What about the other grandparents?

My maternal grandmother was the only grandparent I ever knew. Both my mother's father and my father's mother were dead long before I was born. Same for my mother’s three sisters and my father's sister. But what about my paternal (my father’s father) grandfather you ask? Well, he was a classic domineering, controlling old world Italian with a violent temper who planned everyone's lives, could basically be described as a brass-plated *** and who I never met. At least I don't remember it since I was only 9 months old at the time.

Interesting story about him. When I was nine months old, we all went up to the family home to visit. My grandfather (his name was Luigi) had ALREADY put me in his will, established a college fund for me, figured out what I would do in life, where I would live, who I would marry AND what my mother would be doing in the interim. The way Luigi had it planned, we would all move into the family home, my uncle's wife (who had been doing all the housework while the men enjoyed the fruits of her labor) would then cease doing the housework and sit back and relax. Who would take over? My mother (after she resigned from the phone company where she had been working since 1922) would then take care of all the housework.

This was not an unusual practice for him. One reason my father left home when he was 18 in 1926 was that his mother died. The other is that Luigi had also planned HIS life, just as he had mine. In this case, Luigi went so far as to tell my father where the house would be built and who (Luigi) would build it. But I digress. Back to the plans that were being made for me.

As you might expect, my mother being a stiff-necked, defiant, stubborn Southener, born in northeastern Mississippi, had a one-word answer: No. Luigi said if she didn't, he'd take me out of his will. She didn't. He did. That has a lot to do with why I've always had to scrounge and scrape most of my life to get by.

The upshot of all this is that I've never had the pleasure of being doted on by loving grandparents.

But I'm in one piece and thankfully no more bigoted than my parents were. Do I have my biases? Sure do, but we're all biased to some degree about something. That's part of being human. If we could eliminate all biases, prejudices and hatred, we'd be perfect. But that's not possible so long as we're human beings. So we do the best we can and some do better than others.

My grandparents (all of them) grew up in a time period and culture where hatred and racism were endemic. They were a product of their environment. Fortunately, my mother was able to break out of it. So did my father. I’ll be forever greatful for that.