Growing up as the son of Oscar Kincade
I think it was Marcus Aurelius a Roman Emperor who was quoted saying "Your life is what your thoughts make of it." Looking back I can see the wisdom in that quote. I cannot help but wonder how my life would have turned out if different choices had been made but then I suppose if I altered something I wouldn't be the man I am today…and I certainly wouldn't imagine my life without him. He's the one that changed everything… it felt like I was always looking in and never living my life that is until Gideon came. It's funny I ever got to a place where I could actually be the man I am today…when I met "Zero" it almost feels like I was a different person. Gideon showed me who I was. Not the self-loathing image of myself I had growing up.
I remember my mother would always tell me that love is a gift. It's a gift of selfless giving…though to be anything fruitful it has to be reciprocated by the other. It's what gives meaning…a sense of purpose in our lives. My mom didn't have that with my father. She never really spoke much about him. I look back now and realize I think she wanted me to form my own opinion of him and not the one she had. But her choices certainly did impact the way I viewed him and the opinions I had of him as a child and certainly the ones I have of him as a man. Though, I resented my mom at the time. I had this image of my dad…the image that Hollywood would give of any wealthy person. I was supposed to be someone important or at least what I thought made a person important. I felt as if she took from me a life of privilege. I wanted to be one of those spoiled rich kids but seeing now how many of their lives turned out I really should call my mom and thank her. Money for many is a curse. It clouds the vision of what is real and what is an illusion but it took me a long time to find that out. It took me finding Gideon to understand what life was about.
I never had any relationship with my dad. My mom left him when she was pregnant. She never spoke of him except for a couple times. I know he cheated on her…extensively. He was verbally abusive and very deceitful (though she called it sneaky). I was very much my mom's son. I was totally her personality and thankfully I did not inherit my father's looks. I was and am very co-dependent. I am always concerned about what others think of me. I'm always one to despise controversy…I want to make everything right. I hate change. Security is very important to me. Perhaps because it was something I never thought I had growing up but looking back my mom did give it to me. I was just to caught-up in myself to see it. I wanted very much to be unnoticed…fearing I suppose rejection. But as a kid I really wanted to be like him. I wanted to be like Oscar Kincade. But you can't put an apple in a banana skin and call it a banana my mom would say. Though I really did want to be like him. I fantasized about having a relationship with him. I only saw him a couple times in my life and I felt like an inconvenience…an insignificant unimportant unwanted inconvenience.
All we ever got from Oscar was the money he gave my mom in the settlement of their divorce, which wasn't what she should have gotten but we lived well enough. My mom really didn't have to work. In truth we were comfortable. She couldn't be extravagant. She was tight with the wallet but we lived in a nice rambler in the burbs outside Minneapolis. After the divorce my mom wanted to be by her family so I never got to enjoy the sunshine of California but I wouldn't have changed anything looking back now. It was a great place to live. I do miss the seasons. The smell of autumn leaves…the first snow…the last snow. I miss the shirtless college boys running around the city lakes in the spring. Seasons teach us about the cycles of life, after winter always came spring. But I'm digressing here. I was saying what Oscar did for me…which was nothing. After I came of age the child support stopped and he never offered me anything after that. Though my mom had taken the monthly child support checks and put it away for me so it helped with schooling later on. I certainly didn't qualify for loans…they would always come back with how much my father was worth sorta thing. So I worked during college. Went to school at the U of M in Duluth…close enough to visit far enough that it wasn't that often. I did go to the Minneapolis campus for my master's degree. It was one of the only suggestions I ever got from Oscar. He viewed college was important and I wanted to please him so bad being the good little son that I wanted to be…so I went. He viewed it as important but he wouldn't pay for it and I never asked him too.