My Father - Part I

Yesterday I barely scratched the surface of a subject that is pretty remarkable in my life. I don't mean "remarkable" as in wonderful. I mean "remarkable" is in outlandish, crazy, unbelievable and so on.

I'm not an author or a writer so my telling of this subject may be unorganized and sporadic but I'll do my best. I'm not writing it for theraputic reasons and I'm not trying to release hidden aggressions or anything like that. I'm simply telling my story. I know I'm screwed up. I know why I'm screwed up and I still love and miss my father despite the fact that he is the very reason I am screwed up. I'm not really angry, I'm just left with a million unanswered questions that I assume will only be answered when I see my dad again, someday.

Maybe in telling this story you will find a greater appreciation for your parents. Maybe you will see that your disfunctional family isn't really that disfunctional compared to mine. Maybe you will finally understand why I am the way I am. Who knows what you will get out of this if anything. Maybe you will just shake your head and say "what the fuck" over and over again. I find myself doing that a lot anyway.

I'm an open book. Too open. I bare my heart and soul as if it's show and tell time in class. I don't hide many things. So, I have never kept the subject of my crazy father under wraps. The only reason I wouldn't say anything is because it wasn't the right time to bring it up. But, if the subject of my ethnicity or childhood ever came up in conversation, the person asking would get an abridged version of the subject or I would hit some highlights, enough to wet their appetite, and then say "Someday I'll tell you everything".

"Crazy father" is quite a derogotory term for my dad. When I speak it the guilt consumes me immediately. But I know he's up in Heaven nodding in agreement, smiling and probably saying "You'll have your answers someday honey.... I know it seemed I was crazy... it's ok". I don't say "crazy father" to be disrespectful to my dad. I say it because the entire story IS crazy and it's the only term I can come up with. Eccentric doesn't really apply, loony is too much and after that, I'm out of dictionary terms. I settled on "crazy".

I can tell you stories, situations, factual data and events that happened. But I have no answers for them. Only questions. Even though I am left with questions that no one seems to be able to answer, I'm not angry. Just confused.

In the summer of 1997 my whole world was turned upside down. I was 21 years old and was basically told that my dad was not who he said he was and subsequently everything I knew was a lie. Even my own ethnicity. I was raised believing that my father was Italian and his parents emmigrated over to the U.S from Italy. My mother was a hodge-podge of Irish and Scottish and northern European descents so I was raised thinking I was Irish/Italian. I even had my father's "Italian" last name. Ha. That was not really his last name.

The mystery and confusion surrounding my father started well before I was born. His place of birth, date of birth, his childhood, his parents and everything surrounding those subjects was a lie. They aren't all necessarily far from the truth, but they were none-the-less lies. I was able to find out his true place of birth and I know who is real mother was, but that is as far as I can get. His mother disowned my father and subsequently disowned his offspring. She apparently said she wanted NOTHING to do with my father or his children, ever. So getting answers from her was futile and she has since passed away anyway. She might have been the only person to give me any answers. The reason she disowned my father is still a mystery as well. But it would have to be pretty bad to disown your own son and his future kids, don't you think?

My father claims to have joined the Navy at 17. That would explain the birthdate confusion. If he joined at 17, like he claimed to have and had to lie about his age, then falsifying his birthdate makes sense. I have seen records with one date on it and records with another date. I still have no clue which one is correct and furthmore I don't know what his real birth year was and therefore don't know how old he really was when he passed away.

He always told us that he was assigned to submarine duty and got out after his 4 years was up. After he died I found out that he was in for a bit longer and was given a psyche discharge (or whatever they call mental health discharges). Then, sometime in his young adult life he changed his last name. I have no idea when or why but it was changed. I have a picture of him as a child with one last name on the back and yet I was raised with a different name. His own family doesn't even know why he changed it. Furthermore, after my dad died and I confronted a few of his family members about it (only two cousins and an aunt and uncle of my father's that he actually remained close to, the rest of his family was never in our lives, he didn't speak to anyone) and they had no idea about any of this. They didn't know he claimed to be Italian (an my father most certainly looked the part, too), they didn't know that was how he raised us, they didn't know when/why he changed his last name or why he lied about his birth place and parents.

As I sat there talking with them one day, we compared stories. I told them things my dad had told me while growing up and they would tell me similar stories that he had told them. Everything was paralell but my father was telling us one side of the story from one angle and yet his family would get the same story, only from a different angle. It was an insane conversation and only left us all with more questions. The only answer I got, and still can't be 100% about, is that my father wasn't Italian. His parents or at least his mother was Czech. The country of Czecholslovakia has since fallen apart and is now the Czech Republic (how symbolic and paralell to my own life, eh) and Slovakia so I really have no idea what I am. I just say, for statisitical purposes that I'm Czech and a pot purri of pasty eurpoeans.

My maiden last name, my ethnicity, my father's life and my "legacy", if you will, is all in question and what I used to know isn't what it is. What do I tell my children? What do I say about their grandfather? What do I tell them they are? "Boys, you are half mexican and half I don't have a fucking clue?" That doesn't roll off the tongue very well.

This is just the beginning. I will go on with the story later.