I’m back on Medium. It’s been four years since I wrote a story here. But recent events almost make it mandatory.

In September of 2019 I wrote a story, “Did Mama Have a Boyfriend”, where I postulated, based on some family history and documents, that I may have been illegitimate.

Later, in April of 2020, my feelings were confirmed. My daughter got my wife and I, Ancestry.com, for Christmas.

My results showed that I had no Czech DNA or even any Eastern European DNA. My dad was all Czech, and my mother was almost all British. The results showed that my ancestry was mostly from England and Scotland, with a splash of Sweden thrown in. So, I wrote the story, “Mama Did Have a Boyfriend”.

Even my siblings showed up as half brothers and sisters. It wasn’t a big deal. I was raised with no difference. Same treatment as any of my brothers and sisters.

It was more the loss of a particular culture that affected me most. I had always been Czech. Well, Czechoslovakian until 1992 as I joke. I spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe during the Cold War and felt a certain affinity for Czechia since I thought it was my homeland. I was even there when Russia invaded in 1968.

So, what brings me back to medium? I thought my readers might be interested in an important update and a big step forward towards solving the mystery of my parentage.

I haven’t really thought too much more about the discovery, or lack of discovery, of my heritage. But, a couple of weeks ago my daughter was contacted through Ancestry.com by a woman who had been identified as her second cousin. So she started digging around with the help of a genealogist and actually managed to unearth my biological father.

Meet John Meredith. He passed away in 1986. He was a bit of a womanizer. Within six months of getting my mother pregnant he got another girl pregnant, a 15 year old girl who had a son in October or so. I’ve actually been able to make contact with my half brother. He doesn’t live in the area but I have spoken on the phone with him and we may meet up soon.

It’s amazing what information is available on line. He’s from Salt Lake City, is even buried here. From 1940 to 1941 he served in the Army like so many other men during that time. His short tenure though, gives some indication of his character.

I have his birth and death dates, several of his residences here in Salt Lake, his social security number, and even some of his employment.

He was married several times but none of his children seem to know much about him. I think I got the better deal. My mom and dad were married for forty six years before dad passed away from cancer.

Dad worked hard to provide for his family. I can’t think of a time when he didn’t hold down two jobs. He was strict but fair and taught me and my brothers many useful skills.

It’s strange at the age of 78 to discover these things and I wish my mother would have had the courage to tell me about them after dad had passed. I’m not even sure if he knew.

Dad was my dad and mom was my mom. I had a great upbringing and a full and fun childhood. I had a good example growing up and cherish it to this day. I guess, in the end, that’s all that matters.

There it is. That certain star. It has been there since I became aware of it so many years ago. Just a little above the horizon in the western sky.

I was young. In the early years as I was just beginning to see my life outside my family and my home town. I spent many nights sitting in the great weeping willow in our back yard staring at it. I was either pining over a new girlfriend or dreaming about a life of adventure and foreign lands.

It was a time before the washing out of the night sky by encroaching civilization. The Milky Way was still a glittering haze of stars spread across the darkness above. But more intense than that was my star, distinct from all the others.

One day my dreams of adventure began to come true and I found myself leaving my small town and visiting those foreign lands. The first I visited was on the other side of the world. It was the complete antitheses of my roots. Perpetually hot, sticky, smelly and backwards.

But overhead the same night sky as at home, except for the occasional bomber sneaking in over the border. And as always, that same twinkling star in the low western sky.

Through tears and smiles, alone or with others, in comfort and sometimes in pain an anchor.

And so it went over the years. Different countries, different cultures, different experiences, but still my familiar star. Always taking me back to the comfort and warm memories of a distant but familiar time and place.

It’s been sixty odd years now and I’m walking my dogs on a warm night back in the same home town I left years ago. But now the sky is a dark veil absent of stars, overridden by the lights of ever growing cities and towns. As my dogs take the time to decide on just the right spot to deposit their offering I look to the west and there it is. It still twinkles red and blue and green overcoming the artificial light surrounding me.

What is my affinity with this star? Is it even a star? It may be a planet such as Mars or Venus. Or perhaps it is my ancient home calling me back. Is that a thought too far off to consider?

It doesn’t matter. It has always been and it will always be. Immortal it hangs in the night sky. Perhaps, someday, even as I.

