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My paternal grandmother was named Vera Masters Gee. She was an alcoholic. She married her husband, Robert "Bob" Gee, my father's father, because he had gotten her pregnant. Vera then miscarried the baby. Their second child, my father, Gerald Masters Gee, was born in 1944. 9 months after his birth, Vera was back at the hospital giving premature birth to a daughter, my father's sister, my aunt, Gretchen Gee. For the first two months of Gretchen's life she had to stay at the hospital, and Vera had to stay at home with Gerry, because Bob was having an affair.
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Spring: my maternal grandfather Earl R. Barlow Jr. "Junie" drove my paternal grandmother, Vera Masters Gee, for three days from their home in St. Clairsville Ohio to the home of my parents, their children, in Tallahassee Florida. I was eight years old. Vera stayed at a motel near Interstate-10 just south of our house. She entered rehabilitation for alcoholism. The classes she attended required a member of her immediate family to attend with her. Because my father, her son, was having an affair at the time, my mother, her daughter-in-law, attended with her.
Summer: Junie, Vera, Gerry, mom and I went to Disneyland with a friend of Vera's who lived near there. According to my mom we had a "really wonderful" time, and this was the happiest she remembers Vera ever being to spend time with when all of us were around together as a family. I remember missing the exit to get home from Disneyland because of Vera's backseat driving, and having to circle around several times on the interstate at night while she laughed at us.
Autumn: for thanksgiving mom, Gerry and I went up to visit my paternal aunt Gretchen. By this time Vera had found for a sponsor in Ohio a surgeon who used to perform operations under the influence of alcohol, but, out of boredom in her small riterement apartment, she had begun to lapse back into drinking ice cream liqueures. Vera was sneaking drinks at Grtchen's all Thanksgiving. Gretchen's house was in Boston, Maine, and I remember exploring the snow-covered woods behind her house with mom, and Gretchen buying me the most expensive toy I could find for early Christmas. I also remember this thanksgiving as one during which I solved a very complicated puzzle-game Gretchen had. Mom relates to me that Vera had been very verbally abusive directly of me that thanksgiving, saying that she didn't want to play a board game on the same team as me because I thought I was smarter than her, and she wanted to prove me wrong, and stealing my security blanket. Mom speculates the aim of this was to insult mom through me.
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