4. Growing Up Catholic Part 2…

We were all still living the in Gramp’s apartment building in the Burnside neighborhood. Dad was only coming home about twice a year now. He came home one summer and told mom he was being reassigned and he wanted us to come with him. He was being assigned to Germany for five years. He asked mom please come live with him in Germany. He said with his rank and all of his years of service that we could live like royalty. We wouldn’t have to live on post and we could have a house in town. He said that he wanted this more than anything in the world. Mom’s answer to his pleading was a loud, resounding NO. She had  thousand excuses…who will take care of my parents? I don’t know anyone in Germany. I don’t know how to speak the language! What will I do there? Where can we send our child to school? What will happen if my parents need me? When dad left after that furlough, it was the last time I saw him…

Gramps was a racist. In his opinion, the only people of worth in the world were people from Hungary, everyone else was inferior. And he had a pet name for everyone…spics, chinks, wops, polacks, dagos, kikes, taco benders, niggers, greasers the list was endless. I found this very interesting for a man who came to the USA in the 1900s. When he had risen to such a lofty position in society? The next year, gramps decided to sell the apartment building and we all moved into a smaller house on the near southwest side. Why? Because a black family had moved into the neighborhood. We moved a lot over the next few years…

When I was six, I broke my Mother’s heart again when I asked her for an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas.  I got a toy train instead. She was bound and determined to make me want to be a boy even if she killed me in the process. Every time she caught me in her closet, smelling her perfume, cleaning the bathroom, trying her lipstick, trying to cook, she would fly into a rage and grab whatever was close and beat me with it. The whole time she was hitting me she was screaming things like, “see what you made me do?”, “why are you so stupid?”, “I hate you”. I apologized a lot as kid because I knew (probably from being told all the time) that whatever was happening was my fault. My standard defensive position was duck, cover and apologize for whatever I had done…

It seemed to me that no matter what I was doing or how hard I tried, it was never quite good enough for my mom. I think the only time I made her proud during those years is went I had my first Holy Communion.

And in case you wondered, I was the one that tried to scratch out my face on the first communion photo. That kid didn’t look like the girl who lived in my heart.

But I digress…