Roots

I was born in 1963, the youngest daughter of six children, born to a man who was considered a "jack of all trades" and a woman who probably shouldn't have had any children (and probably would have quit at one if there had been birth control back then).

My father, the youngest of three, was born in 1925.  He was born in Berea, Kentucky and lived there in his childhood and later moved to Maine where he met my mother.  His biological father left his mother when my dad was two and moved to North Carolina telling everyone he had a wife and one son who were dead (no one knows why he didn't claim the other two children; maybe it was just easier for him to claim two fake deaths, rather than four).  His mother remarried, to a good man fifteen years her senior, whom I knew as my grandfather.  Gram and Gramp owned and farmed a 100 acres in rural Maine and Gram fostered girls for extra money from the state (and possibly so the boys would have someone to pester besides their sister).  Gram practiced herbalism occasionally helping out girls "in trouble".  Gram and Gramp were the glue that held our family together.  When Gramp died in 1982 Gram went to live with my aunt and uncle in Kentucky.  She died a couple of years later.  I never saw or spoke to her again.

My mother was born in 1931, one of 10 or more siblings/half-siblings (I don't know how many there were...I don't even think she knows).  She grew up in Maine, in foster homes mostly.  According to my mother, her father had three different families and was a drunk and a child molester who, fortunately for my mother but not for some of her sisters, died when she was 12 years old.  Her mother (again, according to my mother) was a "whore".  I know Grammy was married five times but I don't really know her story.  Anyway, regardless of what my mother thought of her, she still took us to visit her a few times a year.

Now, all my grandparents and my father have passed away.  All that is left of the older generation is my mother and a lot of aunts and uncles that I don't really know.