My dad was born outside Brussels and grew up in the area. His mother and stepfather live in Brussels and are known by all (it's a town of around a thousand people, give or take in any census year) as upstanding citizens.
My dad is a bit of a black sheep. When his mother married his stepfather, things were fine until my first uncle was born, at which point my dad might have vanished and not been missed. As a result he grew up very stubbornly independent. He loves his mom and stepfather but hasn't always liked them very much. He refused their financial help when it came time to go to college (and so never finished), then lied about his age and entered the navy.
He was in the navy when he met my mom and fell hard for her.
My mom was born ninth of ten kids in small-town Newfoundland (Windsor, which is now part of Grand Falls-Windsor). Her mother was second- or third-gen Canadian; her father was an Irish immigrant. Her mom died at the tender age of fifty-two, when my mom was just ten years old. She stayed with older siblings until she was old enough to work and support herself. She moved from Newfoundland to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and there she met a nice boy who knocked her up and fled. I was not quite two years old when my mom met my dad.
My dad, as I said, fell hard for my mom and campaigned hard for her heart. He is also a huge sucker for little girls, and as a two-year-old I guess I was pretty adorable.
It wasn't long before my parents were married by my dad's ship's chaplain - my dad in uniform and my mom in a lovely blue gown. There's a photo of them on that day but I don't have it; shall wangle it from the maternal unit when I can.
My dad's mother was, to say the least, unimpressed. She perceived my mother and me very negatively (just imagine--a Newfoundlander who already had a child! Scandalous!) and that has never changed. She speaks civilly to us, but if we died I think she'd be happy.
So in grade seven I transferred to school in Brussels. My teacher was close with my dad's mother and she disliked me from the first day. She insisted on shortening my name (something I hate), and she made fun of any mistakes I made in class. Needless to say, I didn't like her much either. I ended up having her as my teacher for two years. Two. Very. Long. Years.
At one point in either grade seven or eight (it's all a blur) we were asked to create family trees, tracing our family lines as far back as we could. I should mention here that all my life--even now--I've been a fabulous procrastinator. I work best when faced with short deadlines. Naturally, I left this particular project to the last minute, and the night before I had to hand it in I whipped something up. My mom's side of the family I knew fairly well, so I went back a generation or two. My dad's side, however, I didn't know. Rather than ask my dad or his mother, I made stuff up. In my wonderfully creative version of life, my dad's family were descended from cutthroats and pirates.
I handed it in without a second thought; one more project complete.
My mother got a phone call that week from my teacher, who wanted to schedule a meeting. She was angry--genuinely angry--that I had dared to make up such nonsense about such a fine upstanding family. My mother tried to keep a straight face in the wake of this righteous rage, but she failed once she was handed the project as proof of my shocking disrespect. My teacher never got over it. My mother was plainly the cause of my inability to integrate into decent society.
As I mentioned before, my maternal grandfather was an Irish immigrant. In my little family history, as it turns out, I hadn't gone back far enough. On that side of the family, my antecedents had in fact taken to piracy in reaction to English enslavement. This discovery tickled me beyond belief and is my excuse for every rebellious thing I do: it's genetic!
That said, I still don't regret applying the piracy to the other side of the family. They deserve it.
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