2. I HATE MOM, I HATE DAD

Aberdeen, Washington
January 1974 - June 1979

I hate Mom, I hate Dad
- From a poem on Kurt's bedroom wall.

The stress on the family increased in 1974, when Don Cobain decided to change jobs and enter the timber industry. Don wasn't a large man, and he didn't have much interest in cutting down 200-foot trees, so he took an office position at Mayr Brothers. He knew eventually he could make more money in timber than working at the service station; unfortunately, his first job was entry level, paying $4.10 an hour, even less than he'd made as a mechanic. He picked up extra money doing inventory at the mill on weekends, and he'd frequently take Kurt with him. "He'd ride his little bike around the yard," Don recalled. Kurt later would mock his father's job, and claim it was hell to accompany Don to work, but at the time he revealed in being included. Though he spent all of his adult life trying to argue otherwise, acknowledgment and attention from his father was critically important for Kurt, and he desired more of it, not less. He would later admit that his early years within his nuclear family were joyful memories. "I had a really good childhood," he told Spin magazine in 1992, but not without adding, "up until I was nine."

Don and Wendy frequently had to borrow money to pay their bills, one of the main sources of their arguments. Leland and Iris kept a $20 bill in their kitchen - they joked that it was a bouncing twenty because each money they'd loan it to their son for groceries, and immediately after repaying them Don would borrow it again. "He'd go all around, pay all his bills, and then he'd come to our house," remembered Leland. "He'd pay us our $20, and than he'd say, 'Hell, I done pretty good this week. I got 35 or 40 cents left.'" Leland, who never liked Wendy because he perceived her as acting "better than the Cobains," remembered the young family would then head off to the Blue Beacon Drive-In on Boone Street to spend the change on hamburgers. Though Don got along well with his father-in-law, Charles Fradenburg - who drove a road grader for the country - Leland and Wendy never connected.

Tension between the two came to a head when Leland helped remodel the house on First Street. He built Don and Wendy a fake fireplace in the living room and put in new countertops, but in the process he and Wendy battled increasingly. Leland finally told his son to make Wendy stop nagging him or he'd exit and leave the job half finished. "It was the first time I ever heard Donnie talk back to her," Leland recalled. "She was bitching about this and that, and finally he said, 'Keep you god damn mouth shut or he'll take his tools and go home.' And she shut her mouth for once."

Like his father before him, Don was strict with children. One of Wendy's complaints was that her husband expected the kids to always behave - an impossible standard - and required Kurt to act like a "little adult." At times, like all children, Kurt was a terror. Most of his acting-out incidents were minor at the time - he'd write on the walls or slam the door or tease his sister. These behaviors frequently elicited a spanking, but Don's more common - and almost daily - physical punishment was to take two fingers and thump Kurt on the temple or the chest. It only hurt a little, but the psychological damage was deep - it made his son fear greater physical harm and it served to reinforce Don's dominance. Kurt began to retreat into the closet in his room. The kind of enclosed, confined spaces that would give others panic attacks were the very places he sought out as sanctuary.

And there were things worth hiding from: Both parents could be sarcastic and mocking. When Kurt was immature enough to believe them, Don and Wendy warned him he'd get a lump pf coal for Christmas if he wasn't good, particularly if he fought with his sister. As a prank, they left him pieces of coal in his stocking. "It was just a joke," Don remembered. "We did it every year. He got presents and all that - we never didn't give him presents." The humor, however, was lost on Kurt, at least as he told the story later in life. He claimed one year he had been promised a Starsky and Hutch toy gun, a gift that never came. Instead, he maintained he only received a lump of nearly wrapped coal. Kurt's telling was an exaggeration, but in his inner imagination, he had begun to put his own spin on the family.

Occasionally, Kim and Kurt got along, and at times they'd play together. Though Kim never had the artistic talent of Kurt - and she forever felt the rivalry of having the rest of the family pay him so much attention - she developed a skill for imitating voices. She was particularly good at Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and these performances amused Kurt to no end. Her vocal abilities even gave birth to a new fantasy for Wendy. "It was my mom's big dream," declared Kim, "that Kurt and I would end up at Disneyland, both of us working there, with him drawing and me doing voices."

