Character flaws

 

Imagine taking away your child's playmates at ages four, eleven, twelve, thirteen and sixteen by moving. Then of course that child goes to college. That is six major disruptions in fourteen years.

The only continuity is family, mostly the immediate family including three other siblings.

The family does expand to include a grandmother, aunts, uncles and cousins during the second to last year, but in two years many of these people are eliminated too. It is once more just immediate family.

Both parents do the best they know how. The father, who has a post college level education, works three and four jobs to try and make ends meet, but tries to also maintain a relationship, mostly with the oldest child. The mother runs hot and cold. She is passionate, overwhelmed and her values mostly center on superficial things like how her children look to others. She will do whatever it takes to maintain her belief in that look, even doing their homework and projects.

The mother uses force, shame, and anecdotal and mythological advice, to control the children. Fearing for their safety she imposes all her fears as deeply into their subconscious as possible. 

Both parents tend to label all the children. There is mommy's little old maid who is very gifted and brainy, the petite, beautiful one, who is encouraged to do gutzy things without thinking, the oldest son who has serious medical problems and is enabled in doing pretty much as he pleases while his mother makes excuses, and the youngest who is the one most likely to succeed because, among other things the next door neighbors become a second set of parents who encourage him to be athletic, competitive and a perfectionist.

In spite of whatever they might want to be, these children pretty much all fulfill their parent's type casting. All but the youngest one grow up with some fairly serious character flaws. The oldest one is the only one who ever really leaves home. The rest never venture more than a few miles from home for any length of time.

However even the oldest one experiences such deep traumatic homesickness when she goes to college that she cannot stay away from home long enough to graduate and marries with the idea that now she will have someone at her side forever. (Which of course is not true.) For an abundance of reasons her marriage only deepens her trust issues with people.

This oldest sibling has children who live in states that span the country from sea to shining sea. Favoring mountains and water and beautiful places while still struggling with personal relationships to some extent, but are good parents in spite of everything else in their lives.

The two middle siblings are medical and social disasters. One dying at 65 from medical problems stemming from both genetic and lifestyle issues. The other bouncing from one bad relationship to another, focusing on people who will enable her and her myriad fears. They each have one child who makes a relative success out of their life while all their other children fail miserably.

The youngest sibling, while raising athletic wonders and collegiate winners, also encourages his children not to go too far away from home. Allowing them only about 30 miles of freedom in the end, which vastly limits their potential success in the world.

Generations of people struggling to overcome the things that held their parents back, starting maybe as early as the 1850s.