Perpetual Dad/Son

On May 11, 1833, a baby boy named Frederick was given to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Phineas Freelander. Mom, Emilia, realized the maternal family rumors were true when her son was six–that’s when little Freddie began going around the cabin humming an old Bavarian folk song–the same old Bavarian folk song that her vater, now deceased, lullabied her to sleep with when she was a little girl. It was true that life had done an unworldly genealogical timeslip somehow, but a good one at least, because she got her baby and her vater rolled into one!

His grossmutter hinted at such family secrets every once in a while while playing with lad on the plank floor, gushing that “you look just as adorable as the day you were born mein kleiner Junge en Breslau, ächt!

Fred Freelander was doted on as he grew; married a gal from the county over named Bonnie Albright, and had a girl. He was killed in a Civil War battle on August 19, 1863, shot in the midsection, exploding his pancreas. His daughter Samantha, three and still in curls, wondered where Da-Da went all of a sudden. She still wondered this as she walked down the matrimonial aisle alone on her way to marry a man named James Jasper Burch when she was nineteen.

In the midnight shadows of April 30, 1883, Samantha gave birth to a boy named Jeremy; yet she realized something strange–her son was somehow also her Da-Da; she realized this because every once in a while, young Jem would slip up and call his ma SammyBananny because Da-Da used to call her that before he left to save the Union. It was one of the most distinct memories her baby mind remembered about him. Disciplining the lad was difficult–how do you punish the man who brought you into this world? Bonnie could paddle her son’s little hind end, but not her father’s.

Jeremy married a woman named Patricia Dinwittie at the turn of the century. Emil Conrad Burch was born in a blizzard on January 26, 1903. His first word spoken was ‘pip’. Pip was the pet name given to his mother as a child by her father who had died twenty years earlier.

Patty and SammyBananny treated the boy special: Emil’s birthday was a furnerial celebration of joy and tears, so happy that son/father/grandson was born/reborn. His Christmas stocking always had a few extra walnuts in it; t’was bulging with two oranges while the other kids only got one.

At age 25, Emil met and married Clara Swisher. They had a daughter named Maria who absolutely adored him. The happy Burch family was short-lived because Émil died at thirty of pancreatitis on June 22, 1933 and was buried in the town’s Lutheran graveyard.

Teenaged Maria sucked up life the best she could during a global economic collapse, angry now that Dad left them stranded in a dust bowl of debt and defeat. Mom, Clara, took in laundry; the bank took the house. They moved to the city where the widow found housecleaning work; she found a husband.

Maria and Harold Springer had four kids, all strung out. Paul, the last, born May 6, 1963 was an accident. When Little Pauli, at aged four, pestered his mother to “go visit my gave in the loontern gaveyard”, his Mom realized the awful family truth—now Dad shows up when Mom and I could have used his help way back when, she stewed.

Paul was never loved—neither Maria nor Clara wouldn’t dare make that mistake again!—was an age-anchor. “I’ll be raisin’ kids til I’m eighty, ” they moaned.

Paul married a girl named Carol Ann Goodson and moved halfway across the country. He died October 22, 1993 of pancreatic cancer at age thirty. His nine-year-old daughter, Alicia, distraught at his deathbed, thought Dad delirious when his final words to her were “see ya in twenty years, Mommy.”

By CraigE

From: United States