March of 1975 was filled with much joy for eight-year-old Kurt: He finally visited Disneyland, and he took his first airplane ride. Leland had retired in 1974, and he and Iris wintered that year in Arizona. Don and Wendy drove Kurt to Seattle, put him on a plane, and Leland met the boy in Yuma, before they headed for Southern California. In a mad two-day period, they visited Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, and Universal Studios. Kurt was enthralled and insisted they go through Disneyland's "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride three times. At Knotts Berry Farm, he braved the giant roller coaster, but when he departed the ride, his face was white as a ghost. When Leland said, "Had enough?" the color rushed back and he rode the coaster yet again. On the tour of Universal Studios, Kurt leaned out of the train in front of the Jaws shark, spurring a guard to yell at his grandparents, "You better pull that little towheaded boy back or his head will get bitten off." Kurt defied the order and snapped a picture of the mouth of the shark as it came inches away from his camera. Later that day, driving on the freeway, Kurt fell asleep in the backseat, which was the only reason his grandparents were able to sneak by Magic Mountain without him insisting they visit that as well.

Of all his relatives, Kurt was closest to his grandmother Iris; they shared both an interest in art and, at times, a certain sadness. "They adored each other," remembered Kim. "I think he intuitively knew the hell she'd been through." Both Iris and Leland had difficult upbringings, each scarred by poverty and the early deaths of their fathers on the job. Iris's father had been killed by poisonous fumes at the Rayonier Pulp Mill; Leland's dad, who was a county sheriff, died when his gun accidentally discharged. Leland was fifteen at the time of his father's death. He joined the Marines and was sent to Guadalcanal, but after he beat up an officer he was committed to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. He married Iris after his discharge, but struggled with drink and anger, especially after their third son, Michael, was born retarded and died in an institution at age six. "On Friday night he'd get paid and come home drunk," recalled Don. "He used to beat my mom. He'd beat me. He beat my grandma, and he beat Grandma's boyfriend. But that's the way it was in those days." By the time of Kurt's youth, Leland had softened and his most serious weapon was foul language.

When Leland and Iris weren't available, one of the various Fradenburg siblings would baby-sit - three of Kurt's aunts lived within four blocks. Don's younger brother Gary was given child-care duties a few times, and one occasion marked Kurt's first trip back to the hospital. "I broke his right arm," Gary recalled. "I was on my back and he was on my feet, and I was shooting him up in the air with my feet." Kurt was a very active child, and with all the running around he did, relatives were surprised he didn't break more limbs.

Kurt's broken arm healed and the injury didn't seem to stop him from playing sports. Don encouraged his son to play baseball almost as soon as he could walk, and provided him with all the balls, bats, and mitts that a young boy needed. As a toddler, Kurt found the bats more useful as percussion instruments, but eventually he began to participate in athletics, beginning in the neighborhood, and then in organized play. At seven, he was on his first Little League team. His dad was the coach. "He wasn't the best player on the team, but he wasn't bad," Gary Cobain recalled. "He didn't really want to play, I thought, mentally. I think he did it because of his dad."

Baseball was an example of Kurt seeking Don's approval. "Kurt and my dad got along well when he was young," remembered Kim, "but Kurt wasn't anything like Dad was planning on Kurt turning out."

Both Don and Wendy were facing the conflict between the idealized child and the real child. Since both had unmet needs left from their own early years, Kurt's birth brought out all their personal expectations. Don wanted the father/son relationship he never had with Leland, and he thought participating in sports together would provide that bond. And though Kurt liked sports, particularly when his father wasn't around, he intuitively connected his father's love with this activity, something that would mark him for life. His reaction was to participate, but to do so under protest.