Musings on a Star was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When I wrote “Did Mama Have a Boyfriend” I was basing it on anecdotes. Since then I’ve received the results of my DNA testing and not only is there not Eastern European ancestry in my DNA, there’s not even continental European DNA.

My entire DNA is from the British Isles and some Scandinavian. I didn’t understand the Scandinavian until I found out that’s not uncommon as there was a lot of migration between Scandinavia and Scotland.

So now what? How does it change my life? On the whole I don’t think it does. After all I was raised in a loving family, had the same privileges as my brothers and sisters and generally had it pretty good.

There was sometimes the feeling of not belonging and the occasional behind the hand comments but overall it was a normal childhood. My mother used to tell my brothers and sisters that I was “special” and my dad was always somewhat distant.

As I’ve thought more about it though another aspect has emerged.

A boy’s first love is his mother. Just ask Oedipus. That bond is strong and it’s forever. Even soldiers hardened by battle when faced with their own death, lying on the battle field, will invariably cry out for their mothers.

Now, after 73 years of life I find out that my mother never chose to let me know about how my life began. Is that a betrayal, or was she just protecting her own feelings and as an afterthought, mine? What are the implications, I have to ask, of not knowing about my true heritage?

I don’t want it to affect how I remember her but suddenly I’ve lost my entire culture. I was a Czechoslovakian and then a Czech but now I’m a Brit, a limey. Whenever I would see movies with scenes of Prague I would think, “That’s a place I need to see some day, my homeland”.

Were the circumstances of my birth that distressing? Did she cheat on my father or were there more serious such as rape or incest? There were rumors to the latter. There was a third cousin, they say, that she was especially fond of.

If I wanted to I could let my imagination run amok but now there are no relatives to go to for the real story. Anyone that would know anything is dead.

I’ve been searching my genealogy for any clues and writing to everyone shown to be a relative by my DNA results but without any luck.

My wife has told me that she questioned my mother a couple of more times without my knowing about it, but she received ever increasing hostility until she just decided it wasn’t worth it. Mom’s secret was going with her to her grave.

Another aspect that has been disappointing so far has been the relative indifference expressed by my siblings. “You’re still our brother and we love you”, has been the general feeling. This is good but does nothing to relieve my long standing feelings of isolation, it only intensifies them.

Even one of my greatest experiences is now somewhat diminished. On a trip with my parents and my wife to Innsbruck, Austria we met a long lost Czech cousin.

It was almost miraculous. We had met my parents in Frankfurt with the intention of taking the hovercraft down the Rhine to Basil, Switzerland and then the train to Innsbruck.

Everything went awry. We had to take the ferry, we missed our train, and we were too late at our pension so we didn’t have a room when we got there as it was past midnight.

But then things turned around. The pension arranged rooms at the Holiday Inn around the corner for the same price. They served American style breakfast and it turned out the cook and hostess was a married couple with our last name.

We had dinner with them that night and they brought along birth certificates dating back to 1747. All those events had brought us to that place and that moment. It bound our families and two countries together.

Now that’s all gone.

How am I going to find the other half of my heritage? It’s true I have my mother’s side of the family. But I feel that I’ve lost some of my uniqueness.

Then there’s the possibility of medical complications. I enjoy really good health for my age but every question on every medical form is only half true. What could the impact of that be in the future?

Why do we feel this need to be bound to our ancestry? What is it that makes us want to be a part of our heritage and a certain culture? Is it that we want there to be a continuity of whom we are? A line going back and then forward in time with us somewhere in the middle.

I’m still evaluating how I feel about the whole situation and of course I’m going to continue searching to see if I can’t discover my roots. I guess I could say my Kunta Kinte journey. On a positive note, I’ll probably learn a lot about genealogy and DNA.

Part of who I am is where I came from and now part of that is lost.

My Own Instant Family

Once again, It’s the season of togetherness. My family and I just had our annual Christmas party. Seventeen of thirty four showed up. Some were sick, some were out of state and, some just don’t like being here. We span four generations now and it all started over 50 years ago.

My wife was one of those high school girls who got caught at 16, twice. So when I met her she was divorced with two sons. Pregnant through ignorance, “encouraged” to marry, another son a year later, then abandoned and divorced shortly after that.

