[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.Welcome to the Families

I am Tyr Lake Hawkaluk. I have thirty children, will eventually have four fathers, and I’m also my own uncle. My family heritage is one almost completely shrouded in mystery, and I fear that I’ll really only ever know so much. However, no matter how little I know about it, I do know that my family is something that has, directly or indirectly, shaped my entire life from my birth, and will do so until the day I die. This is more of their stories than mine, because their stories are the ones that made mine what it is today.
My biological father, David John “Dave” Harder, was born in Arcadia, California on the 28th of March, 1961 to my grandparents Robert Leland “Bob” Harder and Arlene Ann Fabian. Robert was the son of Edwin Leland “Ed” Harder and his wife Esther Estelle Kunkle. I was raised away from this side of the family because my mom left Dave before I was born, he never admitted to anyone I existed until just recently, and we could never find him despite our efforts to do so. It’s intriguing to learn that despite my being completely set apart from that side of my family I’ve still inherited their sense of humor, and even their speaking habits (going off on tangents, setting apart certain words, etc.). My great grandfather, grandfather, and father were all geniuses when it came to math, and I’m no exception to that line. I’ve been blessed with their ability to crunch numbers, to easily pick up mathematical formulas and concepts; I just happen to be the only one in the line who doesn’t like math.
Meanwhile, my biological mother, Julie Ann Hawkaluk, was born on the 5th of May, 1971, to Mary Ann Byrne and Wayne Johnson. Mary Ann and Wayne were, unfortunately, divorced after 5 years, and she remarried in 1976 to Michael Nikolas Hawkaluk. Once again, I was reared away from my biological family due to my mother’s unfortunate death 4 days before my second birthday, as well as the death of her biological mother several years before that. Because of these deaths, I know little about that side of the family, besides that my mother was an amazingly talented student (an honor’s graduate from my very own High School) and a wonderful person, two qualities which I’ve always been told I’ve received from her.
Enough about the family I haven’t grown up with though, let’s move on to those whom I know, those members of the family whom I have loved, cherished, tolerated, or downright only saw three times in my life. In others words, let’s get to the heart of the matter.
Michael Hawkaluk and Virginia Lundeen took in my younger brother Keith and I after our mom died. They were married that year, they’ve raised us ever since, and they’re some of the greatest parents I could’ve ever asked for. Mike was both a fatherly and grandfatherly figure at the same time (interestingly enough, he was also my adopted grandfather, and later my adopted father, which is why I’m my own uncle), which was why we’ve always called him ‘grandpa’, and never ‘dad.’ He was a strong man with vast amounts of intelligence on nearly any given subject that you could throw at him. His memory exceeded any person’s that I ever knew, and he had a dry sense of humor that also seemed to make me laugh. However, he was a 6’4” tall man who seemed two feet taller whenever he was angry. Scary… ya, you might’ve called him that. When you grow up in close proximity with a man such as my adopted father, you learned very quickly to bite your tongue, lest you end up with your rear end very sore. He accepted me, was proud of my accomplishments, but still retained a certain sense of the distant father figure whom I could never truly talk to for fear of upsetting him. This fear was self-implemented, because I found in later years that he was easy to talk to, however, it still doesn’t change the fact that I still worry immensely about pushing others’ buttons in conversations and tend to keep to myself. I’ve always striven to be wise like him, and wished I had his memory, but I’ve never wanted to be like him because he smoked, and because he scared me. I don’t know how I could live with being a father who scared my own kids. Meanwhile, Virginia (a.k.a. Ginny) has always been “Mom,” for as long as I can remember. She was Mom before my brother and I were adopted, and always will be. She’s the woman who raised us, who nurtured us, who’d try to teach us about the world, and how to act around other people. Unlike Grandpa, she was kind, and gentle, even though she did have her angry side. My Mom taught me how to be fair when punishing, how to be strict, but not too harsh or too cruel. She only had to truly punish us a few times before we realized that when she said “No” it meant “NO.” Mom’s word was law, Mom was the head of the household in our eyes, especially since we rarely saw Grandpa because of all the work that he did. Yes, she was a stay-at-home mom, and I’m proud of her for that. She has seldom been unhappy, but never with her life; she has never truly been bored; she has always been a busy woman who does hundreds of things despite age, her weight issues, and how tired she often got. Of all the people I’ve ever known, my mom was a hero to me, both for what she did and what she never did.
