(Cue Brady Bunch theme song) Here's the story...of a little girl...whose daddy walked out when she was 9...she had straight brown hair...like her mother...for a while it was a really rough time...till the one day... her mom met a nice man...and they started going out to dinner...at first the little girl...was afraid...till they realized he was a winner!
1970-1980
Yes, I realize I'm not the best song-writer, and yes, I realize Father's Day was LAST Sunday. However, I've been wanting to do a blog about my dads, and there's no time like the present I say. Neither was rich. Neither was perfect. Both had flaws and faults, but the one thing I know to be true is that they both loved me, and I loved them. For the first part(half) of my childhood, I was raised by my mom and dad, my real dad, or biological dad. Dad was a tall, dark, and handsome type with a goofy sense of humor but also a quick temper. He was one who worked hard and believed if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself. He didn't accept excuses or laziness. Dinners were served at the kitchen table, and the conversation revolved around everyone's day. What did you do? What did you learn at school that day? If I told Dad I didn't learn anything that day, he would ask me, "Why am I sending you to school if you're not learning anything?" I responded, "I don't know." I was ok with him not sending me there. He did anyway. I would like to say that my dad was the warm, fuzzy type, but he wasn't. That doesn't mean he was a mean, hateful person who didn't have a heart. He did, but he believed a man should work hard to support his family and give them what they needed, not necessarily what they wanted.
I wish I could say my memories of my dad were always good ones. They're not. I remember being afraid of him or walking on eggshells not to make him mad. I remember once when I was "playing" at the table. I was probably about 8 or 9. We were having chicken fried steak, and I dipped mine in ketchup. I was eating but also messing around with this little black address book he kept in his pocket. You see, Dad emptied his pockets out and placed everything on this one corner of the table, and I happened to be eating by that corner one particular evening. Well, I dropped that little black book in my ketchup, and Dad was NOT happy with me! He didn't spank me, but he did send me to bed without finishing my supper that evening. I think I cried myself to sleep. I was still hungry, and even though, yes, I deserved to be disciplined, I think a more fair punishment to fit the crime would have been to finish dinner and then go to bed or maybe ground me from getting to play outside for a few days. Another memory about that same time that I recall is one Saturday my mom had taken me shopping in town, and she let me have whatever I wanted for lunch that day since Dad was at work. Well, I wanted Sloppy Joes so that's what she made. Dad came home early and unexpectedly from work that day. He was super angry about something. Maybe he had a bad day at work? I don't know, but he didn't want any GD Sloppy Joes that's for sure! He told my mom, "Woman, I don't want any goddamn Sloppy Joes! You get in that kitchen and make me a steak!" And I'm sure she did...anything to keep him from yelling and to try to put him in a better mood. In fact, I remember Mom, all of us in a way, babied Dad. After dinner, he would go soak his feet while she cleaned up the kitchen. Then she would pull a chair from the dining room table, put a towel in her lap, and then Dad would put his feet on that towel in her lap, and she would literally scrape his feet every night. When I was younger, around 4 or 5, he would always have me plug in his lamp by his chair. It always scared me because it would spark, but I didn't dare whine about it because he would yell at me and make me do it anyway. To this day I hate plugging in anything. Also during this time he wanted me to comb his hair. I would stand behind his chair while he reclined and comb his hair. I guess it relaxed him. One night I was mad and didn't want to comb his stupid hair so I started scraping the comb over his scalp. He didn't get onto me until...I accidentally scraped over the mole on his forehead. THEN he was mad hot. He jumped up from his chair, removed his belt, and spanked me with that belt till I peed myself. Poor Mom had to clean it up. I was sent to my room. He never apologized or talked to me about how that hurt him or give me the chance to tell him I didn't want to come his hair. Mom later consoled me, but he didn't apologize for anything. When I was even younger, like 2 or 3, I remember if I acted up and he went for the leather strap, I was getting a spanking, and there was no negotiating to get out of it. Now...I'm not saying I didn't deserve to be disciplined or punished. I'm not trying to debate about spanking vs. non-spanking here. I think kids still need their asses spanked every now and then. I'm just talking about my experiences, my memories, my feelings. In fact, I do have some good memories. It's just that there are far fewer good ones than bad ones. The one I remember the best I guess is Dad used to go rabbit hunting a lot. I may have gone with him because he taught me to say "Shoot it, Daddy! Shoot it!" when he saw a rabbit. Well, one year for Easter he got me a live rabbit. He put it in a box for me to open as a gift on Easter morning. Once I opened it, I shouted, "Shoot it, Daddy! Shoot it!" LOL He then had to explain that THIS rabbit wasn't going to be shot, but it was my pet rabbit. We did laugh about that for many years.
