Cornball Genetics

Mark's Granddad passed away this week, and maybe that's why I'm thinking about family and their role in our lives.

I often joke that being a cornball is in my genetics.  I feel like it's true because my dad's one, but he didn't have a big part in raising me.  So it seems more probable that being a cornball was just passed down-haha!

I remember when it hit me.  It was when we made that trip to Texas to see him.

Flora, me, and Lee

(March 2014)

Flora was about 7 months old, and I hadn't visited him there in Texas since I was a teenager.

I'm convinced he doesn't go anywhere without 

that bluetooth in his ear-haha!

There were things I was able to see then, that I couldn't have really seen when I was younger.  Not so much because those things weren't there, but because I was somewhere totally different that time around.

I wasn't told the dad who raised me wasn't my biological father until I was 9.  And when it happened, that dad is the one who told me.

Turns out he'd been scared for some time that someone in my family was going to tell me.  Most likely because the probability of them telling it to me out of spite instead of love was pretty high.

I saw that dad as a hero for most of my life, and I dare say it stemmed from that moment; and I still feel thankful that he kept us away from what would probably have been a much worse fate.

Me with my dad and younger sister, 

Christmas 2017

When my maternal grandparents passed within months of each other, my dad knew what existence would be like for my sister and me if we lived with my mom's family.

My mother was/is barely capable of caring for herself, so there'd be no way we'd live with her.

The next in line would be one of her sisters, I'm sure, but they were both jealous and spiteful that Nanny and Pawpaw had spent more time taking care of us than they had their kids (due largely to the fact that my mom was much more incapable than them of doing so, of course).

The Christmas following my grandparents's deaths they came bearing many gifts (my dad says they were just trying to outdo one another) and a handwritten eviction notice.  (We were all still staying in the trailer where my grandparents had lived, per my grandmother's request).

They didn't want us in there anymore.  Some of them never had wanted us in there in the first place...

So we moved out.  They even helped.

My dad kissed butt until he finally got custody of us (mine being the hardest since I wasn't biologically his), then we never looked back.

It was sometime around then when I first met my biological father.  

I was just going into third grade.  

I was too busy feeling kind of shy and weird to really pay a lot of attention to that visit.  I remember him eating healthy.  I remember pretending to be asleep when he left.

He would later tell me he had come to check things out; to make sure he felt good about my living situation.  Because if he didn't, he was planning to have me come live with him.  In Texas.

After that, he sent all three of us gifts for every major Holiday- my dad and sister included- if that tells you anything about the person he is.

He would call and talk to my dad and me- with me mostly deflecting with silly hyena impressions (I was really into The Lion King). 

When I was a teenager he drove all the way to Alabama and took both my little sister and me to have Thanksgiving with him and his wife, Gloria's, family.  

It's kind of funny, because I think of Gloria as the type of mom I would have liked to have.  

Miss Gloria giving baby Flora sweet kisses.

She is so nurturing and very supportive.  She is the kind that loves with her whole heart.  I sometimes wonder that it was really her that encouraged my dad to reach out to me.  In fact, I'm positive it was.  

That early morning we set out to come home.  

(Hence all the pajama-wearing going on here.)

If it wasn't for this amazing, nurturing, compassionate woman, who knows if my dad and I would have ever talked and/or met?

It took me until I was older to see that I was really appreciative to have him make up a portion of my DNA.  

It was during a time when things felt really unstable, family-wise.  

He felt stable.  And I clung to him from all the way over in Alabama the best way I could.  I called.  A lot.  I cried.  A lot.  I vented.  A lot.

I was so happy that there was this one "not-fucked-up" person in my life.  It was just how I felt then.

It's neat having a life where I can refer to someone as "my other dad."

It's neat knowing they both played really huge roles in getting me through some of my hardest times.

Maybe that's why in Biology 101 it would piss me off to have to choose between Nature vs Nurture.  

I said both.  "That's a blanket answer" is what I got.  

But I kinda felt like choosing was a bit more generic.

I mean, I think it is pretty obvious that every single person is made up of 

endless

moments 

and cells. 

We are all a mixture of whatever experiences we've had being tempered by our genetic coding.

At least, I could see that we are all infinite blends of nature AND nurture.

And I still feel that way.

You know, the cornball thing wasn't the first time it washed over me;

-this thing- 

....that DNA is far-reaching. 

It was this one time, as a teenager, talking to him on the phone.  I discovered we both didn't just like books, but we liked the same kind!

I remember remarking on it a good bit back then.  I suppose I still do.  That it was funny because I had always figured the things people were into were only influenced by what went on around them.

Now the world had expanded to hold the fact that my interests could be genetic(ish).

I have always been drawn to things that make my world feel expanded.  

So has he.

Well, class, that'll be all for today's history lesson-haha!  

So, think on the complex being that you (and all the rest of us) are.

Until next time....