I'm not going to go into heavy detail about events I was not present for. They were my mother's childhood experiences, not mine. Not even close to mine. She was the baby of six, her sister born two minutes before her. I didn't know her parents well. They both died during my teens. Besides that, they were liars. Neither was authentic to me, to their kids, to each other, and to themselves. My mom doesn't know if she was breast of bottle fed. There's a lot she doesn't know about her parents and people like them. There's a lot she doesn't know about herself.

I'm the chain-breaker. It's clear to me because I'm on the outside. I am grateful for what I was given; the talents passed down from my mom and grandparents. I am grateful for my own story.

Before they met, my grandfather was married with no kids and my grandmother had two kids with no husband. Where and how they met, I don't know. I just know they didn't have much of anything except grief. My grandfather worked for the railroad, was handy, and didn't fit into his own life--he was a horrible drunk.

I knew him differently. On Sundays, he sat in his chair while the rest of the family visited in the back room. A large spitoon sat to his left. The only time I ever remember him speaking to me was when he passed gas in front of my friend and me. When we laughed he said, "you do that too." He died during a hospital stay with his family by his side. He had my mom's forgiveness.

I knew my grandmother to be loony but harmless. She cleaned houses, never drove, had a smelly house, liked polka, bent over to pick up crumbs, never went grey, turned Jehovah, and always continued talking after she said goodbye. My mom knew her to push the tall dresser in front of the door to keep her drunk husband from hurting her kids. She died peacefully in her sleep. No warning. Just a Sunday paper still sitting outside her door.

My mom was a scared kid--scared because of what alcoholism does to a family without them knowing it; scared because her nights home were spent hiding from her drunk, verbally abusive, threatening father; and scared because her grandma said she looked sick. She used to wish someone would hear her dad and save her.

My mom and dad went to high school together. Their fathers both being drunks resulted in me--1976. Their resentments resulted in divorce--1990.

Those Sundays where my grandpa chose his chair over his family--he missed out on gossip, pessimism, sarcasm, judgement, prejudice, immaturity, self-pity, self-righteousness, fear, and the comfort of sharing pain and suffering. There was enough miserable company among the next generation to excuse grandpa, and there were kids listening. I was listening.

I know how alcoholism affects a family because my head is also disconnected from my heart. I learned to be manipulative and fearful. I learned an obscene view of the present: clenching tight to the weapon of yesterday to protect myself from tomorrow's beasts.

Coincidentally, and this was years ago, my mom and her twin discovered that each had clipped and hung a Ziggy cartoon that read, "Today is a gift. That's why they call it the present."