Growing Up Minicozzi

WARNING:  This is one of my serious essays.  It isn't funny.  You are welcome to read on, however.

You’d never know it to look at me now, but I was a shy, awkward, and unpopular child.  I got off to a bad start with the other kids and stayed that way throughout school and beyond.  I was never actively hated.  Nobody bullied me, at least most of the time.  But I was studiously ignored by the other kids and sometimes ridiculed.  I wasn’t invited to parties.  I never attended a dance, including proms.  I never had a date.  It never occurred to me that any boy would find me attractive.

I had no self-esteem whatsoever, some of which was due to my father’s verbal abuse, which was considerable.  He was an alcoholic, and when he had been drinking, he could get very mean with us.  To his friends, he was the life of the party.  He was verbally abusive to those of us he was supposed to love.  I thank God he never hit any of us.  He stuck to words, but he might as well have beat us because his words hurt, and they left emotional scars, some of which I am still trying to deal with at age 76.  He was a good man when he was sober, but he was a mean drunk as far as his family was concerned.

(No, Dad, I never played tackle for the 49ers.  I have always been a big girl and a big lady, but I was a GIRL, and I became a WOMAN.  Attacking my femininity because of my size was not cool.)

In my Dad’s defense, I have some good memories of him.  He would sometimes sit at the piano with me, and we would sing popular songs together.  He had a pleasant baritone voice, and it was fun to sing with him.  It was a good way of bonding.  We even had some nice talks sometimes.  So yes, there were good times, too.

My Dad passed away in his 50s from what started as lung cancer.  When he was in the hospital dying, I traveled back across the country to see him for one last time.  Cancer and chemotherapy had reduced him to skin and bones, and the full head of hair he always had was gone.  I would not have recognized him if I had not known who it was lying there in that bed.  At one point, I took his hand and held it.  I was never sure if he recognized me.  But I think he was waiting for me.  When I got back to my home in Boston, I was told he had passed on.  I couldn’t travel back across the country for his funeral, so I missed it.  But I’m glad I got to visit him in his last days, hold his hand, and maybe be recognized by him.

This started out to be about my school days, but I digressed.  That can happen sometimes.  Maybe my next essay will be about my school days.  Stay tuned.