe subconsciously, that no one really wanted me because I was an unexpected, and unwanted pregnancy. And why not? My pending arrival had messed up my mother’s plans, my father’s plans, and both my grandparent’s plans of what life should be like. I don’t think it was intentional, but I am convinced that I felt that rejection in utero before I even showed up. There is just too much evidence nowadays to assume anything else. But on July 23, 1950, there I was showing up in the world.
Now, I did have two things going for me. First, I was a male…which is a big deal in the South. Secondly, I was the first grandson on both sides of the family and again down South, that’s a big deal. I also must have been cute as the dickens, as they say down South, because my parents were now married, and all things were forgiven…at least by most. But I still dealt with that deep feeling of rejection, for most of my life. I eventually turned it into fuel to help me rise above everything, but that’s a story for another time.
Just like the picture here of a tree somehow coming to life out of solid rock…life will find a way to make it happen.
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