IYou hear it all the time, "I've had a less than ordinary life" followed by some droll story. Well I am going to try to write about my life and let you, whoever you may be, decide about my life. Personally, I don't find it that weird, but I lived it so what do I know, right?
I will start by saying that I'm really unsure about a lot of dates and details from before I was 11 or 12, I just simply don't remember and never cared that much to ask. A lot of the stories and details have actually come from my wife who learned them from my Mother.
I was born in Huntington, West Virginia in November of 1971. My parents (who were married the previous April, you do the math) didn't live in Huntington or even in West Virginia, they were living in Ohio. I don't know why they were in West Virginia, I was just along for the ride. My birth was (apparently, again, don't really remember) relatively easy, to the point that a "Candy Striper" (hospital volunteer) wound up catching me as she was the only one in the room in a position to help. After the requisite (at the time) couple of days I was released (with my Mom) from the hospital, we left West Virginia and I didn't return until I was 42.
My father was working construction when I was born but I guess that the construction market in Eastern Ohio in 1971-1973 sucked because Dad rejoined the Army (he had served a year in the late 1960's) in 1973 when he found out Mom was pregnant with my younger brother. We were stationed in Fort Hamilton (Brooklyn, New York) when Little Bro was born (August, 1974) but didn't stay long. By September of 1974 we were in Merholz, West Germany.
My Father was stationed in Merholz, he was actually in Gelnhausen, however, there were no openings in the housing on base. As a result we lived "on the economy", which is (was?) the term used when military personnel lived off base, renting a home/apartment from a local. We lived in a red brick multi-story apartment building (weird that I remember that) on top of a hill.
We apparently arrived in early September of 1974, by the end of September things had gone sideways in my life (sort of setting a pattern for the rest of my life). My Father was deployed by the end of September, which was followed soon after when my Mother collapsed. She had an horribly infected kidney, the German hospital she was taken to expected her to die.
In 1974 the U.S. Army did not have the support system in place it did even in the 1980s, let alone today. As a result when my Mother collapsed and my Father was "somewhere" being a soldier my brother and I were left alone. Ok, that's not true, we weren't left alone, we were placed into GERMAN foster care. That's right, we became wards of the German state since the Army would not work with the German authorities to track down my Father in a timely manner.
At the age of 3 (ok, a month short) I was placed with a strange family whose language I did not speak. My brother, at the tender age of 2 months, came with me. I am sure that the family was nice, I can't imagine them not being, they took in two foreign children. Sometime in mid to late October the U.S. Army finally said "Shit, I guess we better this soldier his wife is on death's door and his children are being raised by foreign nationals" and my Father re-appeared. However, he was only back briefly, to try and find out what was going on with his family.
While Mom was busy dying, Dad was busy practicing to make other people die and the U.S. Army was ignoring the situation the German authorities had actually been productive. They had already contacted my maternal grandmother (who couldn't be bothered with her daughter's life, she was busy with her new "country club" husband) and my paternal grandmother (who had a toddler 6 months older than me and couldn't handle two more). At a loss, they proposed the only solution they could to my Father. Because of a lack of a translator the solution wasn't clear so for my 3rd birthday my Father signed adoption papers for the German family to take us in permanently. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
Amazingly my Mother survived, thanks to the different laws regulating medication use in Germany compared to the U.S. Here doctors would be forced to watch a patient die even if they have a possible cure in testing while in Germany they were allowed to test an experimental antibiotic on her. It turned out that my Mother had a kidney infection severe enough that it developed internal gangrene. She had a kidney removed and the experimental antibiotic saved her from the rot slowly destroying her body. It took more than two months but eventually she was allowed to come home.
Imagine her surprise when she found out that her sons had been adopted by a German family!! HAPPY HOMECOMING!!!!
We were returned to our birth (original?) family right around the holidays at the end of 1974. My brother most likely didn't know the difference but I did. While with the new family my language development significantly changed. I went into September speaking broken English, I came home at the end of December speaking fluent German and knowing very basic English. I also had (and still have) intimacy issues.
From what I have been told I stopped speaking after being returned to my parents. We (literally) didn't even speak the same language. Talk about parents not understanding! The only "person" I would speak to was our cat, Cindy.
Wow, that covers until I was three years old. I think that's enough for part 1.
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