My Heritage – ToersBijns - Culture Shifts, Racism, Shame, Secrets Part II

My Heritage – ToersBijns

Culture Shifts – Racism, Shame, Secrets

Part II

 

Since my mother and father had a special influence on me in my growing years, it is logical and very reasonable to accept the fact that their guidance on my morality and outlook in life was shaped by their values and expectations. Already developing an inner stubborn spirit and being a rebel at heart, this was some deep provoking labor instilled with a sincere dedication to shape me into a man.

My father wouldn’t accept anything less than manhood and responsible behaviors mirroring his own integrity and character he formed during his thirty some years in the military.  Theoretically, this also changed our religious viewpoints and belief factors as we were being converted into a Methodist manner of faith that was significantly different from the Catholic faith my mother practiced.

To make it even more complicated, since my father was born in a Muslim faith family with ties to Islam and so forth, I thought he would retain his beliefs but with sudden and unexplained reasons, he seemed to have voluntarily submitted to a Christian faith and became involved in the church business intimately and very actively.

Moving from Holland to the United States was a grave undertaking with serious cultural consequences for a twelve year old youth and his brother and sister. Crossing the ocean in an airplane didn’t just take a few thousand miles of flying and hours of patiently waiting for the landing gear to touch ground in New York City. It took a heavy burden off my mother and father’s shoulder as they worried about our future and how we would be educated and raised under the perceived limited resources made available to us in Holland.

Other than enduring the weary efforts of long distance traveling for almost a day and a half, we instantaneously saw and felt the difference between the manner the Dutch people interacted and how the American culture behaved. At first, we looked at each other and then the reality hit us really hard – we had landed in the middle of a racist jungle where people were judged by color unlike the environment we left behind in Holland where color, skin tone, eyes round or slanted, blonde hair or kinky hair made no difference to us who came from there.

It appeared that in the USA, it did matter. It mattered a lot and people behaved according to an approach and response stimuli that triggered racism at its worst. If the person you were talking to was white, the response appeared to be respectful and mild toned. On the other hand, if the person you were talking to was colored, the response was condescending, insulting, demeaning and sometimes very vulgar. It appeared to be a natural act without any acting attached to it. I didn’t like it.

Some of the greatest men alive tried to change this discriminatory behavior and died doing so. Early 1965 I knew and heard of a man called Martin Luther King who defied racism with peace and civil disobedience. A tactic that worked some of the time, but not all of the time. Ohio was where we settled and Columbus was a hub of hate for colored people moving into the city.

History would cover this time period with poem, short stories and parables of wisdom on racism and discrimination. It would cover the equality of a man regardless of their skin color and finally they would pass a law making all men created equal. One has to wonder why it took a law to make people realize that every human being is entitled to respect, dignity and compassion regardless of their color or ethnicity.

As a boy who lived and came from another part of the world, this was most shocking and eye opening for me. Since I was dark skinned, and appeared to be a non-white person, I immediately felt the eyes glazing over my presence when a white person stared at me with a ‘what are you doing here’ look that degraded my value and existence. One can further relate that many public or community swimming pools and other recreational halls were off limits to those of color that included playgrounds and public places.

There was an immediate sense of difficulty within me. I had to walk softly on egg shells and be careful where I went, who I talked to and what I did or said to be accepted socially or anything else. It was like living in a different region of the world and you were not welcome here. In other words, white, brown, black, red or yellow, there was a distinct odor of biases floating in the air.

This created a homesickness for Holland to me and my siblings. Although we didn’t talk about it, we could sense the hate when we were around white people who looked at us odd and skeptic as we were hoodlums or thieves. This mixed culture was harsh and toxic and difficult to manage without tripping or pissing someone off regardless how much you tried to tolerate the dislike or detestation addressed at you for no reasons other than your color.

Seldom did you hear the words, ‘let’s play’ or ‘let’s talk’ as conversations and interactions were regulated by peer pressure and social standings. Dealing with growing pains, sexuality changes and now racism, made the adjustment most difficult for me and I wanted to hide somewhere to avoid social contact. In so many words, this made my childhood different and special as I learned tolerances I never had to experience before.

Between the years of fourteen and sixteen, I grew up with a small circle of friends. Some were white, some were black and some we called ‘rednecks.’ We all got along fine until an outsider would probe or poke the whites for hanging with the colored or blacks and then the tension would rise to another level making it uncomfortable and usually ending up in a fight between agitators and us.

My friends lived within a six block area; this was how we were able to socialize and keep the relationships in order as it was a mutually shared burden to put up with outsiders. Our friendship bonds were strong. The circle was hard to be broken and our houses were open to all who shared the time and space with each other under duress and demanding conditions.

Within our neighborhood, where poverty was common and the local stores were owned by Italians of Spanish speaking people, there washed up all sorts of uninvited guests in our locality. Designated a high crime zone by the police, they rarely patrolled in our area and left the justice up to those who could handle the adversities of violence, theft and assaults on their own. It was a way of life that took a hard time getting used to after being exposed to this toxic cultural awakening.