This story is about our sons, and adoption. On our very first date, a blind date arranged by mutual friends. We went to her house to pick her up but I had to wait while she got the boys ready for bed. They were her priority.

I liked them right from the first time I met them on that evening.

The oldest was very serious. He took his role as man of the house, at age 4, with sober determination. He would hold and pat his moms hand when she cried and assured her “everything would be ok”.

His one year younger brother was quite the opposite. He looked at me with his wide, silly grin and promptly rolled off his rocking chair. No harm done, he was just a little klutzy. It wouldn’t be the last time he took a tumble. Future tumbles however would usually result in some stitches.

We became a family about a year later. I came home from Berlin after a long, and sometimes naughty, correspondence, knelt in the driveway while getting into the car and I put a ring on her finger. Six days later in a ceremony at my family home we were hitched, all four of us.

I understood from the beginning that it was all of them or none of them. I never thought of it in any other way. We only had a month or so before I had to go back to Berlin but four months later we were all on our way to Japan.

Japan was a good thing for us. The isolation, away from the influence of family and friends made us more dependent on each other and helped develop a strong family bond. Don’t get me wrong. There was some knockdown, drag out fights between the wife and I. There was never anything physical of course, but there was some serious yelling.

One night, after a rather enjoyable night at the NCO club, for no apparent reason, the wife and I got into a yelling match on the half mile walk through three feet of snow back to our quarters. It was almost comical as we trudged waist deep through the snow yelling back and forth. Sometimes together and sometimes far apart yelling even louder to be heard.

But being that we were 5600 miles from home there was no going back to moms or crashing on a friends couch until cooler heads prevailed. We just continued the fight at home, quietly because of the boys sleeping, until we were both really smashed and laying together on the floor of the kitchen contemplating the ceiling light and all made up.

I think the boys suffered the most though. That was almost all my fault. I loved them but I hadn’t yet learned patience in dealing with kids and I have to admit to having a terrible temper in my youth.

There were some unnecessary spankings followed by some serious remorse on my part. Maybe because I missed out on the infant bonding and was more or less, thrust into parenting. I’m not making excuses for my bad behavior but thankfully by the time we left Japan 11 months later the boys had taught me an invaluable lesson. Love and a good example was a much better teacher than anger and criticism.

It was just understood from the beginning of our relationship that as soon as possible I would be adopting the boys. But because of being out of the country it took longer than we had expected.

By the time we got back to the states I had been providing material support for the boys for over two years. That’s when I ran into the most irritating aspect of the adoption process for me.

Their biological father had never paid any child support. In fact he was in prison for check forgery and theft when we got everything ready to adopt the boys. But I still had to go, with my wife, down to the state prison, and get his written consent to adopt.

Of course I had my wife dress to the nines. Hair, makeup, beautiful dress, the works. And I took along the latest pictures of the boys, smiling and happy. I wanted him to know exactly what he had thrown away.

So today I’m the old guy, at our family Christmas party, with a wonderful progeny of 34, and another great grandbaby on the way, while he’s dead from a drug related auto accident. I guess I shouldn’t gloat.

The point is that I couldn’t love my two oldest sons any more if they were my biological children. We smile and nod at comments from people about how much we look alike and I forget that we don’t have the same genetics. They look upon my Czech heritage as their own and are proud of their surname. We are family, tried and true, by choice, not chance, and nothing will ever change that.

A Grandson’s Journey of Destruction

There is nothing like the arrival of a new grandchild. We get to have all the joy of childbirth without all the pain and little of the responsibility. Our only job is spoiling them, or so it should be.

Braydon came into the world following a 3000 mile round trip to retrieve his mom and dad and bring them home. The living conditions in their home state had become intolerable.

Our son had just married his long time, now pregnant, girlfriend and needed a leg up. We were more than willing to help. We loved having our children and grandchildren close to us.

Within a couple of months Braydon arrived. But by the age of eight he had been abandoned by his mother even though she had full custody after the divorce and by sixteen his father had kicked him out of his home too.

My wife and I talked it over and despite Braydon’s growing meth addiction we had him come to live with us. After all, we reasoned, a stable home life would probably go a long way towards helping him overcome his addiction.

Instead, over the next ten years we got an education in useless treatments, overpriced multiple rehabs and a fringe sub-culture we didn’t know existed.