When Kurt was in second grade, his parents and teacher decided his endless energy might have a larger medical root. Kurt's pediatrician was consulted and Red Dye Number Two was removed from his diet. When there was no improvement, his parents limited Kurt's sugar intake. Finally, his doctor prescribed Ritalin, which Kurt took for a period of three months. "He was hyperactive," Kim recalled. "He was bouncing off the walls, particularly if you got any sugar in him."

Other relatives suggest Kurt may have suffered from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Mari remembered visiting the Cobain house and finding Kurt running around the neighborhood, banging on a marching drum and yelling at the top of his lungs. Mari went inside and asked her sister, "Just what on earth is he doing?" "I don't know," was Wendy's reply. "I don't know what to do to get him to stop - I've tried everything." At the time, Wendy presumed it was Kurt's way of burning off his excess of boyish energy.

The decision to give Kurt Ritalin was, even in 1974, a controversial one, with some scientists arguing it creates a Pavlovian response in children and increases the likelihood of addictive behavior later in life; others believe that if children aren't treated for hyperactivity, they may later self-medicate with illegal drugs. Each member of the Cobain family had a different opinion on Kurt's diagnosis and whether the short course of treatment helped or harmed him, but Kurt's own opinion, as he later told Courtney Love, was that the drug was significant. Love, who herself was prescribed Ritalin as a child, said the two discussed this issue frequently. "When you're a kid and you get this drug that makes you feel that feeling, where else are you going to turn when you're an adult?" Love asked. "It was euphoric when you were a child - isn't that memory going to stick with you?"

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In February 1976, just a week after Kurt's ninth birthday, Wendy informed Don she wanted a divorce. She announced this one weekday night and stormed off in her Camaro, leaving Don to do the explaining to the children, something at which he didn't excel.Though Don and Wendy's marital conflicts had increased during the last half of 1974, her declaration took Don by surprise, as it did the rest of the family. Don went into a state of denial and moved inward, a behavior that would be mirrored years later by his son in times of crisis. Wendy had always been a strong personality and prone to occasional bouts of rage, yet Don was shocked she wanted to break up the family unit. Her main complaint was that he was unceasingly involved in sports - he was a referee and a coach, in addition to playing on a couple of terms. "In my mind, I didn't believe it was going to happen," Don recalled. "Divorce wasn't so common then. I didn't want it to happen, either. She just wanted out."

On March 1 it was Don who moved out and took a room in Hoquiam. He expected Wendy's anger would subside and their marriage would survive, so he rented by the week. To Don, the family represented a huge part of his identity, and his role as a dad marked one of the first times in his life he felt needed. "He was crushed by the idea of divorce," remembered Stan Targus, Don's best friend. The split was complicated because Wendy's family adored Don, particularly her sister Janis and husband Clark, who lived near the Cobains. A few of Wendy's siblings quietly wondered how she would survive financially without Don.

On March 29 Don was served with a summons and a "Petition for Dissolution of Marriage." A slew of legal documents would follow; Don would frequently fail to respond, hoping against hope Wendy would change her mind. On July 9 he was held in default for not responding to Wendy's petition. On that same day, a final settlement was granted awarding the house to Wendy but giving Don a lien of $6,500, due whenever the home was sold, Wendy remarried, or Kim turned eighteen. Don was granted his 1965 Ford-half-ton pickup truck; Wendy was allowed to keep the family 1968 Camaro.

Custody of the children was awarded to Wendy, but Don was charged with paying $150 a month per child in support, plus their medical and dental expenses, and given "reasonable visitation" rights. This being a small-town court in the seventies, the specifics of visitation weren't spelled out and the arrangement was informal. Don moved in with his parents in their Montesano trailer. He remained hopeful that Wendy would change her mind, even after the final papers were signed.