Most of my friends had moved there about the same time we did. Some went to the same church and some didn’t go to church at all.

The most popular spot was a small diminutive liquor store that drew the social misfits to their tiny bar at nights and if you stayed around long enough to see them stagger out and head for home, you would be entertained by drunks walking and staggering on sidewalks too narrow for them to stay on or so it seemed.

We never knew that rats could grow the size of cats and getting rid of them was near impossible. Whenever you killed three or four, you were visited the next day by five more. It was perpetual in body counts as well as the growth of the rat packs that chose our house and many more as their nests and hiding spaces.

Living in Holland made us frequent visitors of the beaches and the North Sea shoreline; making us proficient swimmers and salt water freaks. Trying to find a place to swim in the south end of Columbus Ohio usually ended up in the dirty Scioto River or Alum Creek – both waste water outlets that didn’t bother us too much except when the sewage was thick and muddied the water.

In the house we lived in, a converted ice house, I grew up with my parents, my brother and sister and a newly born baby sister making us a growing and expanding family. The house was cold as ice in the winter and hot as hell in the summer. Poor heating and no air condition made the house shrink and swell with the humidity and heat accordingly making it miserable for us in the Ohio humid weather.

I loved the rainfall – the street were often flooded and the bucket in the kitchen caught all the rainwater dripping through the ceiling. Some of the windows were broken by vandals throwing rocks and as soon as you replaced one, another window was broken. This was at least, a different experience to get used to but we were adapting and growing into the culture more so every day of our lives.

Making new friends in school expanded our circle of friends but we never abandoned each other just because we knew we had persevered the prejudice and hate together for the past few years bonding us as brothers in the poor side of town.

I wanted to be great in sports like Jesse Owens and his likes. There were a lot of good athletes where I lived and competing for a spot on the football team took some hard work and training. These kind of experiences were the good ones I remember and never forgotten. Here, on the team, there were no different colors, no different attitudes and all were focused on winning.  

Oh sure, there were sarcastic remarks, mocking gestures or comments by a few but they were put in place quickly by the coach or other teammates who took their role as captains serious enough to become peacemakers.

Growing up in Ohio was a complicated story. In so many ways, we experienced adversity daily and challenged often to overcome biases and hate of colored people. For some white people, there appeared to be a gross or frequent fascination and embarrassment for color. A lot of hypocrisy as well. Color in my family was not a complicated story. There was nothing to lie about as we were all the same and accepted fate of who we were and where we lived.

So my heritage tells me I am of mixed blood – some say I am Dutch, Portuguese and mixed with blood of my Chinese grandmother and native Java islander grandfather. On my mother’s side there was more European blood or as my mother would call it ‘blue blood’ but that is disputable.

I never believed there was any royalty in our family and I still don’t today. I believe my mother fantasized that t justify her moment of grandeur and pretend she was related to a queen from way back when her fairy tale began.

All said, I was an enthusiastic kid and had so much energy I often got into mischief with the law or school officials but nothing serious. Most violations were trespassing or climbing the fence at the high school and cutting classes or being out of dress code for gym or other activities. I never joined any gangs – I despised cowards who had to group up and beat someone else up with uneven numbers.

I know my family had half-blood running rampant – the war was hard on families and the recovery of losing a man, woman or child was replaced with another man, woman or child. Some were married and some weren’t it didn’t seem to matter to me but it certainly meant a lot to my mother who abhorred out of wedlock relationships and was very critical of such relationships. I suspected a hidden personal motive for such abomination but she gave no clues why she felt that way and the truth be told, she rarely divulged anything personal to us.

Regardless, if you mentioned the word ‘bastard’ in front of her, she went livid and began a tirade that wouldn’t end for days. There were many clues during my childhood that revealed secrets. Secrets that were never to be talked about or discussed amongst us or others in our families. We knew that nothing much was revealed of what happened before the war began and how relationships impacted fidelity or sexuality between family member spouses and other relatives. There was something missing to connect the dots and reveal the truth.

My mother’s first husband was my father’s older brother. We didn’t know this at the time of our childhood but was revealed in later years when my brother went back to Holland to visit an aunt and uncle who invited my mother and Carlos, into their home and asked them to stay there during their vacation in Holland. As my brother explained to me, he saw a wedding photograph of our mother in her wedding dress but the man standing next to her was not our father. It was his brother.

Shocked, dismayed and curious all at the same time, he began to ask relevant questions about the photograph. What he learned was to remain a secret and kept from us until the later years after my father passed away and no harm could be done to his sanity or temperament.

The story told was complicated and intimately revealed facts of our family that makes an interesting soap opera drama on reality television. We knew my mother married our father but they never revealed the date or year they were married. It was one of the many secrets they kept from us through the years.

