Before I could understand my daughter’s medical diagnosis as one having a bipolar disorder, I needed to reflect on my family’s history.
I grew up in a rural town in Florida in the 1960’s. My mother was rather eccentric, while my father usually stayed in his bedroom. My father was an army officer during World War II. He was known as a ‘90 Day Wonder,’ or as the label implied he became an officer through three months of specialized training.
The horrors my father must have witnessed from going to Nazi Germany prevented him from sleeping at night. Supposedly, he had seen dead bodies floating in the water along with the smell of rotting flesh in shallow graves when he entered Germany . Father never spoke much about his life as an army officer, except to say that he never wanted to go hunting for game again. He kept a rifle in the bedroom closet and placed a box of bullets in a safe place. Not one of my three brothers or me ever touched his rifle. We knew it was forbidden.
