I started mentoring my parents lives intensively about 10 years ago, it being 2012 right now. And concrete results came soon and hit hard.
My Dad was living in a dilapidated house on a run down property with a swimming pool that had not worked in over 22 years, my mom was renting a small mud and brick house. They had a failed marriage and I had pretty much raised myself. A few years earlier I started producing my dad who had not recorded anything original in over 2 decades.
I turned around his career not only producing and performing on his first few 'comeback' recordings, but acting as his publicist and doing managerial duties as well and producing and promoting his 50th anniversary in the Calypso business concert. In his own words " I never had it so good!" All the while lecturing to my mother about life and how to succeed as well as the role of education in modern society (she was at the time in the employ of the Ministry of Education).
I was also working on my own career as a recording artist and music producer and producing other local artists for income.
I charted a course for my parents new lives, and got them focused and motivated enough to achieve it asking only for references when they cashed in. After all, they had their glory days but that was decades ago and they had not been able to adjust to the age of the microchip and the internet. And apart from their dwindling circles and conversations of the past, all their major successes were behind them. But they had provided the space for my mind to develop and ensured that I always had something to eat, a bed in which to sleep, clean clothes and access to the best education that my country could provide for a young mind.
The old fools, when my dad became a 'star' again and was once more in the public eye with a working swimming pool and people showing interest in his rekindled career. And my mother at the age 60 for the first time in her life had her own house they became intoxicated with the attention and success. I had been the one who not only envisioned, but made the possibility of a dynastic structure credible asking only that once I had done this for them that they would, with their new found success return the favor.
They succumbed to ass kissing. There is a saying here that goes 'Success is relative, the more successful you are... The more relatives you have' So the vultures came swooping in. My recording studio and the hard drive with all my masters and what little music equipment I had were destroyed and with that all my earning power disappeared. I too had become increasingly agitated by the lies, hypocracy and lack of support. What had up to that point been a manageable drug habit became disproportianate especially with me not being able to earn. Added to that my one true love my daughter had disappeared with her mother.
To make bad matters worse, my dad (who a few years before no one was interested in) no longer needed a producer/publicist/engineer/manager etc etc and as such kicked me out into the street. So I was forced to turn to my mother, who I had never been close to. Not to mention the other mitigating factors in my life, such as the fact that I had been framed with falsified arrest reports and the whole 9 yards earlier in life. And to top it off my parents were now insisting that they were the architects of not only their new found success but all of my achievements and they were willing to go take saddistic measures to ensure that this was the public perception.
At the end of it all they're just a couple old folks who were cool back in the 60's and could dream a lofty dream when everybody else was, but couldn't do it on their own. My dad however is a genuinely talented man who taught me the basics of the mental landscape, the thought world and music theory. If they would only get back to reality and, seeing that I sacrified my life for family, just give me references so that I could once again be gainfully employed and get back to my real life and not the flight of fancy created in their little old minds so that they could look good in the eyes of a world that really doesn't give two hoots about them anyways.
At least I can say that I did my part and though suffering great indignities, thanks to modern technology and the latent guilt of my folks. I'm piecing my life together nicely...M