We all start life in different family structures, both good and bad. We must realize that not all bad people are wrong all the time, as no one is always good. My father was an inventor but not one that made money. His moral compass was never installed. His rages would follow defeats or when back against the wall trying to provide for a wife and seven kids. I don’t remember the first time my father struck my mother, but I remember the fear that took over my entire mind and body. I did nothing but cry and go to my room. My mother told me many years after that this was a turning point for me; after that, at eight years old, I first became very vocal and shortly after started fighting my father back. Some women I have noticed don’t understand that boys have an inborn protection mode and, with me, wanted my mother’s love and safety. My father struck me so hard that nowadays, he would have gone to prison. I went to school telling a lie that you should see the other guy.

As an eight years old boy with no idea what normal was, I sensed my father’s hitting my mother was more vocal when I was by her side and less physical; it was as if he admired my courage to protect my mother and didn’t want to hit me. When drinking, this didn’t matter or help. The rage inside him was like a burning inferno, eyes glazed over with pure evil. As the oldest of seven first kids(my mother,he had more kids another woman), Courage wasn’t there every day and every event, but looking back, I wonder where it came from. My bewilderment even today is after my mother’s beating, they would be lovey-dovey on the couch; it drove me insane.

Most people that have not grown up in this environment don’t realize kids have no idea that it isn’t normal. My father’s greatest saying was we would be rich by Christmas with his next invention. Spending all his money, including money to eat, live and dress his seven kids for school, was spent on the dream of becoming rich by Christmas. Courage at school was you realized that your clothes and shoes didn’t match my clothes and shoes. In a boy’s world, you have two choices to take the abuse or attack and make the words hurt. I chose the latter. Courage again saves you both in ridicule and social standings. Some times the very boy I would fight would ask would I take some old clothes his mother was trying to give away.

Later in life, with Father married another woman they had three kids together , his violence and drinking erupted against his new wife, as they were spending a few days at our house, and his getting a beating this time from me equaled or surpassed his giving to other women. I often hear words that fighting accomplishes nothing, this untrue, they are a part of a boys and man’s world as much as breathing air.

These few lines and words are only a very small part of years growing up in love and hell,and not mine alone, my brothers and sisters had their on tales and adventures with our father, in later years,was not as violent.

Note; my wife of 53 years has witnessed the rage of my father in her husband’s eyes and action protecting family. ( we all have rage, it is how we control it ,that matters)