44 Year Note: a1

I was born a virgin birth baby late in 1967, meaning, of course, my conception was the result of copulation between two (previously) virgins, and subject to speculations of inevitability therein.  This definition of "virgin birth", which I offer, is, if one thinks about it, the only logical material definition possible for "virgin birth" that could pertain in contexts outside pure myth.

I was gestated in the Summer of Love, conceived in the Spring of Love, and born in the Winter of Love. I am a Sagitarius by Tropical Astrology, which is an odd form of astrology if you ask me.  By what logic does one use the Sun for Astro(star)ology... using the names of stars, but assigning equal segments of the Sun's year?  What about the precession of Earth's axis?  Siderially, that is, by the star's themselves, one's sun sign, the one usually quoted, is where the sun is, in the sky. There are 13, not 12 constellations, and the Sun does not stay in each a equal amount of time.  Siderially, I am an Ophiuchan. Take that as you will, I'm atheist myself.

My parents were baby boomers and a scant 18 years old so I was in for a double dose of "unready for the world".  They were also country, a property I value dearly, though in this case it was responsible for their having heard of the sexual revolution but not, evidently, of birth control, it's alleged motivation. Being country myself, to some degree, is expressed for example in my preference to urinate outside.  This is indeed an gateway for even urban men to "go country".  As you may find in this 44 year note, I myself span such subcultures, being also suburban and even to some degree, at least eventually, urban.

Ostensibly, or so the story-to-me went, both implicitly and explicitly, one of my parents' families was from the rich side of the tracks, and the other was from the poorer side.  Each seemed to feel superior because of this. I found out only later that this was a bit of skew on reality, due to small town presumptions, country thinking, and the difference between Bakersfield values and Southwest Harbor values.

In reality both my grandfathers were stable in their career, advancing, and afforded upper middle class standards of living.  My post divorce view (both my maternal and paternal grandmothers had divorced my respective grandfathers prior or near about's my birth). The story goes: my mother's family was wealthy, the patriarch a well respected if small town surgeon and general practitioner.  My father's family was a working class family, closer to the earth, with my Grandfather a lumberjack, and my Grandmother a school teacher.

The truth is my father's families had in fact been working class, but has prospered in the era of the GI Bill, were well employed, and rewarded for hard work, and they did teach me working class values, but they downplayed their own situations with respect to that, compared to what I would later discover about actual sociological conditions.

My Grandfather on my mother's side, who at 13 I would find out was not my biological grandfather, was well known in town, but I found that my school teacher's Grandmother's local notoriety far outlived my maternal step-grandfather's, when each retired.  I also found that my paternal Grandfather was in fact a foreman, a lumber yard manager of sorts, advancing over the years.  He was at any rate was doing well, in an era of pleanty, and in fact better than your average lumberjack.  The family  owned their home, a pool, with a barn for the horse he kept for his daughter, and many other American comforts such as regular travel.

I had a realization there was something false about the working-class/ruling-class mythology in my 20s, when I came upon pictures of my paternal grandparents all the image of Desi Arnez and Lucille Ball, adorned with upper middle class 50s and 60s significancia, "modern" gadgets, conveniences and food technologies. By the time I was aware of such things, my paternal grandfather and grandmother had divorced, he seemed to be doing well, but my grandmother seemed to live very bare (I learned this was more her nature, as she worked two jobs (teacher and school administrator)).  My father was living in Tee Pees tuning out and dropping in on riverside mining claims, which was without money more or less, my paternal aunt (a saint) was a single mother, and it was the early 70s.  I was unaware of the relative wealth they had in fact enjoyed prior to my birth.

The legitimacy of this dichotomy lies in the philosophical roots of each side of the family, and in the fact that one was partriarched by "a professional" and the other, a lumber worker, albeit a manager. The well paid one was still a servant to the system, not from the sort of wealth that supports you regardless of your choices, like all working people, still dependent on continuous pay for continuous work, albeit at a better rate, and thus a greater need.

The less well paid one was nevertheless in the stable upper middle class, the beneficiary of a stronger American economy and steady advancement in the lumber mills of the Pacific Coast, and also in no small part due to his size and belligerent nature. He first advanced to management in the Pacific lumber industry as an axe man, that is, a guy that fires other guys.  He was ideal for this, evidently, due to his naturally and prolifically pugilistic nature, and the crucial benefit that is to someone who's job it is to fire lumber men.  Lumber men tended toward the pugilistic at the time, and also to the larger-than-average.

These and further dichotometric dynamics, of yin vs yang, the tensions between them, played a role in my childhood and life, and leads to the conclusion of this story.  My parents married before my birth but divorced when I was three years old.  I have a few memories of San Francisco, where I must have been three or less, with my parents, but after that family to me is a balance of alleged opposites.  It is a fractal group of people with a lot of animosity to each other, all of whom I love.

I mention the rich man poor man dynamic because this dynamic played a role throughout my childhood as the families feuded after that.  Further complications were that my mother, as I didn't learn until 13, as I said before, was from a previous marriage of my grandmother to my maternal grandfather, a San Francisco lawyer.  That my maternal grandmother was a divorcee was evidently a family disgrace in the view of my maternal stepfather's own mother. At least I was always lead to believe she was the source of the attitude.

My mother's pregnancy was a reason for my maternal stepgrandfather to show his biological daughters the dangers of loose women, and perhaps to cut the losses, so to speak.  My mother had faced a lot of outsider feelings in her family, had evidently acted out a lot, and been difficult, which one suspect may have been related to having lost my biological grandfather, her father, at 13 herself.

Although she loved dearly, and was loved dearly, by her five brothers and sisters, who she took a great part in caring for, being over ten years older than them, she seems to have felt alone, and like an outsider. Although I'm sure my maternal stepgrandfather himself was in reality unconcerned with my mother being a divorcee, he did respect at face value the racy and overly-modern nature of it.  I find he was modern enough for his generation, a Californian, and that might likely have even relished the daring and socially-"unacceptable" nature  of it, the act paying some respect to the propriety of the bigotries against it seemed to have weighed on my mother at least enough that she herself did not tell me about my paternal grandfather. Eventually, at age 13, my stepmother was the one that told me. She had known him well.

I don't want you to get some vague idea that I have some type of pent up resentment, some hard to pinpoint, complex, issue regarding not being told about my maternal grandfather prior to my pracically post-childhood age at the time of 13 years. Instead, you should understand I want you understand concretely and specifically, I was and remain relatively butthurt, and I acknowledge possibly or even probably over-butthurt, about not being told about my paternal grandfather prior the practically post-childhood age of 13.

Cause I am/was.