It breaks your heart when you experience one of your grandchildren taking a path that will ultimately lead to their destruction. You encourage your children and grandchildren with the usual, “You have so much potential” platitude. But sometimes that can only add unneeded pressure to succeed on your terms, not theirs.

Braydon lived two lives: positive adult seeking and getting life changing opportunities and secret functional addict ruining those opportunities. Eventually though, his addiction caught up with him. His drug addled brain became incapable of keeping his lies straight.

He’d leave his Facebook page open on our computer so we could see his interactions with his druggie friends. Or he would borrow his grandma’s phone and not erase texts arranging drug meets or hangouts. Maybe it was a cry for help but it didn’t feel like it.

I try to feel bad for him but it’s hard. He was given so many opportunities for a good life. He is an affable, likable guy so he didn’t’ have any problem getting good jobs and even educational opportunities. But then with his first big paycheck he’d go out and buy a bunch of drugs and then start missing work and get fired or just not show up one day.

And then there’s the peer group. Like minded friends who make you feel at home when you have drugs but will beat you up and steal from you when you run out. Or steal from your grandparents when you’re not looking. We had a couple of his friends who were visiting him haul off our 60 inch plasma TV while he was in the shower. Plasma TV’s aren’t light but they managed to get it out of the basement and into their car without anyone noticing.

I had to regularly clean his room since he seemed incapable of it and it did give me a chance to search for paraphernalia and empty out the bottles of urine he stored in his room so he didn’t have to take the ten steps to the bathroom.

Of course it didn’t take me long to notice the large empty space where the TV was supposed to be.

When I asked where it was I got the usual blank stare and his go to answer. “Braydon, where’s the TV?” “What TV, grandpa?”

Let me stop right there. This could turn into a book rather than a story if I tried to recount all the “Adventures of Braydon”.

So, what did I learn after 10 years of living with an addict?

- You can’t cure them. They have to cure themselves.

- Some of your “loving” behavior is actually “enabling” behavior.

- Seven of your friends dying of overdoses in one year are NOT a deterrent to your drug use.

- Most rehab facilities are more for generating profits, not helping addicts.

- Your peer group will be more than happy to help you perpetuate your addictive lifestyle. It means more sources to sustain theirs.

- There is a large group of disenfranchised young people just under the societal RADAR living lives of self-induced isolation.

- It could be easy to let his self-destructive behavior become your self-destructive behavior.

- Arguments over how much help we should give him brought us the closest we’ve ever been to getting a divorce.

• Just like vampires, never let an addict cross your door step.

I saw Braydon just the other day. He had just spent 30 days in jail. It’s sad to say he looked better than he had in a long time. Regular meals and sleeping in a bed had been good for him. Unfortunately he has moved on from meth to heroin, has contracted hepatitis and is wrestling with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA). A long name for a serious blood infection.

Despite all this, it goes without saying, I love my grandson. I hate his addiction and his choices for the ways in which he deals with his feelings of loss. I fear for him, fear for his survival, mentally and physically as he goes down this path he has chosen to follow. He is searching for guidance but the direction he’s taken is only destroying his life and not leading to the salvation he’s seeking.

Sometimes Love Isn’t Enough was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This year my wife and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. So how does a couple survive fifty years of marriage? Should I give you the usual platitudes of love, respect, communication, thoughtfulness, mutual admiration? That’s probably the answer you would expect.

But, as Pat Benatar said, “Love is a Battlefield” and marriage is the theater of operations.

Of course there have been good times. There was the family time: fun vacations, graduations, playing with our kids or just having great conversations around the dinner table.

Then there’s the not so good times: fights, recriminations, affairs on both sides, money shortages, emergency room visits and so on.

Did you ever see the movie Parenthood with Steve Martin? Grandma described life as a roller coaster. That is an understatement, up and down and around for fifty years. It takes determination, persistence and just putting in the hard work every day to hang in there this long.

For most couples there’s just the two of you at first. That’s the period of adjustment, as it’s usually called. The time a newly wedded couple takes to get to know one another. The time when they discover each other’s likes and dislikes. Of course the daily sex, or several times a day sex, certainly contributes to the process.

It was a little different for me as my new wife already had two kids. Which I didn’t mind, I figured it was a package deal when I started dating her.

