I Know What I Am Made Of

I strongly believe that you have arrived at this very place as a result of all of the mistakes you have made in your life, timing, and your attitude towards everything.

Think about all of your lessons learned.  They are all a result of your mistakes – not your wins. And your wins come as a result of your lessons learned…from your mistakes.

And when you make these mistakes, only your attitude towards them will dictate which road you take to recovery.

Many people will quit.  Some will blame. Some will feel sorry for themselves.

Others will pick themselves back up, kick their own ass, and keep going.I am the latter, but I did not become this person alone.

I credit my own resilience to a very positive, sometimes naïve attitude towards life.  An attitude that believes that if I work hard enough- everything will be alright in the end.

I believe that I get this from my Grandfather, and my best friend.  I call him Bumpa, but his name is Lawrence Dally.

But to understand Bumpa and myself – you have to understand our recent ancestors, and the journey they took to make us who we are today.  Once again, I am giving you the most unbelievable, abridged version of this man’s story.  Feel free to Google:  Henry J. Dally.  Stay with me – because it all makes sense when we get to today…

Bumpa’s Grandfather, Henry, was a son of a sailor maker and blacksmith in New York.  But Henry had no intention of following his Father’s footsteps.

By 1833 he lied on his paperwork and joined the Navy.  This is before the Civil War.  During his active duty, he goes A-Wall in Peru.  He then becomes a whaler for several years all over Peru and Africa.  One day he gets in a fight with the captain and the captain leaves him on an island in Mozambique, where the captain believes he will be eaten by Cannibals.

However, he does not. Instead, he becomes good friends with them and stays on for a while.  One day traffickers capture him and several of his Mozambique friends, and sell them all, including Henry, to a whaler. Henry works as an indentured servant for a few years until he is finally set free in Connecticut.

He becomes restless and decides to again jump a ship and become a sea otter hunter.  He AGAIN gets in a fight with the captain who leaves him on Anacapa Island to die.  He survives on fish, berries, and barks until another Otter Hunter finds him.  They bring him back and he settles in San Luis Obispo, California.

This is LITERALLY the Wild, Wild, West.  The Mexican, American war is under way and he is in the middle of it.  Finally, the United States wins California, but it is only a territory.  The government needs to find someone who will help restore law and order until they figure out what they want to do next, and they hear about this crazy guy, Dally, who has no fear of death.  So they hire him to be the very first Sheriff of California.

He decides to take this opportunity as the highest ranking, American, white man in California, to make a deal with local Mexican Land Owners.  Together, they decide to have Dally marry their daughter, Felicita, which will allow them to keep all of their land.  They just HAPPEN to own the entire Coast of California from Santa Cruz to Camarillo.

Deal is struck, and now my Great Grandfather and my Great Grandmother own all of this land.

They have 16 children, one of them is Bumpa’s Father, George.  George is the youngest, and obviously the most spoiled.  I have no stories of him because he really didn’t do anything with his life.  Because his parents were rich land owners, and they and his older brothers and sisters did everything for him - he felt entitled to everything.

But in the end, all of the land was sold, piece by piece, to pay for all of these children, business deals gone bad, and just bad investments.  So George ended up with nothing.  He really didn’t do anything with himself, and had nothing to fall back on.

What he DID do was marry Bumpa’s mother, Ethel.

Background on my Grandmother…Ethel’s GRANDMOTHER was a single mother of two girls.  She raised them in the late 1800’s when women were not supposed to be alone.  She survived with her girls when they all lived in a home as indentured servants.

When Ethel’s MOTHER was grown, she married a gambler who would often times abandon Ethel and her mother and sisters.  He would come home every few months, promise to be better, steal the money that her mother hid around the house in coffee cans, and then disappeared again.

When Ethel was grown she got together with my worthless Grandfather, George, and had two sons.  Bumpa, and his brother.  He abandoned them while Bumpa was young so she started cleaning houses in order to feed them - Like her mother, and her mother before her.  Again – this is in the 1940’s when no woman should be alone.  So, in order to make sure there was a roof over her son’s heads she moved from one abusive boyfriend to another.

When Bumpa was 17 years old he made his mother sign paperwork to let him join the Navy - Just like his Grandfather almost 100 years before. He was tired of being passed from one house to the next, and watching his mother get beat up by her drunk boyfriends.  He did not want to be a burden to her any longer.

In Japan, during the Korean war, he married my Grandmother.  He decided right then that he would not be the father that his was.  He worked his ass off for years.  He worked two, sometimes, three jobs to pay all of the bills.  My Grandmother, Obaba, would tell me stories about my grandfather working 24 hours in a row.  He would come home and lay on the floor of the kitchen so as to not wake my grandmother and get the house dirty.  He would then get up and go straight to the next job.

My grandfather moved his family out of the ghetto as fast as he could, and into a neighborhood that was originally created for military.  It would ensure that his kids would be raised around middle class kids.  He thought this would give them a better chance at life than he had.

At first it did not go over well.  My Grandfather is Irish and Mexican.  My Grandmother was Japanese.  Here come these kids to the white neighborhood who are dark skin, and slanted eyes.  This is the early 60’s. Some of the neighbors disapproved and would call my little 4’11” Grandmother and her children N________ when my Grandfather was not around.

When my Grandfather found out he set the parents straight.  Sometimes with his fist.  But that is how he did things.  He was rough around the edges, drove a Harley, and would go get in bar fights for fun.

But when he was home, all he cared about was taking care of his family.  He sent his children to private Catholic Schools.  And he made sure that the house was paid for in cash while my mother was still a young girl.  That way, if anything happened to him, his wife and children would be taken care of, and his wife would not have to go through what his mother went through.  She could be self-sufficient, her own money.  I remember my Grandfather obsessing about his life insurance and his retirement making sure it went to my Grandmother with no problems.

My Bumpa was by no means a perfect husband or father – but all he cared about was making sure his wife and children were taken care of.  He is still alive today, and his family is his greatest treasure.

I am told that before I turned one years old, he sold that bike (that he had named Panocha) and stopped fighting.  I am his first Granddaughter, of his only daughter. So naturally, I am his favorite! (insert evil laugh here)

Anyway…. Back to my point about mistakes, and your attitudes towards them.  Lessons learned…

My Great, Great Grandfather, Henry – just kept screwing up.  But he picked himself back up every time. He joined the next ship and he kept going.  Until eventually he became the richest land owner in California, and the very first Sheriff of California.  But even then!  He still kept screwing up, and eventually sold off all of this land.  But in the end he created a huge family, supported them all, and started a successful little resort in Carpenteria (right outside Santa Barbara).

My Grandfather, George, on the other hand – had the attitude that everyone owed him something.  He was poor his whole life.  He died poor, and had no one around him except other complainers.

My Grandmother, and her mother, and her mother were all abandoned by their husbands and fathers.  All during the times when women had no rights at all.  Yet they cleaned houses and did anything they could to take care of their children.  When each of these amazing women died, they were surrounded with loving children who took care of them in their old age.  They died knowing that despite the trials that were thrown their way – all of their children were loved and taken care of.

So now when I tell you about my mistakes – know that I have no regrets.  I have no regrets about what I did, or what has been done to me. They all make me stronger, smarter, and a little more resilient.

And my attitude is one of appreciation.  I am grateful for all of it.  Some you will not understand why – it will make no sense to you.  But I am.  And that’s it.