In life are we given circumstance, and we make choices — or does fate somehow lead us there anyway? January 3rd marks the day my father died of bone cancer at the age of 29 just two months before I was born.
My mother could not remember from all of the stress of his illness and death when I was really due. So her doctor recommended that she would be induced into labor to have me. My mother chose March 14th, two days before my brother’s birthday.
At 5:56 p.m., on a Wednesday, I made my debut in small town outside of Philadelphia. In the hospital while my mother was recovering, there at the foot of her hospital bed, these instructions were written in large letters: “Husband is deceased so mother may visit.”
The doctor also recommended not to breastfeed to prevent the depression and stress hormones that could possibly be transferred to me. So I was bottle-fed.
My mother was now a widow with three young children. My sister was four, my brother was two and I was a few days old. It was not until two years later that I was to meet my stepfather, who became my father who raised me.
When I was almost three years old, my mother a widow, wed my stepfather, a widower. My new dad taught me how to ride my bike and cast away my training wheels. Even today this image is as clear as if it happened yesterday.
I am either blessed or cursed with an incredible memory since it’s as if as soon as my eyes and ears were working, everything began being recorded into my memory.
January is now a very sad month for me since this past January 3rd marks the anniversary of my father’s death, and January 22nd marks the anniversary of my stepfather’s death who raised me as his son. I was 25 when my stepfather died.
As years have passed, I have thought about many things. But one thing stands out in my mind, which makes me think things are predestined like a blueprint.
During the 1990s, when I was taking care of my mom with her diabetes, I found a Vietnamese acupressurist that someone recommended in Silver Lake. One day as he gave my mom her treatment, and I got a treatment as well, he asked me if I wanted him to do my astrology chart and I said sure.
Several weeks later when we went back to him, he gave me a packet of papers he had handwritten that had a reference to Chinese Astrology. There on the front page at the bottom was a reference to me being a Tiger sign in Chinese Astrology but under that it said: “Fatherless, Solitary.”
As I stared at the word: “Fatherless,” I kept thinking it was true, I was born into this world without a father, then got another one and lost the second one in my mid-twenties. And the other word: “Solitary.” How does this work? Even today as I write this column, I have somehow ended up still single.
How did it come to pass that this Vietnamese man’s gesture to do an astrology chart would bear those two words? How did he know? Or how did this happen this way? Was it predestined that I would end up fatherless twice?
Years ago, in the mid-1990s, a friend put me on a list with other friends to have a private group reading with the medium James Van Praagh who talks to your dead relatives. So during the session he turns towards me and says: “I’ve got both of your fathers here. Your genetic father is on my right and your father who raised you is on my left.
And the reading continued, and I was thinking: This is how it was supposed to be… I guess.
Jerome Cleary is a columnist for the LA Independent and lives in West Hollywood. He can be reached at jeromecleary@aol.com.
