ii. Childhood: How His Mother Brought Him Up - Two Women And Two Unconverging Lines
ii. Childhood: How His Mother Brought Him Up
He was born in a middle upper class family. The term ‘middle upper class’ is an odd term, but it describes his family’s financial status more accurately than other terms. The financial status of the family would change in his mid 20s though. He basically had model parents. His father was busy working; he traveled regularly on business but he took time for his family also. His mother worked part time at his company, but he remembered that he spent a lot of time with her. In addition to summer vacations and winter vacations, his mother took him and his sister to go visit her mother’s side family in California. He had a fond memory of that. He was put into a swimming club as soon as he got old enough to be able to learn how to swim. He was 4 or 5 years old when he started. His mother drove him to the swimming club and picked him up. He seemed to remember that there was not a day that he went there alone or with another adult caretaker. Later on, he was put into Boy Scout. Like many children, he occasionally wanted to eat fast food; his mother took him there not frequently but occasionally to satisfy him. But, more often, his parents took him, his little sister and his grandparents who lived with them to fairly expensive restaurants. Later on, this helped him to develop cultivated taste in food. There were a number of fine restaurants in Great Neck, but his family spent many weekends, half day and weekday evenings in the city and they typically dined out at upscale restaurants. He did not turn out to be one of those who complained that coffee tasted like dirt and drank sweet sodas and preferred to eat fast food than exquisite meals served at recherché restaurants. He appreciated that he did not turn out to be a, what he called, ‘American peasant’ who was incapable of understanding that Americans’ sweet tooth was largely a product of sugar saturated food market and that they were simply addicted to fast food and other types of similar food products rather than being able to appreciate fine cuisines. At the same time, he did not turn out to be a spoiled child who never cooked or washed dishes. He knew how to cook; he did not mind washing dishes. Retrospectively speaking, he could hardly find faults in his parent’s parenting.
As a child, he was attached to his mother. Not uncommon, but he recalled that he was much more attached to her than most of his friends and acquaintances. He did not have memories of those who were remotely close to him compared to how close he was to his mother. Retrospectively speaking, there was no question of how strong the bond between the two was; two were almost inseparable. But as he was about to enter junior high school, the divide between two were being created. Diminutive and almost unrecognizable divide at the beginning, but as time passed, he was taking farther and father distance from his mother.
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Ten years later, he met a girl. She was a stranger and there was no prior relationship between him and her. But, as time passed, he was being more and more attracted to and attached to her. Contrary to the development of the relationship that he had with his mother.