Other secrets involved our mother’s family’s business dealings and the sudden disappearance of significant funds and wealth due to theft between brothers and relatives who promised to carry the wealth out of Indonesia under the watchful eye of the Indonesian police and smuggle out money to be returned to the family and re-create the wealth in Holland. I suspected slavery, illegal trading and extortion of the native to be the main source of their wealth and income.

My father’s side was never wealthy – they were common folks who were native to the land and lived accordingly. Their occupations were police and military – between my grandfather, my father and his brothers and sisters, all were honorable people and the men, they served honorable and with distinction. His father was a good native born man who married a Chinese woman.

All this did not matter whether they were full blooded native or mixed with European or Chinese blood. The fact that much of this was rarely revealed and concealed purposely, made the relationships appear shameful and because my grandfather had numerous illegitimately born children out of wedlock [since the story was he was actually still married to another woman], he too became a target of social injustice and felt much humiliation and embarrassment thus they chose to keep many of the facts hidden.

It was not like he had a harem of women around him; he was likely more of a womanizer than most of us knew and paid a dear price for such promiscuous or as some called it ‘unrestrained’ behaviors, his morality was in doubt and often hidden from the public opinion or family oriented conversations. One thing was certain, looking at my father’s charisma and solid magnetic charm, I could see where my mother was always so jealous if he even looked or talked to another woman.

The fact that there was a lack of domestic governance among the various family member became even more critical to create a hush hush situation of the past. We wanted to know why my father’s brother left our mother and what circumstances were driving those decisions to divorce him and allow my father to marry her.

 It was a complicated matter that would take some time to explain and rather than explaining this, my parents chose to remain silent and never talked about this until it was brought up later in when I was in my fifties.

So while my mother was bragging being born in a prominent family, it was my father’s side of the family she was ashamed of or so it seemed. One has to guess on this s she never really talked about it as the matter would raise her blood pressure instantly if even a mention of this was brought up in a casual conversation. So now, we found out my mother’s family was into illicit dealings that made them rich and on my father’s side there was adultery and messy divorces that drove families apart or mixed blood lines to no end.

All in all, these secrets or the fact that both sides engaged in concealment and then deny it through pre-arranged silence or forgotten memoirs, turned out to be a tremendous significance. It has been told that both sides of the family has beautiful daughters and handsome men. There must be some truth in this as my father was a very handsome man and my mother was a natural beauty and it is easy to understand how my father fell in love with his brother’s wife.

The truth however, was more complicated that a three ring circus. The personal commitment to hide the truth was based on several promises made by my uncle, my mother and my father to never bring this matter up again as long as they lived. This created an enormous amount of tension in our families and often the cause that drifted them apart and stop associating with each other for decades to come.

Not pointing fingers of blame, they all engaged in this concealment of the facts and all bear the shame they imposed on each other as they judged but failed to allow themselves to be judged as well. These dynamics and social projections were insufferable to defeat. There was no solution in merging bad feelings and starting over.

To forgive and forget was impossible. This family bearing the ToersBijns name could never reconcile their difference and chose to not speak to each other ever again with the exception of the younger generations who wanted to know the truth of all family matters told or disclosed.

You might say this was the dark side of the family and the black sheep in the families from the past. Nobody was worried or distressed about this matter or strong enough to reveal the truth. It was easier to remain silent and keep it buried as all decided to bury their heads into the ground and pretend nothing was wrong with these situations.

Probing, digging and asking questions, we finally found out why my uncle divorced my mother. It was a shocking revelation and unkind to the cultural and social norms of circa 1940’s how this divorce developed. Divorce was a serious matter and it took a serious matter to create enough pressure to annul or break up a marriage between a man and a woman.

As the story was told, my mother worked for the underground during the war and was a messenger and courier for the underground to pass along information where the Japanese troops were, what region they were searching for troops and who was captured and where they were being held in various prison camps on the island.

She worked closely with high school friends turned patriots as well as friends and relatives of all families brave enough to perform such a critical task to spy on the enemy and relay that information to those who could use it to their advantage and upset the enemies plan while occupying the islands.

It was during one such underground activities when my mother was raped by a long time close friend inside one of those hidden tunnels where they congregated to gather intelligence and prepare the dissemination to other couriers. Although she fought hard to prevent sexual penetration, she lost her battle and had to face the harsh consequences of telling her husband, my uncle and my father’s brother, she had been raped by another man who forced himself on her and caused her much pain and suffering emotionally and physically.

For my uncle, it was an ultimate social disgrace to accept her explanation and he walked away from her leaving her behind forever. He adamantly believed she could have prevented this assault and blamed her for it happening. Regardless of my mother’s plight and sorrow, he was unforgiving and literally walked out of her life leaving her feel guilty and ashamed of being a violated and now an abandoned married woman.

It seemed his emotional wellness about his own credibility and reputation outweighed my mother’s pain and suffering. Soon after, my father came to my mother’s side and reassured her he would marry her after his brother divorced her legally and take care of her and raise a family.