Wendy would have nothing of it. When she was done with something, she was over it, and she couldn't have been more over Don. She quickly became involved with a new boyfriend, a handsome longshoreman who made twice as much money as Don. Her new beau was also prone to violence and anger, and Wendy loved nothing better than to see the venom projected toward Don. When a new driver's license of Don's was accidentally mailed to Wendy's house, someone opened the envelope, rubbed feces on the picture of Don, resealed it, and forwarded it to Don. This wasn't a divorce - it was a war, filled with the hatred, spite, and revenge of a blood feud.

To Kurt, it was an emotional holocaust - no other single event in his life had more of an effect on the shaping of his personality. He internalized the divorce, as many children do. The depth of his parents' conflict had been primarily hidden from him, and he couldn't understand the reason for the split. "He thought it was his fault, and he shouldered much of the blame," observed Mari. "It was traumatic for Kurt, as he saw everything he trusted in - his security, family, and his own maintenance - unravel in front of his eyes." Rather than outwardly express his anguish and grief, Kurt turned inward. That June, Kurt wrote on his bedroom wall: "I hate Mom, I hate Dad. Dad hates Mom, Mom hates Dad. It simply makes you want to be so sad." This was a boy who as an infant was so bonded to his family that he fought sleep, as Mari had written in her home economics report seven years previously, because "he doesn't want to leave them." Now, through no fault of his own, he had been left. Iris Cobain once described 1976 as "Kurt's year in purgatory."

It was hard on Kurt physically as well. Mari recalled Kurt in the hospital during this time; she'd heard from her mother he was there as a result of not eating enough. "I remember Kurt being in the hospital because of malnutrition when he as ten," she said. Kurt told his friends he had to drink barium and get his stomach X-rayed. It's possible that what was thought to be malnutrition was the first symptom of a stomach disorder that would plague him later in life. His mother had suffered a stomach condition in her early twenties, not long after his birth, and when Kurt first started having stomachaches, it was assumed he had the same irritable condition as Wendy. Around the time of the divorce, Kurt also had an involuntary twitching in his eyes. The family assumed it was stress related, which it probably was.

While his parents were divorcing, his life as a pre-adolescent boy, with all its internal challenges, was continuing. About to enter fourth grade, he began to notice girls as sexual beings and to be concerned with social status. That July he got his picture in the Aberdeen Daily World when his baseball team won first place in the Aberdeen Timber League after compiling a record of fourteen wins and one loss. The other highlight of the summer was his adoption of a black kitten that had been wandering around the neighborhood. It was first pet, and he named it Puff.

Three months after the divorce was final, Kurt expressed an interest in living with his father. He moved into the trailer with Don, Leland, and Iris, but by early fall, father and son rented their own single-wide trailer across the street. Kurt visited Wendy, Kim, and Puff on weekends.

Living with his father solved some of Kurt's emotional needs - once again he was the center of attention, an only child. Don felt bad enough about the divorce that he overcompensated with material gifts, buying Kurt a Yamaha Enduro-80 mini-bike, which became a neighborhood attraction. Lisa Rock, who lived a few blocks away, first met Kurt that fall: "He was a quiet, very likeable kid. Always with a smile. He was a little shy. There was this field where he'd ride his mini-bike, and I'd ride alongside him with my bicycle."

Rock's observation of the nine-year-old Kurt as being "quiet" echoed a word that would be used repeatedly to describe him in adulthood. He was able to sit in silence for long stretches without feeling a need to make small talk. Kurt and Lisa had the same birthday, and when they both turned ten, they celebrated with a party at her house. Kurt was glad to be included, yet he was tentative and uncomfortable with the attention. He'd been fearless as a four-year-old; as a ten-year-old he was surprisingly fearful. Post-divorce, he held himself with reserve, always waiting for the other person to make the first move.

After the divorce, and with the onset of Kurt's puberty, his father took on a role of heightened proportions. After school Kurt would stay at his grandparents', but as soon as Don returned from work, they were together the rest of the day and Kurt was happy to do whatever Don wanted, even if that meant sports. After baseball game the two Cobain males occasionally ate dinner together at the local malt shop. It was a bonding that both savored, but each of them couldn't help but feel the loss of family - it was as if a limb had been severed, and though they got through the day without it, it was never far from their thoughts. Their love for each other that year was stronger than it was before or after, but both father and son were still profoundly lonely. Afraid he might loss his dad, Kurt asked Don to promise not to remarry. Don gave his son this assurance and said the two of them would always be together.

