So, What About Dad's Family?
Drowning in family there
When will you come up for air?
Porcupine Tree - "Drown With Me" - In Absentia - 2003
The Flozberks that have wreaked the havoc outlined on these pages during my life number eight, nine if you count Grandpa Theo. Thank heavens there were not more of them.
Dad's family, almost completely blocked from our lives by Mom as we drowned in The Istanbul Bunch, was huge, springing from rock solid Roman Catholic Arkansas farm people.
I'm aware of zero estrangements, lawsuits, rancor, convicted felons, hatchet jobs, or corn loggings among 'em. All of my tragically-limited interactions with them have been nice, at odds with Mom's longstanding insistence that they'd treat the impious badly.
All I gots is an unwed pregnancy in the 1940's that a very dear, lovely woman handled by allowing the family tree to be shuffled a bit, as was the custom then. While it was unfortunate that had to be done, all turned out well.
And, a vague rumor that one of my cousins wrote a few bad checks about 60 years later.
That's it.
When I look their way, I see decent, intelligent, successful, productive people who manage to navigate life without all hell habitually breaking loose. The disparity in, say, calamities per month per person between the Dad's family and The Flozberks is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
It's like the two sides are not even the same species.