It did complicate the “period of adjustment” but since we were 5600 miles from home for the first year of our marriage we had to make it work. There were some fights, some real doozies. Like when my baggage arrived from my previous assignment which contained three years of my work as a photographer, A NUDE photographer. I promptly threw them in the garbage but it took a long time to smooth that one over.

By the end of that first year, and probably due in part to the 300 inches of snow where we were, our own little bundle of joy was set to arrive. Soon you realize they all need to be fed, clothed and protected. But, hey, those are the things that make life worthwhile. At least until they start reaching puberty and suddenly they know everything. They get bigger and their problems get bigger.

Eventually they get grown enough to find their own food and toys and mates of course.

And then the grandkids start to come along. Grandkids are your reward for letting your kids reach the age of reproduction. But the world has changed in the generation between you and them.

There seems to be more drugs and STD’s and much more violence. We ended helping to raise some of them because their parents couldn’t handle them or had too many problems of their own. So we got to start all over rearing kids just when we thought we would be retiring.

Once you manage to resolve all their issues and you think you can see the light at the end of the tunnel someone turns it off and you get to add great grandkids to the mix. Another generation of little babies seems to revitalize you. They are such a joy.

As we started to get ready for Christmas dinner one year we realized the two of us has become thirty people with yet another great grandkid or two on the way. Haven’t these kids, and grandkids, figured out what causes pregnancy?

But, hey, what a celebration. Of course we’ve given up buying Christmas gifts for everyone and resorted to “family” gifts so we don’t have to file bankruptcy.

Our sex life has kind of dropped off though. Well, actually, it has fallen into the abyss. Between the medications each of us has started taking, some unwanted pounds around the middle and just a general lack of interest even oral sex has come to mean talking about it, not actually doing it.

Then one day I realized that I’d become complacent in our marriage. Every day seems to be a repeat of the one before. It seemed we were staying together just because we’d been doing it for so long. Our relationship became one of polite convenience.

I guess I’m being somewhat cynical. I know there are couples that have enjoyed long term marriages that still have the love and excitement of newlyweds.

But I also see many that just kind of put up with each other. One partner or the other has been taken for granted for so long that it’s become comfortable like that well-worn leather jacket that you just can’t send to the Good Will

So, what do I do? Throw away a life that’s been built over fifty years? Do I really want to try and start over in my mid 70’s? And to what would I be going? Or am I just a coward and I go into that dark night of passive acceptance?

Perhaps there’s another option. Maybe we could find something that brings joy back into our life. Something that gives me, gives us, a reason to get up in the morning once again. To start anew, refreshed and ready for another exciting chapter in life. Surely there’s something that interests us both. The mind outlasts the body and people are not only living longer now more than ever, but the quality of life has improved too.

Bottom line, life has been hard but it has been worth it. There’s a great feeling of accomplishment in overcoming everything life has thrown at us and we still managed to hang in there and do it together. Our day will come and we’ll find that wedded bliss we’ve earned.

50 Years of Wedded Bliss was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I grew up in the ‘50’s and “60’s. Things changed a lot in that era. We went from the hard line discipline mentality, “Spare the rod, spoil the child”, to the hippie movement, “Let the children express their individuality, don’t suppress their creativity”.

My dad was a tough man. He was a wounded WWII veteran of the 82nd Airborne. His battle jumps included North Africa, Sicily and Holland. There were things he saw that he never talked about. As a result of combat he suffered from what was then called shell shock but today would be called PTSD.

He was never a spanker, more of a “yeller”. But his voice could reduce us kids to tears faster than any smack on the butt.

That, by the way, was the prime directive of spanking: only on the butt and open-handed. Except for that devastating weapon of mothers everywhere, the dreaded wooden spoon.

My brother and I were spanked only once. We had been jumping on the double bed we shared in our basement bedroom when we broke the cross boards that supported the mattress.

“Oh no, mom’s going to kill us.” But it was worse than that. “I’m going to tell your dad and he’s going to spank you,” was mom’s not so empty threat.

I’d seen my dad carry a 200 pound rock across our yard just to use it as a garden decoration. I’d seen him take a gun away from my sister’s ex-husband when he threatened her with it and then throw him off the porch.

Our fate was going to be the same as the cross boards in the bed.