During the winter of 1976, Kurt transferred to Beacon Elementary School in Montesano. Montesano's schools were smaller than Aberdeen's and within weeks of transferring he found a popularity that had escaped him previously and his fearlessness seemed to return. Despite his outward confidence, he held on to a bitterness about his circumstances: "You could tell he was tormented by his parents' divorce," recalled classmate Darrin Neathery.

By the time he began fifth grade, in the fall of 1977, Kurt was a fixture in "Monte," the name locals used for the town - every student in the small school knew him, and most liked him. "He was a good-looking kid," remembered John Fields. "He was smart, and he had everything going for him." With his blond hair and blue eyes, Kurt became a favorite of the girls. "It was no exaggeration to say that he was one of the most popular kids," observed Roni Toyra. "There was a group of about fifteen kids who would hang out together, and he was an important part of that group. He was really cute, with his blond hair, big blue eyes, and freckles on his nose."

That outward attractiveness hid a struggle for identity that hit a new plateau when, in October 1977, Don began to date. Kurt disliked the first woman Don met, so his father dropped her. With his ten-year-old's narcissism, Kurt didn't understand his father's desire for adult companionship or why Don wasn't happy with just the two of them. In late fall, Don met a woman named Jenny Westby, who herself was divorced with two kids: Mindy, a year younger than Kurt, and James, five years younger. From the very beginning, the courtship was a family affair, and their first date was a hike with all their kids around Lake Sylvia. Kurt was friendly to Jenny and her children, and Don thought he had a match. He and Jenny married.

At first Kurt liked Jenny - she provided him with female attention he was lacking - but his positive feelings about his new stepmother were canceled out by an internal conflict: If he cared for her, he would be betraying his love for his mother and his "real" family. Like his father, Kurt had held on to a hope that the divorce was just a temporary setback, a dream that would pass. His father's remarriage, and the now severely cramped trailer, destroyed that illusion. Don was not a man of many words, and his own background made expressing feelings difficult. "You told me you weren't going to get married again," Kurt complained to Don. "Well, you know, Kurt, things change," his father replied.

Jenny tried to reach out to him, without success. "At the beginning, he had a lot of affection toward everybody," Jenny recalled. Later, Kurt continually referred to Don's promise not to remarry, and kept withdrawing. Don an Jenny attempted to compensate by making Kurt the center of attention around the house - he got to open presents first, and he was given leeway on chores - but these small sacrifices only served to increase his emotional withdrawal. He enjoyed his step-siblings as occasional playmates, but he also teased them and was merciless to Mindy about her overbite, cruelly imitating her voice in front of her.

Things temporarily improved when the family moved into a home of their own at 413 Fleet Street South in Montesano. Kurt had his own room, which had been fashioned with round windows to look like a ship. Not long after the move, Jenny gave birth to another son, Chad Cobain, in January 1979. Now two other children, a step-mom, and a baby were all competing for the attention that had once been Kurt's alone.

Kurt had free rein in Monte's parks, alleyways, and fields. It was a town so small transportation was hardly required; the baseball field was four blocks away, school was just up the road, and all his friends were within walking distance. In contrast to Aberdeen, Monte seemed like something from Thornton Wilder play, a simpler and friendlier America. Every Wednesday was designated family night at the Cobain house. Activities included board games like Parcheesi or Monopoly, and Kurt was as excited about these evenings as anyone.

Money was tight, so most vacations entailed camping trips, but Kurt was the first person in the car when they were getting ready. His sister Kim went on their trips until Don and Wendy had a battle about whether vacations meant less child support; after that, Kim saw less of her father and brother. Kurt continued to visit his mother on weekends, but rather than warm reunions, these times would usually just irritate the old wound of the divorce; Wendy and Don were hardly civil, so trips to Aberdeen meant having to watch his two parents battle over the visitation schedule. Another sadness befell him one weekend: Puff, his beloved cat, ran away and was never seen again.

