I Taught Myself to Fear

I began young, without understanding
that Mother found herself overwhelmed.
She had lived with parents sixteen years,
began college rooming with her older sister,
moving back a few miles from parents,
rooming with an older woman,
relying on her father for transportation,
then living with her folks until she married,
living with relatives and her soldier husband
a year before he shipped out leaving her
and a newborn with her parents and his.
The war over, the family together
until my birth when Daddy was absent
for training then traveling weekdays,
Mother mothered alone with a four-year-old and me,
and two years later a third little girl.
I learned well from an overwhelmed mother,
garnering insecurity, loneliness, fear.
I was Daddy's little boy, learning that role,
disdaining dolls, wanting firetrucks instead.
From Daddy I got an inability to remember names,
with consternation, embarrassment, fear.
I looked like my Grandmom whose antics
embarrassed my proper mother, so I internalized
Mother's disdain for her as mine. Grandmom was pudgy;
so was I, my unacceptable weight validated by
puberty diet drugs. Consternation, embarrassment, fear
came easily as A's weren't enough, should have been higher.
Try as I might, the shortcomings stood out
as I ate through disappointments, embarrassment and oops.