So today's challenge is to describe my relationship with my parents. This is going to be interesting. We've had our ups and downs, ins and outs, angry words, silence that goes on forever, and some of the happiest times of my life. We will start with my father, but where to begin is difficult without telling some of our story. My mom and dad married young. Late teens or early twenties I'm not totally sure. My older sister came shortly after and then two years later came me. They divorced when I was around a year old and went their separate ways. My sister went with our dad and I stayed with my mom.
Of course I was only a year old, so I don't remember much after that for a while. Basically I don't remember him in my life much until I was in the second grade. I went to visit he and my sister for Christmas and decided to stay. It was so awesome being around my "dad" and big sister! Things were great for a while and I enjoyed catching up as much as a 7 year old could. He would take us down the road to the country store and buy us both a Yoohoo every day after school. I moved back home that summer because I missed my mom too much. I didn't hear from him for a long time and was afraid he had forgotten about me. He would come around long enough to catch up on child support or to drop my sister off for visits. That's when the recurring nightmares started of him abandoning me at a train station. Weird I know. Not sure where the trains came from..... We had a distant relationship until I was 16 and having my daughter. He showed up unannounced with a new girlfriend and then left just as quickly. The next time we reconnected, I was 21, and had just "come out of the closet". I was living with my partner at the time, and he absolutely loved her cooking, so we saw him ALOT! My dad had shoulder surgery during that time and decided to stay with us in our spare room for a couple months while he went through therapy. All fine and dandy, but my dad has a short temper, and when I say temper, I mean more like temper-tantrums! All over weed-eating the front yard....UGH! He had offered to do it the week before, and it hadn't been done yet, so I took it upon myself and did the job. Well that just pissed him plum off! He left and didn't speak to me again for almost a year. Over yard work! My partner and I broke up after 7 years, and my dad disappeared for a while. I guess because I didn't cook much! Since then, it has been an on and off again relationship. I think the best way to describe our relationship is to say it is distant at best.
My mother.....God I love that woman! She is the strongest person I have ever met, and I will always aspire to be more like her. After my father and her split, she met a man who I would call dad for the next 10 years. He was a hard working man who liked his beer and his women, but when my mother came between either of those he became abusive. I saw more than I should for a small child, but that was no fault of my mother's. She was doing what she had to do. I get that now. As I said before she left him. She was forced to leave my two small sisters behind, and I know she regrets it to this day. I get that now too. The strength I have always seen in my mother is more than astonishing. She had three jobs at all times to keep a roof over our head and food on the table. Granted, we didn't have much, but I never went without and never wanted for anything. How she managed to buy the $100 basketball shoes I just had to have in middle school I will never know. At one time, shortly after leaving the abusive husband, we had no vehicle. We would both get up at 5:30 am and start the walk to town. We would stop somewhere on the way for breakfast before dropping me at the school's doorstep, and she would then trek back across town for her day job. I have no idea how that woman kept it together. I would definitely fall apart. I never saw her cry. Maybe because anything was better than how she had been forced to live for so long. Maybe it was because she was raised in a different generation. I may never know. She has always accepted me for who I am. Even when I came out to her, and she told me I was "going through a phase". We still joke about that. I ask her occasionally when she thinks my "phase" will end. She has never talked down to me or my lifestyle. She even has started cracking "straight" jokes with me! It's hilarious! I have never laughed so hard with my mother as the day she said while driving: "You can't go straight" in reference to directions. I guess you'd have to be there. This woman is the most amazing one I know, and she comes in a VERY close second to my daughter who I love the most. I pray my daughter and I have a relationship like my mother and I do one day.
I hope you each reflect on your relationships with your parents today. I know I have.......
Awesome writing again baby!
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