First, a little family history:
My father married quite young, as you are often wont to do in small towns in Ohio in the late 1960's, to his high school sweetheart and had two kids. The first of them grew up to be a doctor, have a nice little family and a big house in a planned development. I hear her boys are on their way to be in the little league world series or something. The second child, who carries my father's complete name without a "Jr." attached to it, turned out to be something else.
My half-brother, Tom, will be 41 or 42 this month. So far, his list of accomplishments include: three children born out of wedlock, an intense familiarity with the interior of jail cells in Portage and Summit counties, Ohio, as well as other unknown jails, a string of drug habits, and a self-righteous attitude. He has managed to piss off nearly everyone he's been close to and stolen from just about all of them. He has a strong sense of entitlement and self-pride, but so far has never held a job for more than a year and generally has nothing to show for his strong self image. Oh, and he's got a RAP sheet a mile long, littered mostly with domestic violence and driving while intoxicated arrests.
I can't say that he's totally to blame for his shortcomings. He had a kind of shit upbringing. His parents divorced when he was very young. As he had his father's complete name, he was a reminder of the pain and disaster of the divorce, so his mother took a lot of her frustration out on him. Additionally, it appeared that his father wanted little to do with him. Whether this was because his father really didn't want to spend time with his former family, or was too busy bringing up the new one, or Tom's mother playing the game of keeping Tom from his father's visits and telling Tom that, in fact, his father hated him, I don't know. But I bet it was a little bit of all of those. So he was the subject of physical and mental abuse and didn't have many outlets. He turned to crime and drugs at an early age and never turned back.
When I was about 12, he started dating Odessa, a girl who appeared to have her shit together well enough to keep Tom in line. For all appearances, he was pretty stable and caring, and when they got pregnant, he really looked like he'd started to figure it out. I look back on the pictures from that time, and I can see the hallmarks of drug use in his face, but I don't remember him being much of a problem then. Odessa gave birth to Sidney Corinne Diroll on my sister's 17th birthday. I remember her disappointment! I got home from school before she did and saw the news, posted on the refrigerator. My sister was expecting a nice birthday celebration, as everything had been promised, and then, well, THIS happened. It was hard to be upset--it's not like anyone had much control over such things, and really, it's hard to hate a baby. She got over it.
Things fell apart with Tom and Odessa after that. Tom couldn't deal with the stresses of fatherhood and started on the path of what is now a total cliche. He drank and did drugs and disappeared for days, argued over who knows what, and eventually got arrested for DV and public intox among other things. I think Sidney was about three when Odessa finally got rid of him. Tom has failed to pay child support for, well, ever. She eventually got her life back on track and married a guy, but I guess that didn't work out so well. She raised Sidney more or less by herself and the two of them have a very strong bond, as you would expect.
Before I go much further, I'd like to point out, for the record, that Tom has repeated the exact same pattern with two other women, fathering children he doesn't support, abusing and running around on them, getting into drugs and disappearing. I remember one summer where I had--at the behest of my father--hired my brother to work at the t-shirt shop (again), and we brought in Sidney as summer help so she could earn money for a car. So she must have been 15. Tom was staying with babymama number 2 that year, whom he had reconciled with recently, and their son, who has some pretty severe autism and developmental disorders. He was driving Sidney to and from work and she was staying with them for the summer. Things seemed to be going pretty well. Then, one day, they didn't show up for work. We got a call from Sidney saying that she didn't know where her dad was, and could someone come and pick her up? So we did.
Tom apparently took Sidney to their house, and while she was in the bathroom he said that he was going to go to the store to get cigarettes or something. He didn't come back. The girlfriend worked a later shift, and didn't get home for a few more hours. When she did, she brought a big bag of take-out for what was supposed to be a fun take-out dinner at home. It was a lot more like chewing in silence while they all wondered if Tom would ever come home.
He didn't. At least, not for about a week. From some of his friends, we discovered that he'd been staying at "The Heroin House," the common drug den not far from the college campus. It was where the townies went to get high. He was caught by police for driving erratically, and upon questioning he said that he was "testing out the new brakes on his car." I was pleased because I got to fire him (again) and he got shipped off to jail (again) and was out of everyone's hair. But I could see that something was definitely broken for Sidney and it wasn't getting fixed.
Sidney has had a somewhat rough go of it, herself, but she seems to be managing. I know how hard it is to grow up and pretend that your family life isn't pure chaos. I know what it's like to have burdens thrown on you that you didn't expect. I know what it's like to have daddy issues. But I don't know what it's like to be pregnant at 17, so I can't really judge her on her life so far. I don't know Sid that well, only from my limited interactions with her over the last few years and now through Facebook. But is 20 now, has a job and an apartment, and she appears to be taking pretty good care of her little boy. Which is a hell of a lot better than her father ever did.
So, Independence Day means a lot to me, and I hope, for Sidney. I think she's already got the gist of it. After all, on her Facebook page, she lists her family thus:
Addendum: My brother keeps trying to friend me on Facebook and it drives me nuts. I've ignored him more than half a dozen times.
ReplyDelete