There was no real emotional connection between our parents and us the kids, so much so that I do not feel like I have a mother and father, I don’t even know what that feeling would be like. when our parents told us to do something, it was more my father telling us, we just did it out of fear of what he would do if we don’t, and of course getting a beating from his big hands or belt was also pretty common.
if I would miss the bus to school, & as i mentioned before, my father never had a car or even a driver license, & niether did my mother, he would never send me with a taxi, but rather take his belt off and give me a good beating and then make me wait for the kindergarten bus that went later, and I would have to go through the embarrassment and torture again from the teachers for arriving late in school. so sometimes I would actually hide out all day in the woods we had near our house until school was over in order not to go through all that. non of my teachers or pricipal ever called home if i was missing, evenif it was a few days, i would just need to come up with an excuse when i got back, which usually was that i didnt feel well.
my father is a cold personality -he was born in germany after all-, my mother though did know better but chose to follow my father blindly instead of being there for the cildren, and didn’t fall behind on the disconnection emotionally. she wasnt much on giving us a beating but rather tell my father everything so he can. once when I refused to come in when she called, she came out and dragged me in, and when I pulled back she pulled so strong that she pulled my arm out of place. I remember I was in extreme agony for a few days. she did remember that incident very well and she didn’t try to do that again.
on the other hand though here is another story showing that it does not always have to be a physical beating. so one morning before going to school I found i had no clean shirt so I told my mother -who was doing laundry at the time-. I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but I was a little boy. she pulled out a wet shirt from the washing machine and placed it nearby, as I stood around waiting for her to put it in the dryer I realized I was going to miss my bus, so I made sure she notices me standing there and waiting for her, she didnt react and compleatly ignored me. after a while of her dealing with the laundry she finally turns around to me and starts yelling at me for missing my bus. turns out she expected me to go downstairs and put the shirt in the dryer on my own. I’m not sure I even knew how to do that at the time, so as a punishment she kicked me out of the house made me stand outside while all the people passing by near our house -on the shortcut that was right there- are all looking at me half undressed, until my father came home and I got the beating from him.
needless to say I could never expect anything from them, and slowly but surely had to figure out how to survive on my own.
as far as my siblings goes, it was like living in a Institution that -to be honest- none of the other kids really likes you. and i always felt like the fifth wheel at best, or like no one wants me and I’m just a burden and bother to everyone.so here and there i was allowed to play with them, but I much more prefered reading on my own. but since we hardly had any books at home, every one we did have I read thousands of times. whenever I would find a book anywhere else, i would read and not put it down untill i finnished, as long as it was just novels -fiction was much better then reality- or sometimes also some interesting nature or history. when I once went to my aunt’s house and found a whole book closet I didn’t leave until I finished the whole closet, not literally but I did spend every extra minute I had over there reading, or brought some books home with me, as one of my sister’s in the later years pointed out, “when everyone was playing outside I was with my nose in a book”.