Narcissus

The first time I read father's autobiography, I was struck at how father was a complete and total narcissus!  The entire 1,100 pages completely revolved around him.  I scored about three lines, my sister - the golden girl - managed half a page, but one of his step sons about three pages, any of his eight wives - almost not even a mention.  The rest a highly fictional story.

Since my last post, I have now reread father's tome a second time and I have been struck, yet again, at what a complete narcissus father was!  Not like it should now be a surprise, only it is, due to the level of narcissism we are discussing here!  We are discussing mental illness levels. So, if father was a narcissus, then I thought I would read up on this subject on the internet.....

I did not know that narcissism is a variant of being a sociopath.  Sociopath I understand very well, I was diagnosed as such at 17 by the US military - whom then wanted me rather badly.  But, my father?  I also learned that psychopathy is a genetic disorder.  Great.

Now I am seeing his family in a new light.  Either of his parents passed this trait on to him.

Now I can understand the man whom could walk away from his family in Switzerland to support Hitler, the man whom could be married eight times thinking he was in love and often with more than one bride at a time.  Social convention meant nothing to him.  I could understand how he could have worked on atomic and hydrogen weapons with no flick of regret or doubt.  How his work on the V-3 (A-9) rocket and its purposed mass destruction was completely without understanding.  The Reich was his god, Hitler its prophet, my father its worshiper.

And yet this man had seen the slaughter of the tens of thousands at Dora, as the SS cleaned up all of the scientific workers - leaving very few for the Russians to capture.  It touched him enough that he converted to Judaism at the end of war.  It touched him enough that even to the end, he was seeking if there was a God or not - but he could never equate his life with the existence of the kind of god he sought.

I still have to wonder at some of what I know about my father.  Not the least of which is why did he write an autobiography that would be largely a work of fiction ..... ?

Deportation

In the world of politics, relations between America and France deteriorated tremendously - thanks to the US Ambassador, Sargent Shriver.  As read in the Stars and Stripes, as well as pieced together from adult conversations: Shriver had a son whom was 14 at the time.  Said kid in 1966 stole a car, went for a joyride and ended up killing an old woman walking along side the road.  DeGaulle confronted Shriver over this and the conversation turned ugly.  DeGaulle suggested that if the US could not control its children, then  maybe they needed to leave French soil by the end of 1967.  Shriver countered that if DeGaulle could not appreciate all the US was doing for France then perhaps the US needed to leave by May 1967.  DeGaulle then issued an order that all NATO facilities were to be closed as of April (26th as I remember) 1967.

Of course the French were outraged by this.  It was just more fuel for the French nationalist fires burning over America's entrance into the Vietnam conflict, a French territory.  Local villagers where I lived rose up in arms and slaughtered several of the NATO children living across the canal from us - amongst them my only English speaking friend.

Things had become so messy that by December 1966, we were escorted off French soil by machine gun toting policeman - all the way to the German border.  They were actually quite nice officers, had lunch with us, were very apologetic, etc.

Of course, change is evil and for those suffering with mental problems, change manifests evil.....  And father was not alone in getting a share of mother's difficulties.

France - Further Strain

Heeding his friends wisdom, father applied for  and got a posting to France.  His hope was to get mother to become less of a control freak and more dependent upon him.  Best laid plans as they say.

At the time, for some unknown reason, father utterly freaked out when we landed in France.  He went from normal to completely unable to speak for many weeks!  And he spoke French fluently, but with having lost his voice, we were dead in the water.  Something in father's past I assume caused this but I have no idea what stressed him to that level, just by landing in Paris.

Mother really did not do very well in France.  She refused to learn French, speak anything other than English and began rapidly becoming very 'odd' - like yelling at the French in English so they could hear her better.  Little things like leaving the house were only done when she was to drive to the nearest NATO base for shopping.  She formed no relations with any of the neighbors, except one old couple whom would watch my sister and I after school.  Yeah, odd.

My parents marriage must have begun deteriorating badly as father did some mighty odd things himself.  There were a series of 'accidents' which almost killed mother.  Were they accidents?  Or were they planned?  Mother was convinced that father was trying to kill her - the NATO police did not agree.  But, the grilling father got only made him more angry with her.

Within a short period of time, a kerosene heater failed and almost killed her due to carbon-monoxide poisoning.  Father was affected too but not near as bad as mother was.  Mistake, equipment failure or by design?

Father set a trip wire on the stairs which went up to the attic where mother hung the clothes in winter time.  She darn near broke her neck coming back down the stairs!  I know father did that because I saw him setting it but was too naive at the time to figure that one out!  The police never talked to me about that and I was ultimately blamed for it!  That was one was by design, which makes me wonder at the other incidents!.

A short time later, mother was driving to the local NATO base and one of the wheels came off of the car.  The only reason mother survived the crash was a tractor had pulled out onto the road and she slowed down from 60 to 20 before the parting of the wheel from the car.  Again, another accident?  NATO police blamed the local communist party.  But, where did they get a non-metric lug wrench for a car?  American bolts do not match up with metric tools well and the nut heads were in good shape.  No, that had to be father or another American in the area.

But why do this at all? I can not believe that he was planning on returning to Monika.....

My first indication that mother had lost it was when we were vacationing in Spain in 1966.  One morning she, out of the blue, started screaming and hollering about how we had to return home that day, immediately!  It was all very unpleasant and father drove us non-stop all the way from the Spanish coast to northern France in one horrible 27 hour drive!  Mother screaming, no words, just screaming the entire time!  Father so angry he bit the stem of his pipe in half, us kids cowering in the back seat.  Lord only knew what would happen next!  It was that bad.

Definitely, whatever it was that set her off, she remained 'odd' for the rest of her life.  One would at this point suppose that another change might help.  As it was world politics were about to provide a change of scenery for her and massive trauma for father.  Us kids were just plain screwed.....