Growing up a mystery!

Reading Lynn’s growing up background amazed me. Clearly he didn’t take the “my parents are religious therefore I should rebel with every ounce of my being” approach that a lot of children of ministers take.
Whereas his parents were clearly very devoutly religious, mine shunned it from even before I was born. My father was raised Catholic and my mother Baptist. When his Catholic church refused to marry them because my mother was a divorced woman, my father turned his back on the church.
So I grew up in a household without religion. We had a single cross that hung on a wall, supposedly it had been blessed by the Pope, though I never had official confirmation of that and we buried my father with it.
We weren’t running around doing good works, and helping our community. My father took a $10,000 investment into his own business and fed, housed, and clothed us on it for nearly twenty years.
It’s so odd the perspective you gain on people long after they have died, and your childhood is completely gone, save only your memories.
Both my parents smoked until I was 17 years old (that was the year my father was diagnosed with emphysema, which killed him 5 ½ years later). My father’s habit when I was a kid was 4 beers a day. I don’t recall EVER seeing my father drunk though.
All that I remember of my father are sketchy memories, he loved ships, which is something I picked up I suppose. He loved sports, a habit I didn’t emulate. He was a devoted husband and father to his children. A strict disciplinarian to my siblings who by the time I came along preferred words to using a belt. He worked, he grocery shopped, in the summer he golfed.
My parents never dumped me off on anybody else, if I spent a night anywhere it was because I wanted too.
From the perspective of nearly 13 years since her death, I can tell you that my mother had a mental disorder. She was never treated for it, never sent to a shrink. Without professional diagnosis I can only guess it was either Bipolar disorder, or just severe depression. Considering she was mostly blind and largely deaf for most of her life, I guess that could be expected.
Whereas my father turned his back on the church, I think my mother continued to pray, true she couldn’t see well enough to read a bible, yet I would sometimes catch her saying well known phrases from it.
I have siblings, yet I grew up an only child. Anyone reading censuses would be highly confused, as in 1970 my parents lived with 4 children ranging in ages from 18 to 11, yet in 1980 they were living with only a single child, who was 9.
We never moved, I lived in the same house from being born until the age of 23. I guess I’ve made up for that by moving so many times as an adult.
I guess the only way I avoided the temptations of others in their teenage years was by not being popular at that time. Throughout most of high school I was a loner, preferring to just go, do my studying, come home and watch tv. A LOT OF TV!!!
I do try to help people, admittedly I could do more I suppose, volunteerism is supposed to be good for the soul. Anymore, I just go to work, come home, watch tv, and try to find ways to have fun. That seems to be enough to keep me busy.