When dad got home we were already crying. Downstairs we went to the basement and across the bed, face down. Dad removed his belt, “Oh no, not the belt.”

My brother and I clinched our butts in anticipation of the whooping we were about to receive.

Up went dad’s arm and down came the belt. One half-hearted whap on my butt and one on my brother’s.

Then dad’s gruff reprimand “Let that be a lesson to you. Don’t do that again.”

We dutifully continued crying until he left the room. Once he was gone we looked at each other incredulously, “What the hell was that”? And I have to admit we kind of giggled in relief.

We felt that we had ducked a great big bullet for sure. But, we never jumped on the bed again.

But despite this I was, for a time, a spanker. I thought I had child rearing all figured out. Simply appeal to their logic. It didn’t occur to me that four year olds had no logic. They only knew what they had learned from their parents.

While it’s true that I had two children as soon as I got married I’m still not sure why I thought spanking my kids was going to help discipline them. It seemed my temper was way out of control. My spankings were unmerciful.

Then one day just after I had spanked my oldest, who was only six at the time, and he was crying in his room, it dawned on me.

What in the hell was I doing? This was only making things worse. Would I want to get beat up every time I did something that I may not even have known was wrong?

I didn’t spank any of my kids again. It’s true that I became a yeller for a while. Oh, and a thrower. I broke a lot of my stuff throwing it into a wall, but not the kids.

It took a few years but eventually I realized how useless it all was and how crazy and out of control I looked when I let my temper take over.

I don’t know if it was wisdom or just age, but I’ve finally become more easy-going and, I hope, easier to be around. In all fairness, I still lose my temper, but finally it doesn’t control me and my behavior.

Now I realize actually how hard it had been for my dad. He had overcome the violence and horror he had experienced. The balance between effective discipline and parental love is a very delicate one.

To Spank, Or Not To Spank was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To say WWII was a tumultuous time is, of course, an understatement. Events during that time though are what brought my parents together. Dad was an Army paratrooper and mom worked at a munitions plant in the same city where he had come for combat training. They met at a USO dance and after a whirlwind romance tied the knot in Fort Benning, Georgia on New Year’s Day, 1942.

Just days later dad was on his way to Europe until September of 1945.

It must have been a great reunion when he got back because I was born six months later.

Wait a minute?! I thought it took nine months to make a baby.

Maybe I was premature. I was the first after all. Nope. I was mom’s biggest baby at nearly eight pounds.

There had to be a reasonable explanation for it right? I was sure time would tell. And boy has it ever.

After I was born my sister came along about a year later. Then a brother another year after that. Mom was on a roll. Two years after my brother came another sister and two more brothers in the next four years to round out our little group.

That was pretty typical family size in the ‘50’s. I, being the oldest, was the first to graduate from high school and shortly after graduation I join the military. As a matter of fact, I was the only sibling to join any branch of the military. I really respected what my dad, and many other dads like him, had sacrificed to win that terrible war.

As time passed I began to notice a troubling trend as all my siblings matured; they were all tall. My sisters were in the 5’7” range and my brothers were all close to 6’. I barely broke 5’6” in my dress shoes.

And they were all dark like both my mom and dad. I was blond and blue eyed. Surely it had something to do with some distant relative. After all, I did take after my mom’s side of the family.

But that assumption didn’t soothe my growing suspicions either.

As we’ve aged the differences have become even more pronounced. My siblings have had cataracts, bad backs, heart problems and each of them has grey hair. Me? No cataracts, solid back, no heart problems and my hair is still light brown. I’m a real outlier. I’d really like to meet the milkman.

In 1987, after my dad had passed away, mom gave me a small facsimile of his honorable discharge from the army. It confirmed what I had thought all along. Dad had been discharged on the 26th of September 1945. I was born in mid-April of 1946.

So let’s count that out: October, November, December, January, February, March and half of April. Maybe it was fast gestation because of the war. But probably not.

Another puzzling concern was that my next younger brother was named after my dad. He was the junior instead of me, as would have been the tradition.

The more I analyzed these inconsistencies, the more anxious I became about confronting my mother. But I really wanted to know why I was so different. It wasn’t just the differences in appearance either. I was treated differently.

My brothers went fishing and hunting with dad but I never felt included. I once asked my younger sister what she thought it was. She said she was told that it was because I was “special”. Whatever that meant.