Perhaps one of my worst memory was one Sunday morning when I was 9 years old. I got up and went into the kitchen. Mom was up. I noticed a pillow and sheets and a blanket on the couch like someone had slept over. We didn't keep any of that on the couch so I asked my mom who slept on the couch. She burst into tears and told me, "I never thought it would happen to us." I didn't understand what she was talking about. She had slept on the couch, and she and Dad were getting a divorce. Just like that my world was turned upside down. I'm not going to lie; I was relieved at first. I was scared of this man's temper, and he wasn't going to be around anymore??? Hooray! However, I was 9 and egocentric. I didn't have the cognitive ability to see or understand that my mother was lost, hurt, and totally devastated. The man she'd met in high school, the love of her life, her husband of 28 years was leaving her...and for someone else. I remember one afternoon I was playing with a friend from down the street. We wanted to go inside my house to get a drink because we were hot and thirsty. I heard my parents arguing so I told my friend let's not go inside right now. My parents were talking. I heard my mother sobbing and begging my dad to stay. I heard him tell her he had already made up his mind. It was too late. I don't remember him moving out or saying goodbye. That's because he didn't say goodbye or have a talk with me about how he wasn't leaving me and would always be my dad, blah blah blah. That talk never came. He was just gone one day, and my mother was beyond devastated. I remember when the divorce was final, she had to take some tranquilizers and go to bed. I also remember during this time she spent a few days in the hospital "just to rest". And then bless her heart, she still had me to raise...
The news of the divorce left us all upset, but in different ways I believe. My two oldest brothers were married, and the oldest already had a son. My brother born before me was out of high school and working but still lived at home. I was a 9 year old little girl. I was supposed to be "Daddy's Girl". I had always been told my dad was so excited that I was a girl when I was born. He was happy to finally have his girl. But then he left me. What was I supposed to think about myself if my own Daddy didn't want me?
My dad gave my mom the house in the divorce, but she was afraid she couldn't afford it or maintain it by herself and ended up selling the house. She bought a two bedroom, one bath trailer. We went from this big house on over an acre of land to this small trailer. The yard was pretty big, but it was far away from my neighborhood friends. Add to that, Mom didn't realize she had moved us from my school district to a nearby one. She thought the trailer was in the same district. That compounded things. I didn't leave my school, though. I went home with friends after school, and for a time a teacher babysat me after school. We did this till we were reported, and I either had to move to the new school, or we had to move back into the district, and that's exactly what we did. My mom found us another trailer to rent, and we rented out ours.
