OP here, we suspect that my father suffered from some sort of PTSD as a result of his combat experiences and that he handled this well while flying - maybe it was his coping mechanism. The drink came on hard after that, and we kids were out of the house. My mother struggled for years with it - until the day my Dad died. She attended Al-Anon, and she has a hard time accepting that alcoholism is a disease. However, despite this, she misses my father every day. They shared a love of sports and football and it was a basis for conversations that she says are harder to have. Every morning before he left the house, my father would leave a cartoon or other article that struck him with a note for my mother to read when she got up. It is these little rituals that she misses. We do not know what demons my father wrestled with. As a younger man, he was involved in covert operations and the only thing he ever revealed about his experiences over Laos in 1968 - and this to my uncle - was that he went on a rescue mission and was too late, "they were all dead."

I remember two experiences with my father, one while he was alive and another after he died. I attended his Naval Academy class reunion with him in the late 80s, and met a classmate of his - a USMC veteran - whom my father saved in Vietnam. That man told me that if "it weren't for my father, I woudn't be here nor would my children."

After my father died, my mother received a condolence note from a classmate of my father. The gentleman had been flying a VO-67 observation mission over Laos in February 1968 when his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed in the jungle. The writer noted that my father was the "pilot of the Jolly Green that plucked him out of the jungle in 1968." My mother has said my father was a different man when he returned from Vietnam. Perhaps it was the war that did get him in the end.

OP your post is like pearls strewn before swine. It's not you, it's them.

Anyway, my mom wasn't up to much. She never met a challenge she didn't avoid or just completely fail to negotiate. I don't know why she is like that, but life is just too much for her and she won't play. Nobody knows why and she isn't telling or possibly cannot articulate.

But my grandmothers, wow. They are my role models. It isn't because they were these goddesses or so privileged, lucky or blessed, but because of the incredible qualities of willpower and perseverence they brought to every challenge. They had virtues - strengths, powers, positive qualities that they cultivated in themselves and brought to bear on their lives. Has nothing to do with class or status because they didn't have any of that in society's eyes.

So I get what you are saying.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, we never wanted for anything. My father died, however, leaving my Mom with a lot of debts. He became an alcoholic in his waning years - probably to fill the void left by having to stop flying - and eventually he let his law practice fail. Fortunately for her, he left a good pension and decent retirement behind and she was able to settle a wrongful death suit that helped with the other bills.

If you visit the Udvar - Hazey Center, you can find my Dad's name on the memorial to recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). He was a complicated man, but he helped to raise three strong, independent children and I am grateful he was my father!

Nice story, pp. Thanks for sharing.

You have done quite a lot of romanticizing of your childhood and your parent's marriage. You see them as archetypes, not people. I bet your parents, were they alive and willing to be honest, would have completely different perspectives on the narrative you are spinning.

Happy people don't descend into alcoholism and failure; if his life was so much wrapped up into flying that it had made him a miserable person when it ended, then he never had a happy, well-rounded life. And I doubt your mom did, either.

I suspect the pp is not romanticizing her father but accepting both the good and bad he brought to the family. My mom and dad also had their faults, including alcoholism (unaddressed in one but the other was in recovery), and my mom in particular drove me crazy at times. But with the benefit of hindsight I can appreciate a lot of what I learned from her, eg, she taught me the importance of giving back to my community. Being clear-sighted about your parents isn't the same as romanticizing them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, we never wanted for anything. My father died, however, leaving my Mom with a lot of debts. He became an alcoholic in his waning years - probably to fill the void left by having to stop flying - and eventually he let his law practice fail. Fortunately for her, he left a good pension and decent retirement behind and she was able to settle a wrongful death suit that helped with the other bills.

If you visit the Udvar - Hazey Center, you can find my Dad's name on the memorial to recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). He was a complicated man, but he helped to raise three strong, independent children and I am grateful he was my father!

Nice story, pp. Thanks for sharing.

You have done quite a lot of romanticizing of your childhood and your parent's marriage. You see them as archetypes, not people. I bet your parents, were they alive and willing to be honest, would have completely different perspectives on the narrative you are spinning.

Happy people don't descend into alcoholism and failure; if his life was so much wrapped up into flying that it had made him a miserable person when it ended, then he never had a happy, well-rounded life. And I doubt your mom did, either.

Anonymous wrote:Well, we never wanted for anything. My father died, however, leaving my Mom with a lot of debts. He became an alcoholic in his waning years - probably to fill the void left by having to stop flying - and eventually he let his law practice fail. Fortunately for her, he left a good pension and decent retirement behind and she was able to settle a wrongful death suit that helped with the other bills.

If you visit the Udvar - Hazey Center, you can find my Dad's name on the memorial to recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). He was a complicated man, but he helped to raise three strong, independent children and I am grateful he was my father!

Nice story, pp. Thanks for sharing.

Well, we never wanted for anything. My father died, however, leaving my Mom with a lot of debts. He became an alcoholic in his waning years - probably to fill the void left by having to stop flying - and eventually he let his law practice fail. Fortunately for her, he left a good pension and decent retirement behind and she was able to settle a wrongful death suit that helped with the other bills.

If you visit the Udvar - Hazey Center, you can find my Dad's name on the memorial to recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). He was a complicated man, but he helped to raise three strong, independent children and I am grateful he was my father!

Anonymous wrote:@20:42 My parents were not rich, but they did give us the things we they could afford. We all had part time jobs in HS and I worked through college. Thought my childhood was pretty typical for a white middle class kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. The rich kids in my HS all drove fancy sports cars to school. I used my parents Buick Century station wagon. My sister worked to buy her own Nissan Sentra. I was blessed to have the childhood I did, but not privileged!