It wasn’t going to be easy to ask her. She hadn’t been doing well since dad died and suffered with debilitating osteoporosis complicated by the juvenile rickets she had contracted while growing up through the Depression.

“Mom,’’ I began, “I’ve noticed that dad had only been home six months when I was born. Can you tell me about that?”

She kindly gave the most ambiguous answer she could. She looked me right in the eyes and said, “We have always considered you our son.”

What the hell did she mean by that?

Was I a war refugee dad had dragged home from Europe? Had I secretly been adopted by them? Was mom my mom and dad wasn’t my dad?

Not sure if I was ready to know the truth, I accepted her bizarre response and didn’t push. And now that she’s gone, I’ll never be able to get a full explanation from her.

However, with the advent of modern DNA testing maybe I can get a little more information about my true heritage. Recently my daughter had her DNA tested. My entire family on my dad’s side is from the Czech Republic so I should have a fairly high percentage of Eastern Europe or Bohemia. Right? Or as I joke, “I was Czechoslovakian until 1992 and now I’m only Czech.”

Of course my daughter was happy to share her results with me. As far back as we can go in our genealogy my dad’s line is Czech. The amount of Czech in her DNA results? NINE percent.

That doesn’t add up for someone whose grandfather immigrated from there.

Although the rest of her results were consistent with my mom’s side of the family, this only deepens the mystery.

It’s also telling that every time I’ve shown some friends pictures of me and my siblings they always say I look nothing like them.

I wonder why.

Did my mom have an affair?

Did my dad know I was his? Did he care?

I have asked myself on several occasions, “Does it really matter?”. Sure my dad and I were never very close but he was my dad. He provided material and emotional support for me and was a great example of a man worth emulating.

He never said, “I love you, son”, but he did express his pride for my career choices and for being a good dad to my own kids.

I may not ever know if I was his, but I know he loved and treated me like I was.

And to me, that’s all that has ever mattered.

Did Mama Have a Boyfriend? was originally published in P.S. I Love You on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I was raised in a culture of preparedness. The prudence of canning fresh fruit and vegetables, having barrels of wheat and molasses on hand was constantly preached. At least a couple of years’ worth just to be safe.

Later savings was encouraged, at least three months’ worth and prescription medications if you could arrange it. And of course the one commodity that we all need, toilet paper.

As times have changed and family farms or even small urban gardens have disappeared we have come to rely more on case lot sales from our local grocery stores. Bottled water has been added to the inventory since access to fresh water, even from streams and rivers, has diminished.

More recently we can add military MRE’s, dehydrated and freeze dried meals to the mix if you can afford them. Most recently I hear they now make a home freeze dryer to package all your favorite homemade meals. Even ice cream if you like.

I had a neighbor who actually buried a 500 gallon water tank in their back yard and purchased several solar ovens “just in case”.

I don’t think this a bad idea at all and there are a lot of resources available to help you with proposed inventories for home preparedness kits from the 3 day emergency kit to those for extended periods of time.

Like anything else though some people can get carried away. We’ve all heard about the survivalist in the northwest who set up whole communities away from society. “Doomsdayers” their sometimes referred to.

When I was in Germany I had a very good German friend who was old enough to have lived through the economic upheaval between the world wars. He was lucky though. He lived on a farm. His family barn had crystal chandeliers, expensive paintings hanging on the walls and fancy rugs on the ground for the animals to walk on.

All of this was bartered by starving people for eggs and a few potatoes. A statement from 1924 demonstrates how bad things were. “Workmen are given their pay twice a day now — in the morning and in the afternoon, with a recess of a half-hour each time so that they can rush out and buy things — for if they waited a few hours the value of their money would drop so far that their children would not get half enough food to feel satisfied”.

That type of hyperinflation probably won’t happen again but it reinforces the need to be prepared and the “luxury” of having your own resources and especially at least a home garden or adequate food storage. Gold won’t matter, money in the bank won’t matter, food and water will.

But I think there’s another aspect that is often overlooked when considering home preparedness. How physically fit are you?

You may have all the latest and greatest in home storage, financial preparedness, emergency kits and a family plan for the unforeseen but can you last more than 24 hours under extreme conditions.