1981-1990
After the divorce my mom went back to work. She had to to support us. She got a job at the Dollar General Store. Between that and the child support she got for me, we made it ok. Up until then she didn't have to work, and in fact, Dad didn't want her to work. He wanted her home raising the kids, cooking, cleaning, etc. She sold Avon and Tupperware, and together they sold Amway products for a while. Regardless, Mom had never had a job just to support herself so it was scary I'm sure. We bebopped along in life with her working her retail jobs and me going to school. I remember we argued a lot. I guess I was being a typical pre-teen brat, and she was a divorcee single mom working hard to support herself and her bratty daughter. My brother Steve still lived with us but had a job and a girlfriend and friends so he wasn't home a lot and then moved away for his work. Then in October of 1981 another man entered into our lives, and at first I wasn't really thrilled about it. I had had my mom to myself for a year and didn't want to share her. His name was Bobby, and he and Mom met at a wedding reception. They started dating and going dancing. My mom literally morphed after her marriage to Dad ended. She lost like 75 pounds, started wearing nicer clothes that matched, started wearing makeup, and started going to the beauty shop once a week. It was a huge transformation. She also started drinking with Bobby, which I didn't like, but I'd never really seen her happy and smiling as big as she did when she was with him. I don't remember feeling jealous, but people said that I was because she was spending all her free time with Bobby. I remember one evening he was over, and I must have made a remark about him being over AGAIN because my mom took me aside and told me she really liked him and was happy and had a good time when they went out, but I came first, and if I wanted her to, she would tell him to go. My friend Tiffany was spending the night I think because she was there. She told me that she had been through her mother having boyfriends and getting remarried so she understood how I felt, but she said that Bobby was a good man and made my mom happy, and my mom deserved to be happy so give him a chance. I did. He also figured out the way to my heart. I was sitting on the couch one evening when he was at the house, and he came and sat by me. He asked me if I liked Mexican food. DO I LIKE MEXICAN FOOD???? Yes, I do! So he told me that he and Mom were going to go to El Chico's on Thursday of the next week, and I could go if I wanted to go with them. And I did. From then on, for the most part, I was included in their dates instead of being left out. Now if they went dancing or drinking, of course I didn't go although I have had my fair share of VFW visits. Mom and Bobby got married a mere 4 short months later on February 13, 1981 in Texarkana, TX. I gained a new daddy, a new sister, and 4 new brothers. Oh and a Mammie. Mammie AKA Auntie AKA Ola Mae was Bobby's mother and my new grandmother. She was a hoot, and we always had a good time laughing and cutting up. I loved her joke about her new boyfriend Ben...Bengay! HAHAHAHA! I told you she was a hoot!
Bobby was everything my dad was not. He was sensitive and approachable. He was very kind-hearted and pretty much soft-spoken. If he got mad enough, now watch out, but that was few and far between. He would watch a sad commercial or something that reminded him of his late wife Sarah and tear up or even cry. I know Bobby loved me and my mom, but my mom could never take Sarah's place. She was the love of his life and had raised a family of 5 children with her. I never saw my dad cry once. I'm sure he did and have been told he shed many tears over the years. I'm just saying I never witnessed it. Whereas it was very difficult to talk to Dad about a lot of things, I could talk to Bobby about anything. Bobby was the one who saw me through the boyfriends (that were never good enough for me according to him), the teenage years, middle school, high school, and the beginning of college. Bobby spoiled me. I could eat what I wanted where I wanted. I could drink sodas and eat between meals. If I didn't want what was for dinner, he'd go to McDonald's and get me what I wanted. Sometimes it made my mom mad. I was happy, though. LOL Hell, I got a brand new car! None of the other kids on either side ever got a brand new car or any car unless they bought it themselves. His reasoning was, though, that he was getting up in age and I would be going to college soon, and he said he may not be around or able to go rescue me if I break down so he wanted me in a new car that would last longer and hopefully be reliable for a long time. I had that damn car till after I became a mother. haha In fact, I think I was pregnant with my son when we finally sold the car.
