When I Was A Young Wart Hog

Mommy's and Daddy's they fight for sure. I only remember a few of those fights between my mother and father. Although my mother says that's all they did was fight. The more I think about it the more I realize I don't really remember much from my mother and father's marriage. They divorced when I was 7 and my father ( who my mother so loosely nicknamed 'sperm donor') didn't really stick around for much time after their separation. The part of me that dwells on my childhood/upbringing hates him and the other part of that realizes I could have never been the woman I am today had it not been for his absolute abandonment, appreciates his absence. I am not going to get into the type of upbringing nor the type of mother I have cause God knows I will never end; if I did it would be a long road that would undoubtedly dead-end in tears, heartbreak, frustration, anger, embarrassment, shame, and eventually indifference.

My mother always said that my father held her back. Back from school although I remember her going to nursing school, from work, from her family and from basically everything. That he wanted to have her caged up like a little animal-mother-hubbard type useful only for cooking, cleaning and minding her children. Heaven forbid she mind her children.
For someone who claimed her tyrant husband was holding her back from any employment on this particular night she was working a graveyard shift at a temp job and my sister and I had school the next day. The time that she usually came home had come and gone without her. Needless to say my father was 'desesperado', restless, anxious looking out the window every 20 minutes seeing if it was her pulling in at midnite the time she usually got home. To his dismay, it wasn't. Sad from seeing my father this way, I offered to take him where I thought she might be.

At the tender age of 7 and from brain cells not being tainted from any street drugs just yet, I had remembered an occasion a couple of days earlier where 'mommy dearest' took us to a 'stranger's' home. My sister and I either sat in the car or went inside, I don't remember exactly but I figured maybe my mother went there. Hey, it was worth a shot and certainly better than watching my father pace the floor all night waiting for this heifer to come home.

SO we took a little drive. My younger sister asleep in the back and me in front navigating my father to what would be the final encounter that ignited a second divorce for him. I remember falling asleep in the passenger's side as he drove, waking up or him waking me as soon as we got off the freeway. I innocently led him to the hood where my mother had taken us just a few days earlier. He sent me to the door and when she answered, you can only imagine the utter shock and disbelief on her face as she realized her 7 year old was there to rain on her parade.

Imagine that! My mother, evading her responsibilities as mother-hubbard to indulge in a night of drinking, slamming dominoes and hollering TEN-SHUN! You can imagine the anger that stemmed in my father. I led her back to our car where my father patiently waited probably hoping, pleading and praying to God that maybe she wasn't there and instead was working overtime so busy she forgot to call. I couldn't see it, but I imagine a combination of fury, sadness, disappointment and heartbreak on his face when he seen us approaching the car where she belligerently began to plead with my father to leave and stop embarrassing her. Almost laughable now as I type that.

I don't remember exact words during the confrontation, the drive home, the sadness and defeat my father and I felt that night but I do remember having a lot of 'what-if's' after that.

What if I wouldn't have led my father there and just let her come home on her own?
What if my mother would never have taken me to that dreadful place that would always remind me of the demise of my parent's marriage?
Or what if my mother would have just been a mother and came home that night instead of being selfish?

I always figured that once you have kids life is no longer about you, dominoes, beer or other men. It's about your children regardless if you love or loathe their father. Leave the relationship respectively maintaining your honor, your dignity, your integrity, and most of all the self-respect all mother's should value especially when they are blessed with little girls that would eventually look to you as an example.

My mother and father separated right before Christmas that year. She had arranged for us to move in to the 'stranger's' home we had recently found her at. I remember as we had finished loading up her car with our belongings, looking at our Christmas tree, holding my diary and foolishly thinking we would be back.

Instead in January, (less than a month later), I caught her kissing this stranger we had moved in with. I ran to the bathroom crying, screaming and feeling betrayed. You would think my mother would have been the one to come and console me but instead the 'stranger's' sister (also a stranger) came and told me everything was going to be OK. I suppose my mother was subliminally prepping me for an upbringing in which she would also be absent, mentally and almost always physically. A childhood where I would have to seek comfort, advice, warmth, affection and attention from other people. Where I would essentially be the one to care for my little sister and I in all these aspects.

Later that night, I secretly watched them dance from our new bedroom that we shared with his two children crying and vowing that I would forever hate the song they danced to and forever hate him for taking my mother away from my father and ultimately away from me and my sister.