I am here, in this place, because I escaped that sentence.
My father's blood delivered me here. I am told of his great love. He was a wonderful person — generous, fun-loving, gentle yet strong. He genuinely liked people and they could feel it. There were no "second thoughts" creeping in to spoil everything. Coming from a large and outgoing Italian family, Dad found himself right at home with all my mother's brothers and sisters — calling them "the kids" and treating them as if they were his own.
I'm not sure what attracted him to my mother; she certainly could not have been too dynamic or outgoing. Her time was spent listening to the radio and reading Street & Smith romance magazines. It was a broken radio that forced her to call my dad, the radio repairman down the street, to "please come look at it."
I imagine her shy, resigned to having nothing but her fantasies — preferring reading about life to actually participating in it. His family lived in another city, so maybe that is what drew him to her. She was part of a large family all living together in a small apartment. He enjoyed people and here were all the people you could possibly want under one roof. Since he had the only car in the family, he would pack everyone he could into it for weekend outings. I think my mother was important, but only part of the whole package.
Great Grandma called him, in German, "that dirty Italian." And Grandma was, of course, resentful of his presence in her family's life. Oh, she accepted the favors all right, but she did not want any love or gratitude going outward from her family toward him. These were feelings that belonged exclusively to her and Grandpa. Besides, Dad was not to be trusted, for surely he was being kind for some reason that would benefit him rather than us.
Grandma convinced my mother the family could not survive without her, so she and Dad were engaged five years before my father decided that was long enough. Grandma and Great Grandma sputtered and fussed, but the marriage eventually took place.
Dad brought joy into our lives and was loved by everyone who knew him. His sudden death was a tragedy for the entire family. He left behind a widow in her seventh month of pregnancy and a four-year old daughter who became, from that moment forward, Sorrow.
How would Sorrow live without Joy? Soon there was born into Sorrow's darkness Hope. Hope, in the form of a beautiful new life, a sister. Now there would be two of us who had blood that was richer because of our father's love. She was another good seed planted in the angry and suspicious soil of mother's family.