to raise doubts, but not enough to push her away. When Joe threatened her with a knife and slashed into every pillow on their bed, all this in an outburst over the proper way to bathe their son, she secretly made plans to leave.

There was no default divorce in those days. The process was painful and disruptive. My mother would have had a much more difficult time getting free had not Joe revealed the depth of his violent temper in court for the judge and clerks to see. She was so afraid of this man that she left the Midwest entirely, even after alimony and child support had been decreed, to make a new life for herself in the place she discovered seven years prior, as a runaway — California, the end of the rainbow for so many in those desperate times.

There are whole chapters of my mother's life I may never know that cover these years just before my conception and birth. She spoke of the struggle to support her son and herself, of praying on her knees for an entire night when Bob nearly died from an infection caused by a ruptured appendix,   of being utterly alone

and feeling abandoned. She would then go on to repeat all that again after she left my father, praying and struggling for me as well as Bob, now entering his adolescence with me in tow.

I spoke earlier of the lack of a strong adult male role model in my childhood. Suddenly thrust into that role as a teenager — much like my mother 20 years earlier with her siblings — Bob came close to filling that role model for me. However, inheriting Joe's quick temper and being so young and impatient, he was a poor substitute for an adult father. Mistakes were made, some of them severe. Fortunately for me, he also inherited our mother's compassion. As adults we became the best of friends, fully aware of all the events I've related in these pages and how they bound us together over a lifetime.

As a young man I was angry and resentful that my childhood was so marred by other people's mistakes. It took me a lifetime of making a few of my own to realize that none of us — now matter how well-intentioned or how well-equipped — can get through this life without stumbling and hurting others along the way. We have only to pause, examine and re-examine our motives and our actions to see this and hopefully make it right.