I was always very offended when my relatives joked that I had been abandoned or mixed up in the maternity hospital because I did not look like my parents or grandparents. My parents, of course, were just joking, my older sister was joking too, but it was a different story with my father’s parents. They were happy with one granddaughter, and Grandpa, as far as I know, didn’t communicate with Dad for a few months because of my coming into the world. The reason was the extra expense of the baby. They didn’t want or like me as it was, and I was born swarthy, black-haired, with brown eyes, while my family was all blond and green-eyed.
My grandfather didn’t treat my mother well, so he suspected her of cheating and called me “the other guy’s grandson. While my older sister received my grandfather’s and grandmother’s support and love, while she was bought and pampered, they wouldn’t even take me on weekends. I grew up disliking them all the time, and no matter how much my parents supported me, I still felt out of place.
When I grew up and kind of got over it, and my grandparents on my dad’s side were gone, I didn’t get my hopes up. I was sure that they would bequeath the apartment to their only son, my dad. But they signed it over to my sister. Of course, she was older and already had a boyfriend, and I was just in college, and she needed the apartment more, but I think this is unfair. Why was she the only one who got the apartment?
For my grandfather’s sake, my father and I took a paternity test, and over time I even became more like my father, but that didn’t change anything for his folks. I was a stranger, and I was still a stranger.
I don’t understand why they didn’t like me the whole time. Had I done something wrong by just being born at the wrong time, not the way Grandpa wanted me to be?
