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Unnamed Mother (Teal) Blog Entry |
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Friday, March 21, 2025, 12:36:12 AM 3/21/25: r/SketchDaily theme, "Free Draw Friday." This week's characters from my anthro WWII storyline are Unnamed Father and Unnamed Mother. These are the parents of Teal Rat, whose story is already in my art blog. Neither one plays any role in raising him, and he never gets to meet his father. There'll be more about them later in my art Tumblr and Toyhou.se. TUMBLR EDIT: The awful story of Teal Rat and his relationship...or lack thereof...with his biological parents is given in detail in his own entry. The rest of this entry will be individualized to avoid repetition. (Please NOTE that I made a weird dumb mistake here, and outlined Unnamed Mother's story before Unnamed Father's, although his artwork is first! The way I tell the story depends on her story being first. So, my weird dumb solution: This is Unnamed Mother's artwork, yet Unnamed Father's part of the story. And his entry will contain her story. Sorry about this dumb confusion, my bad!) Please firstly see Unnamed Father's entry for Unnamed Mother's part of the story. Unnamed Father makes a bad decision, just like Unnamed Mother; I believe he knows she's married, yet somehow the two meet, are infatuated, have their affair. He's genuinely fond of her, hopes she feels the same, maybe she'll seek a divorce. He doesn't want to be a homewrecker but emotions are irrational things. His hopes are promptly dashed when she ends the affair, abruptly and without explanation--he tries asking, repeatedly, what's wrong, why is she doing this, but she refuses to explain, just tells him never to contact her again, she has nothing to say. And just like that, it's over. He's left hurt and confused and with the wound of unknowing that just can't be mended on its own. Everything had seemed just fine, what happened...? Was it him? Was it her? Without any way to answer his burning questions, he's forced to just go on never knowing, and slowly moves on. The world goes through two wars. It isn't until after the second--which brings up a lot of raw feelings for people like Unnamed Father--that, by chance, he runs across her again. They're both quite a bit older but immediately recognize each other. She's uneasy and skittish when he addresses her but at least she stops for a brief chat. And as outlined toward the end of her part of the story (again, sorry for getting these out of order, ugh I'm a moron), she finally tells him the truth: He has a son. Aaron. He's left stunned and numb in disbelief. Yet then does his best to shake it off, and determines to find his son, no matter what it takes. He has very little to go on. So he starts digging. Uncle is dead, there's no asking him anything, but neighbors confirm that he raised a boy by himself. His search is stumped until one neighbor recalls a vital detail: While Aaron was packing up and leaving Uncle's place for good, she'd paused to look at some cooking utensils he was setting out, and he offered to let her take them, take anything she wanted, for free--he wouldn't need them where he was going. What did that mean? "Overseas," neighbor explains; "he was in uniform." The military! Unnamed Father heads for the nearest military base, where Aaron was most likely to have trained. They try to be helpful, except when they go looking for Aaron So-&-So in their records, he isn't there. Unnamed Father is briefly disconsolate before he feels like slapping himself--he'd given them Unnamed Mother's married surname. Of course Aaron would have gone not by that but by her maiden name--Uncle's surname. He asks them to look up that name instead. They search, return a second time: There's no record of any Aaron Such-&-Such, but there IS an Erin Such-&-Such, is it possible he got the first name wrong...? Neighbors had mentioned how much Uncle hated Jews, so Unnamed Father's not too surprised that Aaron changed the Hebrew spelling of his name. Yes, that's who he's looking for (he hopes). The official does a bit more digging. Finds something, looks uneasy, directs him to another official. He meets with a gunnery sergeant named Evans who delivers the bad news that, while one Erin Such-&-Such did enlist and went overseas as part of a special military unit, he's since been declared deceased, and in the absence of any next of kin or religion named in his file, was interred in Germany. Unnamed Father is stunned mute again. Evans, obviously sympathetic, offers to get him in touch with parties overseas who might have further information. Yet after gathering himself again, Unnamed Father asks if it would be possible for him to travel to Germany, now being divvied up between the various Allied nations, to visit his son's grave...? Evans seems skeptical, but promises to do what he can. A while later he provides Unnamed Father with all the proper documents and forms he'll need to secure passage and safe travel to eastern Germany to meet with the Trench Rats, the American forces with whom his son was last associated. Unnamed Father checks his passport, fills out the paperwork, answers all the security questions, boards a ship. Makes it to Europe, travels by train, stares out the windows in awe at the wreckage of Germany. Meets a contact at the railway station, switches to a military transport, heads to a sprawling complex in the city. Is checked over by guards before being allowed in. Finally meets with an American sergeant who introduces himself as Gold Rat, and informs him that here, his son was known as Teal. This place they're in right now, he's surprised to learn, was once the headquarters of an SS-funded project that Teal was involved in; it's all rather complicated for Gold to explain, so he says he's going to pair him up with Lance Corporal Mahogany, who knows all the records like the back of his hand and if something is out there to find, he can surely find it. Gold and Mahogany were there to see the spot where Teal was buried. Gold is busy with other things, but if he'd like to visit Teal's grave, Mahogany can take him. Unnamed Father agrees. Mahogany tends to be overly chatty when given the chance, but