My Family

This is my Family.  There has been an addition of another spouse and more children since this picture was taken.  The little boy is now 15 years old and not so little any more.  Can you guess who I am related to?  Go ahead guess.  Forget what you know about me.  Who would you think I grew up with?.

Here is the most recent pic I have of our family.  My younger brother is getting married, but we are only missing 4 Grandbabies.

 

When strangers see the picture they think it is a family of girls.  I see why, you see red hair and assume, but the family I grew up with are the three boys in the back. I am the "big-boned" redhead between the boys. I never had a sister and I think it has affected my thinking process, of course my mother was not a girlie girl either. She likes to look good and boy, oh boy she likes to shop, but she doesn't pour her time and energy into fashion or concerning herself with what other people thought was fashionable. Which is quite a bubble to grow up in considering we lived in the Hollywood area, my Father worked in the TV and Movie studios.  What you were perceived to own was who you are.  He moved us to California to become a rock & roll star and we were surrounded by the lifestyle that comes with the area, the materialism was and still is rampant.

The two older boys are twins. They are 4 years older then me while my younger brother is 3 years behind me, so we never saw each other at school.  I was on my own there.  I remember when a strange man came to our apartment in Burbank, Ca.  He gave me a bendy Pink Panther as a present and took my brothers away for the day.  It was then I found out that he was the father of the twins.  I remember being very upset to learn that they didn't belong to Dad and in reality they were only half-brothers.  How horrifying.  I believed he was there to change my family.  Pretty complex thinking for a six year old.  It is important to know that they have a different father because they did things and made decisions that were so foreign to me.  But when I looked at their father's behavior I understood better why they made their choices.  I didn't have to worry about him.  The boys father wasn't in their lives much and they have to deal with that.  I had a steady home life which I am so grateful for because I am known for a very hard little heart and it would have turned to stone if my parents had divorced.

Here is my younger brother.  Everyone thought he was the cutest thing on the planet with his curly red hair.  We fought like cats and dogs.  I didn't think he was so special.  I thought he was given everything and everyone loved him.  The boys had the difficult task of having me for a sister.  I can't speak for them and I won't.  I will only write what I felt and still feel today.  That they have a boys club, with a sign on the door that says "No Girlz Allowed!"  I hear of them meeting for food and to watch movies.  They had game nights every week that I was never invited to.  I was never included and that is not an exaggeration.  I understand.  Who wants their sister tagging along and an ugly one at that, but it feels more like they are embarrassed to know me.

My younger brother has good reason to resent me.  He was tortured following me in school.  I was a target.  My school life was a living hell.  I would make myself sick with the stress of it and I thought it would be over when I graduated, but no.  As soon as they heard my brother's last name he was marred with my reputation and suffered abuse for being related to me.

And here are my parents.  My mother was married before, which shocks me all the time because she is the most loving and sweet person.  She lets my dad have his temper which I don't care for, but he is a strange mixture of pure Italian and Connecticut Yankee.  He grew up in a mixed marriage where he had the screaming, loud Italians on one side and the proper upper crust on the other.  He spent his life on a farm that was built in 1797 and is a museum unto its self.  If you read the book 1776 George Washington describes the Connecticut Yankee and it isn't that flattering.  They were more concerned about their homes then fighting the Revolutionary war and it frustrated the future president. I tell you this because I have come to learn over the years that I am my father's daughter.  My traits come from the stoic Peck line.  I look at my mother's side of the family and I am completely baffled by their behavior.  I knocked personalities with her family as I grew up since she had 8 children in her family who all got married and had a combined 27 kids while my father only has one brother who never had any children.

My younger brother is more like Mom and it is funny that my mother and I are the best of friends and you can say the same thing about my father and brother.

My parents are very loving.  I am so grateful that I don't have horror stories within my own family.  My Mother was my savior and best friend.  I am shunned by society for one reason or another and my mother let me be myself, even if I was rough around the edges.  She encouraged me to entertain myself through projects.  I learned how to be creative because she wasn't afraid to have a terrible mess through out the house.  She started making felt dolls and as I got older I helped with her business giving me some strange and obscure skills sets. It provided me with money and since I am not good at interviews or people I was able to avoid getting a real job.

We have opposite creative styles , but we are able to work well with one another.  And I am not joking, the lessons started in youth served to keep me sane and still do.

My brothers are all married to wonderful women.  We talk often of how lucky they are to have the families they have been blessed with.  Right now a twin just had his fourth child, the other twin has three children and the youngest almost has three.

I am single.