Saturday, April 2, 2011

Chapter Three - The Birth Announcement

In the fall of 1968, my mom found out that she was pregnant with my sister.   This pregnancy was the start of the vicious and violent behavior that would be displayed by my dad towards my mom and eventually it would begin to trickle down to my brother and myself.  We had a few glimpses of his temper and cruelty but these behaviors were becoming more frequent and more brutal.  As I look at the birth announcement letting the world know that my sweet baby sister, Katie was born on June 11, 1969, I felt tears forming  in my eyes as I began to think back on the days of my mom's pregnancy and how mean my dad was to her.  How she made it through that pregnancy will always be a mystery to me.  She, not only continued to work, she was raising my brother and I, and did everything within her powers to try to keep herself and her children from being hurt either emotionally or physically by the man that she had once seen as her hero.  I think she truly began to believe that hero's are found in movies and other people's lives but realized that her new husband was not a hero.   He was a horrible man who was filled with hate and this profound hate would spill over into our lives for years to come.  The hidden secrets of my family will begin to become more apparent in this chapter but no one in the outside world would have a clue.  This  meant that we had to not only try and survive while at home, we also had to work that much harder at pretending that our lives were perfect.  How we pulled this off, I will never understand but boy were we convincing.

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