Mother & Father

Joan Catherine Hand was twenty-something when she met Matthew Northrop. I don’t know where they met -- I never asked. All I know is what she has told me -- that they were together, and my mom found out she was pregnant sometime after that. She wanted to keep me, so my grandparents made her get married, because they’re catholic, and they said “you can’t have a kid and not be married.”

So my mom had to get married. And he turned out to be really controlling and abusive. She couldn’t do anything or have any friends. She was stuck in this horrible situation.

She called my grandparents. THey picked her up one day when he wasn’t home, and then she went ahead and got a divorce without him.

It was an awful living situation. “This isn’t how I want my child to grow up.”

I was only eight months old when all this happened.

Part 2: your discovery of the backstory

My mom met my step-dad when I was three. I would always ask questions, because I knew he wasn’t my real father. I probably started asking about the story in earnest when I was ten, around the age when I could comprehend everything. this the

Part 3: sorting out your feelings of the story

I had the hyphenated name, and it really bothered me. “Who is this? Why is this bad person a part of my name?” I really questioned it. When I was younger, I really didn’t want the name Northrop on anything.

Part 4: how you feel now

I feel like my mom did well with raising me without my father. I always knew that he was a part of my life, but he wasn’t a good guy to my mom, and I wouldn’t want a person like that around all the time.

there was this one time when i was maybe 13 when i was spending some time on facebook. i somehow came across the people that were blocked by my account, and one of the names was Matthew Northrop. i sat there pondering whether i should unlock him or not for a while. i clicked it, and freaked. i was scared, what if i did something bad? would my mom get mad at me?