Even up to today Jacob had a hard time to believe what his mother had done to his grandmother, her own mother. His father told him that once in a fit of rage, she struck her mother, who was suffering Alzheimer. The old woman fell on the hard floor of their old house, her head had a bad cut and blood was gushing from her head and nose. Then she , in a more frenzied way sat on the old woman's chest and tried to smother her with a pillow. She kept saying; "I'm tired of taking care of you ..." If it was not for Max, Jacob's father, the poor, defenseless old woman would had died then not rather six months later for natural causes. Jacob remembered that he had told his father then:
"You should have called the police, so that way, they would take my mother; may be for some kind of treatment. Her action throughout her life has not been normal. She needs to see a doctor for her head."
But Max was from the old school. No matter what his wife did, he remained faithful to her.
"I took your grandma to hospital and told them she had fallen herself. They never questioned me; since she had Alzheimer. She got twelve stitches on her head."
There was another part to his mother's character. She believed that something had happened to her at the young age of twenty five, something supernatural that never was understandable to anyone especially the immediate members of her own family. She said that she could see things and she could know future. She said she could analyze people by only looking at them. She said that she could write and speak other languages that she was never introduced to them. However anytime Max or Jacob (the days that he was her favorite) asked her to speak the other languages to proof her point, she got abusive and then simply said that at that moment there was no electricity was coming from her brain. She used this mental disorder, which to her was a transcendental power to condom people around her and to take more control over the lives of others around her.
His mother's influence had not been by any means equal to Diana's in a moral way; however, it was in achieving what he meant to be not what his mother wanted him to be. Another words, the supremacy of his mother over his destiny made him to become completely a different person; or as Diana put it a better person. He had no love for medicine or being a medical doctor, as his mother wanted him to become. His love had always been literature, poetry, and languages. Therefore after the dispute over simplifying his last name, he also changed his major. He already had a B.S. in Biology, and in order to get his MA in Literature, he needed to do major adjustment and to take many courses and almost start all over again.
Investigating about different colleges around the country, he got a scholarship from the University of Texas in Dallas. Nonetheless, his motive from moving so far away from his home town was twofolds. first the scholarship and second to move away from his controlling mother and a father that would not do anything to save his family from this crazy woman. His reason, as he always put it: "Your mother is a good woman. She just have had a bad childhood. We don't disgrace our family. We don't let anyone know what is going on here and so on and..."
Jacob was twenty six when he got his master degree. The first day at UTD's Campus he met Diana, a young twenty years, shy woman from an Irish ancestor. Their first visit for both of them was full of so called "CHEMISTRY". They talked long hours in college and then on the phone. Soon they started dating. Six months later, they were married.
To Be Continued
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