Wednesday, September 2, 2009

A problem in my paternal family line

I think there is something being handed down in my paternal family line that is throwing me off.

My father's father was a real success. He only completed the eighth grade and yet he became chief engineer of a large hospital. But my father never really understood his father. My father's own success, as a ladies' hairdresser, was financially secure but not as respectable as his father's was. He talked of his father very familiarly. I don't think he respected his father's work. He never talked of it.

Because of this difference between my father and his father, I looked up to my father's father as my male image, and not to my father at all. I was always very attentive whenever he spoke.

Why didn't my father respect his father? Why was he so cocky? His mother must have had something to do with it.

So now here I am not respecting my father. Is it because he didn't respect his? I don't believe this is the case. My father didn't respect his father's father. He never spoke of him at all.

For the record, my father's father's name was James Jacob Batek, my father's name was Kenneth James Batek, and my father's mother's name was Marie Smach Batek.