Like all children, Kurt was a creature of routine and he enjoyed the structure of things like family night. But even this small comfort left him conflicted: He yearned for closeness while fearing being close would result in abandonment down the road. He had hit the stage of puberty where most adolescent males begin to differentiate themselves from their parents, to find their own identity. Yet Kurt still mourned the loss of the original family nest, so breaking away was fraught with both necessity and dread. He dealt with these many conflicting feelings by disassociating himself emotionally from Don and Wendy. He told himself and his friends that he hated them, and in this vitriol he was able to justify his own remoteness. But after an afternoon of hanging with his buddies and talking about what rotten parents he had, he would find himself yet again participating in family night and being the only one in the house who didn't want the evening's festivities to end.

Holidays were always a problem. Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1978 meant Kurt was shuttled around to a half dozen different, jealously, and betrayal, his feelings for Wendy's boyfriend were pure anger. One night the boyfriend broke Wendy's arm - Kim was in the house and witnessed the incident - and Wendy was hospitalized. When she recovered, she refused to press charges. Her brother Chuck threatened the boyfriend, but there was little anyone could do to change Wendy's commitment to him. At the time, many thought Wendy stayed with him because of the financial support he provided. She'd begun working after the divorce as a clerk at Pearson's, an Aberdeen department store, but it was the longshoreman's salary that afforded them luxuries like cable television. Before the longshoreman  came along, Wendy had been so in arrears on paying her bills that her electricity was about to be turned off.

Kurt was eleven that year, and small and scrawny, but he never felt as impotent or weak as when he was around Wendy's boyfriend. He was helpless to protect his mother, and the stress of watching  these fights made him fear for her life and perhaps for his. He both pitied his mother and hated her for having to pity her. His parents had been his gods when he was younger - now they were fallen idols, false gods, and not to be trusted.

These internal conflicts began to exhibit themselves in Kurt's behavior. He talked back to adults, refused to do chore, and despite his small size, began to bully another boy with such force that the victim refused to go to class. Teachers and parents became involved, and everyone wondered why such a sweet boy had turned rancid. At the end of their ropes, Don and Jenny finally took Kurt to counseling. There was an attempt at family therapy, but Don and Wendy never could manage to arrive at the same appointment. The therapist, however, spent a couple of sessions talking with Kurt. His conclusions were that Kurt needed a single family. "We were told if he was going to be with us, we needed to get legal custody of him, so that he knew we were accepting of him as a part of our family," Jenny recalled. "Unfortunately, all this did was to cause problems between Don and Wendy, as they debated it."

Don and Wendy had been divorced for several years, yet their anger with each other continued, and in fact escalated through their children. It had been a difficult spring for Wendy - her father, Charles Fradenburg, had died of a sudden heart attack ten days after his 61st birthday. Wendy's mother, Peggy, had always been a recluse, and Wendy worried that this would increase her mother's isolation. Peggy's behavior may have resulted from a grisly childhood incident: When she was ten years old, Peggy's father stabbed himself in the abdomen in front of his family. James Irving survived the suicide attempt, and was committed to the same Washington mental hospital that later would give shock therapy to actress Frances Farmer. He died from his original injury two months later, when hospital staff weren't watching, he ripped open his stab wounds. Like many of the family's tragedies, Kurt's greatgrandfather's mental illness was discussed only in whisper.

But even the travails of the Fradenburg family failed to bring Don and Wendy together in shared grief. Their discussions about Kurt ended, as all their conversations did, with an argument. Wendy finally signed a document that read: "Donald Leland Cobain shall be solely responsible for the care, support and maintenance of said child." On June 18, 1979, three weeks short of three years after the date of Don and Wendy's divorce, Don was granted legal custody of Kurt.