parents

my father was a prick - and my mother was an idiot...to further complicate matters they were both intelligent.  they were married in 1933, totally unsuited for each other.  my father was from an uptight, aristocratic british family who didn't want him marrying an american to start with, rose to run a big merchant bank in london, and hadn't much of a sense of humor.  my mother was from philadelphia by way of baltimore and providence, rhode island, the youngest of three, a debutante and, as she later proved, an alcoholic.  she had, not long before she met my father, been jilted by the son of the doctor to italy's king ferdinand.  my parents each misjudged the others potential inheritance.

somehow, i came into this union in 1943.

by 1948 they were divorced - by 1950 my mother and i were in the states where to me, age eight, people spoke a foreign language and drove on the wrong side of the road.

the reason i maintain my father was a prick is because, after the divorce and for the rest of his life he disengaged himself from my existence.  he wrote me the occasional letter - usually castigating me for some adolescent sin - forgot my birthdays, and didn't bother with christmas or things like graduation from various schools.  i even discovered that he had frequently been in new york city on business as i grew up and had not called.  in short, not there.  as a consequence i was always looking for mentors and found a few - some good, some bad.  the bad ones were usually sexual predators, easy enough to fend off but disquieting none the less. [we all knew about the roman church and its problems.]  the others, even the good ones, often got sick and tired of an unwanted puppy panting at their heels all the time and brushed me off.  when he died, i, my half brother and his third wife in attendance, i felt little sadness and no loss, which i have since learned is unusual.  he did leave me a few nice bits of english furniture which, because it's veneered, is falling slowly to pieces in our hotter and drier climate than that of its origin.

my mother was an idiot because she squandered all sorts of opportunities to lead a happy life after she returned to the states.  as a single, slightly exotic, forty year old woman with a wide circle of upscale, high society friends in her adopted hometown [to live in philadelphia was to be too close to her older, dominating sister] she had everything going for her - and the gentlemen callers were legion.  they soon fell away - as did her influential friends - because she decided, almost at once, to kill herself with drink.  eventually, even i fell away - absconding in the family car to a lake below dover where i fished for two days [until my money ran out] then returning home to a house full of stunned friends and relatives.  "i want out of here..." or some such, were my homecoming words.  i soon was.  she died, alone, on a new year's eve, a very old 58.

these are some of the reasons i swore - after my divorce from their mother - i would never abandon my children as my parents had abandoned me.