If you haven’t missed a meal in 40 years, and you look it, are you prepared for rationing or dehydrated food? Do you have the physical strength to put up a tent or maybe hike 10 miles carrying a heavy pack? In extreme circumstances can you effectively defend your family?

I’m not saying Rambo tough but at least fit enough to run 50 yards and do about 20 pushups and sit ups. If your kids use your belt for a hoola hoop maybe you should consider reducing your intake just a little. I always liked the half rations rule. Only eat half of what’s put on your plate, especially at restaurants. You might be surprised what that will do for your waistline overall health.

Walking is a great exercise. The health benefit between walking and jogging is negligible so just take half an hour and go for a fast paced walk. In bad weather go to the nearest mall for your walk.

Life in this country is easy for most and pretty laid back but there are many benefits that come from being prepared. Not just the ability to withstand a natural or personal disaster or even something like a job layoff, but with a minimal amount of effort and discipline, some good health benefits too.

Yesterday was a day of introspection. I was with a very dear friend and he had some interesting questions for me. He’s considerably younger than I and wanted to know if I had a bucket list and how I felt about being old. You know, did I feel like it was too late to even have a bucket list, any regrets, did I even make plans anymore?

I had to stop and think about that for a few moments. I guess I have an unofficial bucket list. Places I’d like to see, things I’d like to try. I see people all the time that are old, I mean really old, doing skydiving and even bungee jumping. Of course these are things I probably wouldn’t do when I was younger.

Age does have its privileges, and I don’t mean just the senior discount at a restaurant. My responsibilities certainly aren’t what they used to be. The kids are raised, my job I could do in my sleep and I get enough money every month to more than meet my needs.

But, things don’t work as well as they used to either. It’s kind of cruel of Mother Nature to bring you to a point where you have the freedom to do all the things you’ve always wanted to but now you don’t have the energy or sometimes even the health to do them.

I’ve never been much of a planner I have to admit. I’m more of a take it as it comes sort of guy. I’ve been around the world in the northern hemisphere so I’d like to see the world south of the equator. There are a few tropical island beaches I’d like to enjoy also.

I have to ask myself though, “Have I become too passive”? Has life lost its thrill for me? I did earn a black belt in taekwondo when I was 72 but now I hardly go to class. I’ve been doing more writing, which I enjoy, and more drawing. But they’re hardly high adventure activities.

I think I may be in a rut. There are a few observations I’ve come to realize though. When I was in high school, like most teenagers, I observed how “square” my parents were.

Their corny music, over dressing just to go to dinner, spending the weekends fishing or doing yard work. Boring. I wasn’t going to be like that. No siree, I would stay hip and up with the times.

I’ve come to realize that even though I am the same person I’ve always been, it’s the following generations that have changed. I find myself saying the same thing my parents said, “What’s wrong with these kids today?” and “When I was young…….”.

I’ve understood for a long time that there are two universal laws. Things change, and people resist change. You can get stuck in the culture you’re raised in.

For example, when I was in Pakistan it surprised me how backward the people were, even the Pakistani military officers I worked with.

I observed an officer struggling with something as simple as a ringer type mop bucket. He couldn’t seem to grasp the concept of locking the ringer rollers together before he tried to crank the wet mop through them.

I’m pretty savvy with computers having been brought up during the computer evolution. All the way from working with an IBM that was vacuum tube based and took up three stories of a building to the modern cell phones.

But when I sit in a waiting room next to a three year old and watch him poke, swipe and manipulate his phone to play video games I realize that the culture they’re being raised in is a technological miracle compared to mine. I almost feel like that Pakistani officer with the mop bucket.

Some days I feel like just sitting on the front porch and whittling. But that would be a waste of the health and well-being that I do have.

I’m 73 years old, still have all my hair with very little grey, weight is good, take some medication for blood pressure, no heart problems, no cancer, no arthritis and I can still train and teach martial arts, work a full time job and find joy in waking up every morning. My family is healthy and I have some really good friends.

Maybe it’s time to put together an official bucket list and start planning my life more than a week in advance. I never did finish that college degree or see Hawaii.

My friend suggested the first step might be getting my passport. Just as sort of an incentive to use it. I think that’s sound advice.

It’s been pointed out to me that Moses didn’t start his ministry until he was eighty and Colonel Sanders didn’t franchise his first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant until he was 62. I guess it’s never too late.