My adopted parents never had a specified religion that we practiced in our home. My mom’s side of the family was LDS (also known as Mormon) almost in its entirety, while my dad’s side was steeped thick in Catholicism (Catholic weddings are horribly boring). Since Grandpa’s side of the family wasn’t close to us, Mom’s family’s religion was the one that I ended up experiencing the most. The large families of my oldest step-brother and sister were twice yearly visitors, or visits, that always gave me a taste of a certain flavor of people which I grew to respect, and even admire. Their families were close-knit and friendly, no matter the age of the members, and this always made me feel at home, even when I was hundreds of miles from anything that could be considered ‘home.’ I’ve actually joined the LDS faith at this point in my life because of the standards and practices they both preach, and follow.
My parents raised me in a home of relatively few rules, but with a strict code of punishment for any rules that were broken. I was given talks about the consequences of doing drugs, which involved a lot more physical pain, dealt from their own hands, than drugs could normally cause. Nothing escaped their eyes or their ears, no matter the volume of the TV or the company that we had. I came to family dinners, get-togethers, and whatever other event my parents wanted me to go to because I had to, no matter what other matters there were at hand. They never hounded me on homework, just told me that it had to be done. They never bugged me about the details of my life, just asked how my day went when I got home from school. Most importantly, my parents never directly interfered with my life, or my decisions; they let me make my mistakes, my choices, my friends, my enemies, and my life, just so long as I didn’t do anything outrageous or obscene. Throughout all of this, they never fought each other, and they never truly got into any fights with me, or my brother (which took a lot of self-control on their parts, I’m sure).These two people, my adopted parents, were guides in my life who’ve taught me more than I could say by letting me learn on my own. Sure, I could’ve asked for better, but I doubt there’s such a thing.
Then, there’s Keith. Keith is my younger half brother who just seems to have, well, inherited more of his father than our mother. He was raised in the same environment, by the same people, but developed insanely differently than I did. Although he started off as a little brat (as I’m told most little brothers do), we thought he’d change, develop, grow out of it. He never did. Because of this incredible ability of Keith to remain the younger brother stereotype all of his life, he’s constantly pushed to get past me, and has therefore kept me on my toes, keeping me pressing forward to stay ahead. He’d pick fights with me just to see if he was stronger than me; he’d challenge me in any sort of competition just to prove to himself, and to me, that he could best me. Even so, he was also the kind of little brother who shared my interests for the longest time. I could share with him and have fun with him when no one else was around. No matter how cliché it might seem, he’s the reason I’ve always tried to be good at things, and to people, so I could be a ‘role model.’ It never really worked… which is probably why I’ve always felt an ineptitude when it comes to being able to help others, just maybe.
Besides my immediate family though, there was my ‘aunt’ Kris and ‘uncle’ Wayne whom we lived with for a year. They were always like a second set of parents to me, even though they definitely had a stricter approach to running their household than my adopted parents did. Living with them taught me how easy I really had it at the home I’d been living in. They required more of me, and it taught me to require more of myself as well, because of the smile I’d receive when things were done ahead of schedule, or without needing to be told to do them. There was always a reward for doing the right thing, for eating everything on your plate and for accepting punishments as lessons. That one year in their household has kept me a firm believer in all of that. They’ve been close friends of the family ever since then, and took us camping every summer to a place where everyone could enjoy themselves, a place we could get away from the world. Those summers always taught me a lesson, whether it was about checking your pop for bees before drinking it, or that riding your bike down the gravel road isn’t a good idea when semis can appear quite suddenly behind you, or even that life was such a fragile thing that, literally overnight, it could be over. All things I’d have never learned without them in my life.
From the happiest moments of my life, to some of the hardest, my family has always been there for me, and will continue to be. It seems like it grows every year when I hear about a new marriage that a cousin I’ve never heard of is having, or when you suddenly get reunited with your biological father and that entire side of the family all in one surprising summer. No matter who they are though, or how many, or how they come to be in one of the many families that make up my ‘family tree,’ they’re all family.
They’re my family.
And that’s enough for me.

© Tyr Hawkaluk (2004-Present)