Well, it depends on how you defined privileged. If you define it has being in the top 20% of incomes, sounds like you were there. If you define it as top 0.01%, no you were not there. I think if you did a random poll of all Americans, including all incoming groups, most would choose 20% as being "privileged" and 50% as being "blessed".

I'm sure most of us go through our real lives getting stuff done and not complaining, just like your mom, OP. Most of us wouldn't vent in front of our kids. We pile it on in this forum, because it's a release.

My mother was also a military spouse, and she managed to take care of us and the household, whatever country we lived in. She presented a perfect facade. We military families are very good at that. After we were grown, she voiced how much she'd hated it, and she was very bitter. She's also kind of a nut job, and in many ways, I go out of my way to avoid being like her.

I've talked to a lot of women of my mother's generation, and they got shit done without complaint, but they were far from happy about everything. They just didn't have Interwebz forums.

@20:42 My parents were not rich, but they did give us the things we they could afford. We all had part time jobs in HS and I worked through college. Thought my childhood was pretty typical for a white middle class kid growing up in the 70s and 80s. The rich kids in my HS all drove fancy sports cars to school. I used my parents Buick Century station wagon. My sister worked to buy her own Nissan Sentra. I was blessed to have the childhood I did, but not privileged!

I have struggled most of my life not to be like my mother. She was brilliant but doubted herself, never finished her PhD, blamed her lack of success on my father and on having kids, spent most of her life blaming others for things that should have been in her control, but she was emotionally damaged by her own childhood. She was crazy, veering between controlling/overprotective and totally checked out/depressed. She didn't work but also didn't run the household with any particular efficiency and I was making dinner, doing laundry, and taking care of things by the time I was 13. And she complained about my father incessantly. Still does, even though they've been divorced now for nearly 30 years!!!

so, not every mother/earlier generation is a role model.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh, my father had his faults - as did my mother. I just don't remember my mother ever blaming my father for whatever misfortune - if any - she suffered in life. They were a team -both economically and as parents. My father coached the Little League Teams - even had his law firm sponsor them - my mother was the Girl Scout/Cub Scout leader. Mom took us to art museums, exhibtions and concerts (although I once went with her - just me, not my brother or sister - to the Orange Bowl for a Dolphins game). We went to baseball games with Dad. We spent summers on Cape Cod with Mom and on the Jersey Shore with Dad. And it was always a thrill when Dad's AF Reserve Squadron buzzed the house! I could see how the power in the engines of those aircraft woould strike fear into the enemies of America. It was just awesome.

As for the AF Reserve helping to pay for college, at a minimum of 40 hours flight time for month Dad brought in an additional $2000 per month (more if there were more flight hours) in today's dollars. That would pay the tuition for one kid at school, and he got to do it while doing something he loved and that provided a valuable service to the nation. There was once an ABA Journal article he had that profiled lawyers in the military reserves. Most of those profiled were doing JAG work - extensions of their civilian lives. My father flew plans - every weekend if he could. In the end, I think this is what gave his life meaning. He loved it so much.

Somehow, the men and women who raised understood their duty to themselve, their children and their nation. I am not so sure my or the upcoming generation understands anything beyond their own selfish wishes.

How nice to have such an priviliged childhood. Bless your heart.

Solid middle class upbringing. My parents drove old domestic or Japanese cars and had a modest house. They did not care about what their car or house "said" about them. Neither do I. I shared a room with brother. Kids do not need their own rooms!

Not the PP you're responding to but you need to go back and re-read your post. You were definitely priveliged - and it's not just about the money. You don't have a clue how different your childhood was from most people.

Without even bother to rrad the drivel of the OP and upon reading only the title, I puked in my mouth.

Well, they were hostile towards the white man crossing the plains 'cause he wanted to take their lands.

Hostile Indians? All of what you write is revisionist history.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh, my father had his faults - as did my mother. I just don't remember my mother ever blaming my father for whatever misfortune - if any - she suffered in life. They were a team -both economically and as parents. My father coached the Little League Teams - even had his law firm sponsor them - my mother was the Girl Scout/Cub Scout leader. Mom took us to art museums, exhibtions and concerts (although I once went with her - just me, not my brother or sister - to the Orange Bowl for a Dolphins game). We went to baseball games with Dad. We spent summers on Cape Cod with Mom and on the Jersey Shore with Dad. And it was always a thrill when Dad's AF Reserve Squadron buzzed the house! I could see how the power in the engines of those aircraft woould strike fear into the enemies of America. It was just awesome.

As for the AF Reserve helping to pay for college, at a minimum of 40 hours flight time for month Dad brought in an additional $2000 per month (more if there were more flight hours) in today's dollars. That would pay the tuition for one kid at school, and he got to do it while doing something he loved and that provided a valuable service to the nation. There was once an ABA Journal article he had that profiled lawyers in the military reserves. Most of those profiled were doing JAG work - extensions of their civilian lives. My father flew plans - every weekend if he could. In the end, I think this is what gave his life meaning. He loved it so much.

Somehow, the men and women who raised understood their duty to themselve, their children and their nation. I am not so sure my or the upcoming generation understands anything beyond their own selfish wishes.

How nice to have such an priviliged childhood. Bless your heart.

Solid middle class upbringing. My parents drove old domestic or Japanese cars and had a modest house. They did not care about what their car or house "said" about them. Neither do I. I shared a room with brother. Kids do not need their own rooms!