I've been thinking of writing an autobiography or memoir but it just never comes together for me but I figured if I write one story at a time and post it on my blog maybe once a month, I can do that. Maybe one day I'll pull all the stories together and put them in a book but for now I'll just share some stories with you about my childhood. Some of the stories will be happy, some sad and some horrific because that was my childhood. But they will all be real, things that actually happened. If it seems like something that people enjoy reading maybe I'll keep it going. These stories will not be in any kind of order, I'll just write them as they come to me.
Uncle Jack
My grandmother (mom's mother) got married for the first time when she was 12 years old ( sometime in the 1940's) to a man who was much older than her. She lived in Ohio and she told me that's just how things were back then. She got pregnant right after she got married but her husband died (I don't know what from) before her son (Uncle Jack) was born. So she and her parents decided that she would give my Uncle Jack to one of her adult cousins to raise. There was no formal adoption, she just gave him to her cousin who sent her pictures and updates about him as he got older. My grandma didn't have much to do with uncle Jack when he was growing up although he knew she was his mother.
Years later my grandma would meet my grandpa, they would get married and have my mom. My uncle Jack was jealous of my mom and was mad that my grandma kept and raised her while she gave him away even though he would say that he had a good life. When he was 18 he enlisted in the Army and did two tours in the Vietnam War. I was a little kid when he first came to my parents house for a visit sometime in the late 70's. My mom wanted a relationship with him even though he threw it in her face all the time that grandma kept her and not him.
A few years later when I was 12 and living with my grandma after my parents divorced, uncle Jack would come over to grandma's house all the time. But he had some serious mental issues because of what he saw in the war and caused trouble all the time. One time when they had gotten into an argument my uncle Jack took one of my grandma's pictures, tore it up, put it in an envelope with a threatening letter saying her knew how to kill her and never get caught. And wrapped the envelope around a voodoo doll that he had stuck pins in and hung it from her fence one night while we were asleep. My grandma found it the next morning.
She was so freaked out over what he did and she knew it was him from some of the other things he had done, that she took the envelope and voodoo doll down to the police station and got a restraining order against him. We didn't see him again for a few months when he apologized. But his wife Cecilia would come over to our house and tell my grandma that he was having night terrors and would try to strangle her or hold a knife that he kept under his pillow to her throat while he was asleep. They both tried to get him to go to the hospital for treatment but he wouldn't go and she eventually divorced him a few months later.
She was so freaked out over what he did and she knew it was him from some of the other things he had done, that she took the envelope and voodoo doll down to the police station and got a restraining order against him. We didn't see him again for a few months when he apologized. But his wife Cecilia would come over to our house and tell my grandma that he was having night terrors and would try to strangle her or hold a knife that he kept under his pillow to her throat while he was asleep. They both tried to get him to go to the hospital for treatment but he wouldn't go and she eventually divorced him a few months later.
