The Other Son by Victor Augello (phonics reader .txt) 📕

I never understood what came along with being a second child until I was an adult. Being a second child has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that your parents have already had a child and they have gotten used to caring for it and nurturing it and doing all the things that a new parent has to do when a first child is born! The disadvantages will become apparent shortly.

That newness is something very special to a parent. It is the pure gift of the union of one human with another and the result of that union is now before you in all of its little glory! By the time the second child arrives, it is new for sure but since you have already done this before, the novelty is somewhat gone and it’s more a matter of enjoying the birth and getting down to business!

When I was in my teens, I will never forget words from my Mother that shaped how I viewed my position in the family and my feelings of being a second “other” son and a misfit in my own family. On an occasion one summer day, I can recall chatting with my Mother about an incident or such between my brother and me, highlighting some difference as I remember. The thrust here was that I was feeling ”different” from my brother in treatment and was talking to her about that. Her answer was, “Jim, your first child is always different, special.” Perhaps this was not verbatim but nonetheless it hit me like a lead brick and I never, ever forgot it. What she said to me in no uncertain words, and more importantly, what I heard, was that I was not as special as he was. I was devastated as best as I can remember and going forward to this day, I have not had that special feeling between my Mother and me. Different. Not as special. Second fiddle. What an uncomfortable place to be. And to be wrestling with that in my fifties still was even more uncomfortable and very evident in my relationship with her.

Now, in no way am I saying that I didn’t feel close to my Mother, but for all of these years I have always felt less than a special connection, one that my brother has enjoyed more so than I. There are always pivotal moments in relationships that define you for the rest of your life. Mine came in the late seventies. I was just married and busy having my first child when I was told by my Mother that she and my brother were going on a trip down south to “look for a place to live” on the east coast somewhere. I was really caught off guard because I immediately felt a sense of abandonment and certainly felt out of the loop, since this wasn’t even discussed with me. In my time of hurt, I spoke to my then wife, and we discussed our own plans to move out of state for a better beginning, namely to the west coast (I had relatives out there so it sounded alluring, and anyway, I figured they were moving so we might as well too).

As I remember, my Mother and brother did make that fateful trip down south and loved the mid portion and eastern coastal portion of Florida. I, not to be outdone and to secure my own frustrations and insecurity, decided in late in the seventies, to go down to Florida and check things out myself so there would be no disconnect. However, fate is a funny thing.

On the west coast, my then wife’s best friend had moved down some years earlier and she and her husband had established themselves there and were doing well. So without any fanfare, I took off a week from my fairly new job working for a major insurance company and travelled to mid Florida to find my future and my emotional security.

The week went well….I think? I had done some research and the market looked dreary at that time and remember setting up an interview with prominent employment agency, a talent firm who promised me definite work because of my fine background and education. After that interview, I came out into one of the famous Florida rains of the 70’s and was nearly up to my knees in water. Immediately I wondered what in the world I was doing there and why I wasn’t back home. Undeterred, I then ran a dog over later that evening, which might have been a foreshadowing of my own emotional death there some time later and then came back to New York to present my plan to my wife, lest I lose my family to a strange watery world in Florida. We had the ability to make the move immediately so that is exactly what we did.

The plan was struck; my family was happy and best of all, as the second child out of the loop, I would not be separated from my family as I had feared would happen. My wife went along with this move and we packed up our daughter and our meager belongings along with a decent bank account and chugged off to Florida to move into an apartment complex outside of Tampa, a place where we would spend the next two years and welcome our second child into the world. What would disappear before that time would be all of our money due to an ill advised and mis-thought of purchase of a full service restaurant which sucked us dry of money, time and talent. It was at this time that a major rift came to be between myself and my Mother and brother. It would be what defined this triad relationship going forward for decades. Me against them.

It was rather simple. We didn’t open the restaurant with any money in the bank to back us. As I remember it was just about $100 that we deposited, and if it was that, it was a lot. Everything was purchased from our week to week sales and our meager personal bank accounts. After a year of struggle and heartache, I pleaded with my brother and Mother to walk away from the restaurant as we were just about broke. My Mother and brother wanted to put more money into a situation which was a fast downward spiral. The economy under President Jimmy Carter was a disaster, with interest rates running at 21% and a very sluggish economy. I was outvoted about closing the restaurant after calling a family meeting one night. 2 to 1. To boot, our money was just about gone.


I had to think seriously about this situation and told my brother that I would no longer return to work and if he wanted to keep the restaurant open, I would not be there with him working. That would effectively grind things to a halt but in my mind this was the only way to stop the bleeding. I think he and Mom took it hard but realized I was serious. It was a nail in the relationship coffin that never came out.

We closed the doors a week later and put it up for sale after they realized it was fruitless. It took quite a while to sell but by the time it had, I was back in New York establishing myself again. It was clear that a separation was already taking place and our relationships were straining. I had seen once again that my place and ranking in my own family would preclude me from any logical, workable solutions that were not approved by the committee of 2, namely my brother and Mother. It was a lost cause and I left the battleground defeated and withdrawing to a new life again in New York. Fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, my wife agreed with me and off we went. I don’t think she ever had any love lost for my family anyway! So here I was heading back to New York after several years in an exercise in futility and I wound up being split from my family anyway. Truth be it known, they didn’t really care for my then wife anyway, so there were no tears shed for that loss.

Let’s not miss the irony here as well. Keep in mind I settled the family down south while they were looking at a different coast entirely. At that time, there was and still is a difference between the two coasts of Florida. The west coast was and still is beautiful without doubt but at that time, not nearly as built up as the east coast was and not as “fancy!” We went back to New York with barely anything in tow and I know that from the perspective of those I left behind it was not news well received so much so that everyone was quite upset at me for leaving.

I left with the same wounds and fears I had moved down with, if not even deeper than they were before. It would take twenty years and another woman to come into my life that would allow me to see me for who I was, a valued and worthwhile individual in my own right.

For two decades after I left Florida, my then wife and I raised our children, which by the early eighties, numbered three. I loved my daughters very much and was always keenly aware that my Mother had said the first born was special indeed, but I always made a considered effort throughout the years to view all my daughters as individuals with their respective gifts, talents and weaknesses and not favor one over the other. I was so aware of how devastating that could be to their psyche.


For those many years that we were separated, I visited Florida just about every year and enjoyed my visits with my family. I was a short interloper never disturbing the status quo to any degree so we all enjoyed the visits. I was very in tune with the fact that I had left them to re-start my life in New York, which in retrospect was a good idea, both financially for us and from an education standpoint for our three daughters. Education in Florida was certainly secondary to any education they could have received up North in our opinions back in the early eighties, and we were glad that decision was made to move back home. Throughout my years of living in New York, I was aware of, for lack of a better word, the many mini dramas that were unfolding in Florida with my family.
It seemed that there was more bad news than good at times. Certainly from my standpoint, there was much more drama down south than there was up north. Frankly, we were quite boring and our lives uneventful. It was good, not perfect, but good.

My brother’s children certainly put them through their paces. I cannot recall in the years raising our children some of the dramas that occurred here in Florida occurring in New York with us. If they had, I think our entire experience raising our children would have been a different one then it was. This angst and drama being experienced down in the south was absent from our lives. I cannot recall anything but happiness raising our three daughters and there always seemed to be a high degree of stability and balance that followed us. They always brought a smile to my face and any challenges with them were small.