Bobby's health wasn't the greatest. In fact, before he met my mom, he had already had two heart attacks. He was a heavy drinker, and he smoked as well. There were a lot of hospital visits and stays to get fluid off of him. He had bypass surgery in April of 1990. Shortly afterward, he had a stroke while still in the hospital. He recovered from that and also had a defibrillator installed so if his heart got to beating too fast or out of rhythm, the device would give him a shock to get it back on track. I think he had one of the first types of defibrillators they started with because it was one of the huge ones that stuck out of his belly and was very noticeable. That spring he was in the hospital for like two months before coming home. I was nervous to be alone with him in case something went wrong. He had been through so much, and so had Mom. She pretty much took a leave of absence from her job and stayed with him. His son Terry and I would go visit on the weekends and take her the mail and clean clothes and being back the dirty ones for me to wash. She stayed right at the hospital with him. Bobby finally succumbed due to his heart disease right before Christmas 1990. I had seen him only a few days before that. We were hoping he'd be well enough to come home for Christmas, but it wasn't to be. When I left the last time I saw him, he told me he loved me. I told him I loved him. He told me to be safe on the drive back home, and if I couldn't be safe, at least be sanitary. LOL Go figure. The early morning, which was the morning he passed, I had gotten up to use the bathroom and felt groggy. My stomach hurt, and I felt like I was moving through a dream or some type of fog. It was weird. The next day my friend Tiffany (yes, the same Tiffany who talked me into letting him stay in our lives) called and said she was coming over because she needed to talk to me. I thought she was mad at me about something. Before she got there, I had walked next door to the 7-11 to get a hot dog and a Coke before going to work. As I was walking back down the sidewalk to my apartment, Tiffany met me, hugged me, and told me her Granny and a couple of our other friends were waiting inside. Then she lowered the boom. She had gotten a call from my family to please come get me and bring me home. The weather was bad in East Texas that winter with ice and sleet. They didn't want to tell me the news and have me be so upset I wreck in my little car so they asked Tiffany to bring me home in her 3/4 ton pickup. She told me Bobby had passed away, and I told her she was a lying bitch and started screaming at her and asking her how dare she tell me such a lie, etc. It was just the grief talking, and I'm so thankful she understood that. She helped me get packed. I called in to work and told them what happened. Then Tiffany and Lori took me home. We stopped along the way to eat a bite. I couldn't eat anything. Once we got to our apartment, my brother Bruce and his wife had just arrived and pulled up behind us. Once we got out of our respective vehicles, he came up and hugged me. There were no words. Just tears and hugging. He knew how much Bobby meant to me. For the second time in my life, I lost my daddy. I remember that night I slept on the fold out couch with my mom. For most of the night she cried silently and sometimes not so silently. Just the week before he passed, I had been home for my friend Amy's wedding. I told him that when I got married, I wanted him and my dad on either side of me to walk me down the aisle. He seemed really touched by that idea, and I could swear I saw a few tears brimming in his eyes.
It was a hard time for all of us who loved Bobby. He was such a good man, a good husband, a good Papa Bobby or Big Daddy to his grandchildren, and a great daddy to me and his own children. His wide smile could light up a room. He never knew a stranger. He was a kind, gentle, understanding man who came into our lives when we needed him the most. I remember, I kid you not, that one day before we ever knew of his existence, I was looking through the phone book, and I remember seeing his name. I swear on a stack of Bibles. I guess you could call it a God thing, but I believe it was. God put him in our lives for a reason, and I'm so thankful He did. To this day I miss Bobby so much. I remember when I had my daughter I told Mom that I wished Bobby could see her because she was so beautiful. Mom said, "He does see her, Honey, and he loves her." I also remember that night after we buried him, Bobby came to me in a dream. He was wearing the clothes we had buried him in. He was smiling, and he said not to worry about anything. Everything was going to be ok. My mom said she would dream about him like that from time to time, and he was always smiling. I believe he just wanted to let us know he was ok, and when it's our time, we'll be ok, too, and that he was watching over us.
For a lot of my teenage years I didn't really see my dad. I saw him about once a year, and it was awkward. I didn't know what to say. He asked about school and safe subjects. He married someone whose religion doesn't believe in birthdays or Christmas so for many years I never received presents for those occasions. I had never heard of such a thing so it was hard to understand why he didn't call or send presents or cards even. The last birthday or Christmas card I got before I was an adult I was in 5th grade.
