Ambition

---From the Memoirs of Charles Josephson Cassidy:

Mother always said that the only child worth having was the ambitious one. That is most likely the reason that she never really loved me, for I had none.

Ever since my early years, I have never really looked to or thought about the future. In my mother’s eyes, that made me practically useless. She never really cared about looks, so it didn’t bother her that I was a scruffy, messy kid, or that I nearly always had dirt under my fingernails, even on Sundays. It was my lack of aspiration and desire that infuriated her, for my mother, being such a zealous person, did not think that her child could possibly be such a failure.

On the other hand, my older sister Blake was such a fervent student of ideology that my mother looked at her with a face so proud and loving, and it was an expression I knew I would never see when my mother looked at me.

My father had died the year after I was born, so I had no paternal figure in my life, except my Uncle Grey, who was a garbage collector. My mother didn’t approve of him, though he was a kind soul, so he rarely came to our house, even for holidays. She told Blake and I not to speak or associate with him, for she feared that his goalless life would somehow rub off on us. And in a way, she was right.

Uncle Grey may have been the only family member I could relate to, and I tried to visit him every chance I got. After school got out, I would go down to the junkyard at the edge of town and talk to him. I would lean on the rickety old fence enclosing the garbage that my uncle shoveled, and ask him questions about his job, and my mother, and life in general.

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