Unnamed Father wants to know everything, so he lets him talk the entire way there. They take a military truck out of the city and into the countryside, then upon reaching the forest, head off on foot. It's quite a long walk. Mahogany explains Alpha Squad and the early Trench Rats (before his time, yet he's read all the material), the rescue of Doomsday and Teal's capture, the German attack on HQ and everything after. Unnamed Father is despondent to learn how long his son spent in captivity, how for so long he was blamed for things that weren't his fault. When Mahogany mentions how when he consulted Teal's file to determine what to do with his body after his suicide, the sections for next of kin and religion were left blank, it hits hard...his son chose to cut himself off from anything and anyone that might have provided a sense of belonging in his life, and Unnamed Father doesn't understand why. He's been there the entire time. He wouldn't have turned him away. Teal reached out to his mother...why didn't he reach out to him? Mahogany leads him far into the forest, over tumbled boulders and fallen trees and gurgling brooks, and at last to a pool at the bottom of a small but steep drop; a waterfall descends from above. The Trench Rat pauses to catch his breath and his bearings, looks around, lights up--"There!" he points, and clambers over a few rocks, Unnamed Father following. "Here," Mahogany says, squeezing water from his clothes and gesturing at a stone slab, "this is where we buried him." He doesn't notice Unnamed Father's flinch at his blunt language, but Unnamed Father says nothing. "Sergeant Camo--oh, you don't know him--but anyway, he said that Teal located this place while doing reconnaissance and seemed to admire it, he came here often. He suggested this place to bury him since there was nowhere else. We had to move this slab here, but it made a nice headstone." He finally looks up at Unnamed Father, blinks, goes red. "Oh...I'm sorry. I don't think sometimes...I realize that sounded crass. I didn't mean it that way..." "I think I know what you meant," Unnamed Father says past the lump in his throat, "you meant he would've been happy here." Mahogany relaxes a little; he'd looked genuinely dismayed with himself, but seems relieved not to have caused too much offense. He explains how Camo helped pick the spot and Teal was laid to rest. Unnamed Father wants to know more about his son as a person, how he ended up here, how his life ended; Mahogany says he honestly doesn't know much, but, noticing Unnamed Father's crestfallen look, hesitantly adds that there's ONE other person left, who was in a position to know more about Teal than the rest of them. He offers to get them in touch; Unnamed Father agrees. Before they leave, he pulls something from his pocket, places it upon the slab while Mahogany looks on curiously: a stone he brought with him from America, a small piece of the home Teal left behind. When he at last meets this third party, at a large farmhouse out in the country, he learns why he was in such a good position to know things: Otto Himmel was the SS officer who oversaw the project Teal was involved in. Himmel is just as surprised to meet him and find out the truth that Teal successfully kept hidden about his past. He's reluctant to share too much info at first--"I'm not sure this is how you'd want to remember your son"--yet finally relents, and lets Unnamed Father know everything he does, including Teal's shocking attack on the doctor who victimized him, and the Trench Rat surgeon's account of how Teal took his own life, as he felt overwhelmed by guilt, and had nothing left to live for. Unnamed Father's heart is broken. He wishes so much that his son had just reached out to him, just once. Had known that there was at least one person out there who loved him, no matter what. Himmel seems to understand his grief, and although he's Catholic, even agrees to pray with him for Teal. Unnamed Father has never been particularly religious, rarely ever wears a kippah or attends synagogue, but he feels compelled to offer a prayer now, the smallest thing he can do. Himmel knows the words and joins him. He offers for Unnamed Father to join him and his family for supper. Unnamed Father thanks him but declines...he needs some time to himself, to grieve the son he never met and has already lost, and then he needs to head home. He hates leaving him behind but he can't stay, and he can't bring Teal back home with him. Himmel promises to ask Mahogany to check on Teal's grave now and then, and says he himself will visit when he can (a bit of a hardship as he's rather lame in one leg, yet he'll manage), and keep Teal in his own prayers. He tells Unnamed Father that if he ever returns to Germany, please visit; at his home, everyone is family. And his son, who was also in the project, shyly offers Unnamed Father a small gift before he goes: a drawing he made of Teal from memory. Unnamed Father has no photos of his son; he swallows his tears as he thanks them, and departs. Teal's story, IMO, is the most tragic one in the series (only Ratdog's/Adel's comes close); while everyone else deals with grief and loss, Teal doesn't even have anyone to grieve or lose; he spends his life fully believing no one loves him, no one wants or needs him, not even that one thing that's supposed to be there no matter what, family. (Even the Trench Rats basically abandon him.) He makes his own single big mistake in deciding it's not worth the trouble to find his father, convinced that if his own mother doesn't want him, surely his father doesn't, either. The tragic detail is that he's wrong, and he gives up this chance to find the one person who would be there for him. He then gives up completely and dies believing he has no one, he has no worth. Some of these are feelings I know too well...I try to avoid writing characters who are like me, and Teal definitely isn't, but I wanted to write somebody who ends up truly hopeless, with no light at the end to keep him going. But like I said, Teal being completely unloved isn't the real tragedy, the real tragedy is that he IS loved...he just never tries to see it. [Unnamed Mother (Teal) 2025 [Friday, March 21, 2025, 12:36:12 AM]] |