Justin Bieber - First Step 2 Forever, My Story. Justin Bieber

Чтение книги онлайн.

       “My dad has influenced not only my life but my music”

      My mom and dad were in their late teens when I was born. Not that much older than I am now. (And, yeah, that kinda freaks me out, so I don’t dwell on it.) My dad, Jeremy Bieber, was basically a kid, doing his best to handle huge adult responsibilities. Lately, I’ve started to understand how hard that is. He and I have always had a great relationship, and as the story goes on you’ll see how he’s influenced not only my life but my music. I admire my mom so much for how she stepped up to meet all the challenges in her life.

      My parents broke up when I was ten months old. Shortly afterwards, my dad started working on construction jobs out of town. Mom basically worked her butt off at whatever job she could get to keep a roof over our heads. We lived in public housing, and there were no luxuries at our little apartment, but it never occurred to me that we were poor. We had each other, which was everything we needed.

      While Mom was working, I went to daycare, but I also spent a lot of time with my grandparents. I had a room at their house, and Grandma painted it blue and white with Toronto Maple Leafs stuff all over the walls. There was never any question about it: I was into hockey from day one, and the Maple Leafs were my favorite team.

      Every summer, Grandpa and Grandma took us up to Star Lake, where they rented a cabin that belonged to the rod-and-gun club. Grandma’s brothers and sisters would come, and Grandpa and I would go fishing with Grandma’s dad. Being French Canadian, he didn’t speak English, and Grandpa didn’t speak French, so there wasn’t much conversation going on. But that’s a cool thing I learned from fishing: sometimes you don’t need conversation. Ha ha.

      I spoke both French and English from the time I was little, so I could interpret when needed.

       “I’d really love to have a nice girlfriend”

      Grandpa would say, “Ask him if he’s hungry.”

      And I’d go, Avez-vous faim?

      Great-grandpa would nod enthusiastically. Mais oui, j’ai très faim.

      But, for the most part, they both knew the important words. Fish, poisson. Boat, bateau. Water, l’eau. Thanks, merci. You’re welcome, pas de quoi. I have to pee, j’ai envie de faire pipi. What else do you really need to know to get along?

      “Fishing’s not something you have to talk about. It just happens,” Grandpa says, and it seems to me that a lot of things in life are that way. I mean, think how nice it is when you can hang out with someone and not have to fill up the air with small talk. I hate being on a date where both people are working too hard to come up with stuff to say. You know it’s working when you can just chill – listen to music, watch a movie or whatever – without feeling like you have to force the conversation. It should just be natural. When it’s working, there’s room in the air for both people to say things that matter. Scooter gave me the smartest dating advice you could ever give – to a guy or a girl – just listen. And that means really listen to what the other person is saying instead of using that time to come up with your next clever remark.

      Anyway. Yeah. Quiet mornings out on the water. There’s not much of that in my life anymore. I’m going at light speed 24/7 – and I love it. I’m grateful for all the blessings and opportunities that have come my way. But I will say that when I was little, I longed for a “normal” life with a “normal” family, and there’s no way that’s ever going to happen now. There’s a circus going on around me everywhere I go, which makes it hard on my family sometimes. I’d really love to have a nice girlfriend, but she’d have to put up with all that. You won’t hear me complain about how my life is going, but I hope someday I’ll be out on Star Lake with my own grandkid, reeling in brown trout and telling stories about how all of us would get together by the fire pit in the evening, everybody laughing and talking at once, the same way we did at Christmas dinner.

      BIG FAMILY CHRISTMAS

      Our tradition was always to gather at Grandpa and Grandma’s house early in the afternoon. She’d have the tree up and decorated with all the usual ornaments dragged down from the attic. People would start showing up, and by dinner time there was quite a crowd gathered. And not just the usual grandparents, kids, grandkids. Our extended family is really – well, I guess “extended” is a good word.

      See, my mom’s biological father died when she was a baby, so Grandpa is totally her dad, but technically he’s her stepfather, who married Grandma when Mom was two, which is how my mom actually ended up with a half-brother and a stepbrother both named Chris, because Grandpa already had kids from a previous marriage. It would suck for her stepsiblings and their kids not to be with their dad/grandpa at Christmas, so Grandpa’s ex-wife and her СКАЧАТЬ