Picture six children growing in the 1960s. They live in the northeast, some might say in middle class suburbia. On the exterior, their lives seem normal, but to those children normal didn’t exist. Their father, a real estate agent by profession, was the darkest of evil; their mother, a needy woman never content with her life or her family’s social status, was always a victim, her need for attention fueling the evil that lurked within the household.

The six children never understood closeness: they never understood love. The oldest was a girl who excelled at academics. In her adult life, she married, became a mother, an alcoholic, a hard worker and loving sister. The second oldest excelled at wanting to be loved. She was a contradiction, never thinking of herself as smart, but her wisdom helped her survive: she married a good man and became a mother 1950s television shows would want to emulate — portray. These two sisters became survivors.

The third child, named after his father, survived his father’s abuse. His life became a story worthy of a movie script; his maneuvering through dysfunction and chaos became a template for his children not to copy. Two marriages, 4 children, drug addiction and a craving for acceptance, those who know him call him a survivor: he tries to agree with that assessment. The movie is yet scripted.

The fourth child is sixteen months younger than her oldest brother. She was the fragility of the family — a juvenile diabetic by the age of five. She grew up free from the physical abuse, but she suffered mightily for it: she never fit in with her older siblings; she was the ugly duckling awaiting her time. Three marriages, one troubled child and lifetime of physical ailments, she has survived, for the beauty within her is now evident to all that know her. She taught herself to smile.

The fifth child, a boy, grew up quickly. He only remembers his childhood in segments. When he talks with his brother, they share their crazy stories, some imagined, some real. What’s not imagined is the inability of the mother to care for her youngest son. Her migraines, perpetual flus and self-absorbed attention seeking, left him alone. He can’t remember his mother fixing his breakfast or welcoming him home from school. Later, his mother’s second marriage offered him hope, but his stepfather and stepbrother absorbed what attention his mother might have had for him. He grew up distant; he married, became a loving husband and father; he doesn’t remember his father or speak to his mother.

The youngest child, a girl, was conceived from rape, her father her siblings father, or so her mother insists. No one knows the true story. What is known is that on one cold February evening in 1967, the four older children of a distant mother and an evil father sat around a kitchen table and named their baby sister; they became the surrogate parents. Through all the confusion, that was her life, this youngest daughter grew up to become a dedicated wife and mother, a loving sister, a nurse and business owner. She knows her father to be the man who adopted her, her mother's second husband, and that's the way it should be.

So, picture six siblings now sitting in the same living room, laughing, joking, crying, reminiscing and wondering how they survived a life they never asked for. The father, deceased 11 years, is only thought about in foggy dreams; the mother, now eighty years old, is spoken about with an understanding that her maternal goodness never existed, and that is the true sadness that haunts these children — now adults — to this day.