Then my dad really started developing and repairing relationships with his children in 1996. He was divorced from his 2nd wife and had met a really nice woman. They got married in October that year, and I believe she was truly instrumental with helping Dad reconnect with us. He called us more often and was scolded by his wife if he didn't end the call with "I love you". She said he told her, "They know I love them." So she told him that we needed to be told so. From then on he didn't end calls without "Well, I/we love you." He was even at the birth of my son Trevor that year. When my relationship with my children's father ended, he and his wife came to help us pack up and move. The fact that he was present for such an occasion made my heart soar. Dad was back to joking around again and being silly. When I'd call in the morning, he'd say "Good evening" and vice versa. When I'd as him how he was feeling, he'd respond, "With my hands" or "As much as possible". Maybe age mellowed him. Maybe he realized what he had lost out on all those years. Maybe both. My dad started remembering my birthday. He sent me birthday and Christmas cards again. He tried as much as possible to visit. We talked on the phone a lot. I felt like I could talk to him as an adult daughter who still needed her daddy and his advice. I remember the year before he died he hadn't gotten my birthday card out in time so it was going to be late getting to me. He called to let me know he hadn't forgotten but the card was late getting out. It made me happy that he cared so much and broke my heart at the same time. I think he realized how his missing all those birthdays had hurt me. Almost a year to the day later he was gone from us. He passed away on October 16, 2014...two days before my 44th birthday. I wish I could say I was by his bedside holding his hand when he died, but I wasn't. I was at home and had planned to go see him on the day we actually held his funeral. I did get to talk to him a few days, maybe a week before he died. He was weak. He had heart and lung issues, but he had also fallen and broken his hip. I knew the last time I saw him would probably be the last time, and it was. The last thing he said to me during our phone conversation that last time I talked to him was, "I love you, Sweetie." I somehow knew that would be the last time I ever got to talk to him. I never got to hear his voice again with my ears, but I hear it with my heart.
In 2013 for his 80th birthday celebration the family got together at a rented house in Lago Vista near Austin to celebrate. We all had so much fun! We visited Memory Lane and told our favorite Dad stories. He wore a T-shirt that said "It is mandatory to grow old..it is optional to grow up." All four of us kids and most of the grandkids and great-grands were able to make it. I think having us all together meant a lot to him. I had requested some alone time with him, and we got that. I wanted to talk to him about a lot of things like how he and Mom had met, about his mother (she committed suicide when he was 16), etc. We talked about some things that he could remember or what he knew. There were also a lot of questions left unanswered for him. I had this chance to really let him have it, but why? He was 80 and frail. He had apologized and meant it so how many times does he have to apologize? He was in my/our lives. He was human as was I. He was flawed as was I. I remember a time I was 10 or 11, and he was in the middle of helping a family friend move something heavy like furniture, and I was trying to get a hug and kiss from him right at that moment! For years I felt so rejected. Well, as an adult and a parent, I'm sure he didn't really reject me. He was in the middle of carrying something heavy. As humans, we don't always do the right thing at the right time. I have learned over the years Dad had his own issues and burdens to bear. He had baggage carried from his own childhood that I'm sure affected his relationships with others. I know he loved me. I have been told by his 3rd and 4th wives that he had stated his regrets and that he was sorry. He cried many tears over his actions. He faced the consequences and moved on as he realized his mistakes were too late to change things back to the way they were. His only choice was to move on and do the best he could do with any role in his life. That's all any of us can do. I find more and more I am my father's daughter, and that's a scary thing in some ways. I definitely have his quick temper, and my mom used to call me a hard-headed Dutchman just like my daddy. I think a lot of people blame their parents these days for the mess they've made of their own lives. That's easy to do, but before we can place blame, we need to take a good look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we're doing the best we can by our children and friends. Are you proud of the parent you've become? Are you proud of the friend you are to your friends? Are you proud of yourself as a human being? Even if some of your faults and flaws extend from your childhood, at some point you have to take responsibility for your own actions and your own life. The buck stops with you.
I loved both of my dads, and they loved me. It's true what they say: Family is not always bound together by blood. I miss both of them so much. I still find myself wanting to talk to them. I wish they could both see all the additions to their families. Bobby has so many great and great-great grandchildren,, and I wish they all had the chance to know him. He would be so proud of all of them. I am quite certain he is watching over all of them with that wide smile on his face. I wish my dad was here to meet the great grandchildren he didn't get a chance to meet, but I believe he's also watching over them with pride. Their influences in my life made me who I am today, and I turned out ok so I have each of them to thank for that.
RIP Dad and Bobby and Happy Belated Father's Day to you both...
