The Mystery of My Parents

Did I mention that I have a huge extended family?

 

Indeed I do. My mom is one of 14 kids, and my dad is one of 9. They come from disparate states. Dad is from a small town in Washington, and mom is from a large city in Ohio. They met because my dad was a truck driver.

 

Prior to meeting my dad and marrying him, and moving to Nebraska with him (pure idiocy), my mom was a vivacious thing that had a lot of girlfriends and an active social life. She abandoned all that and slowly became the embittered woman that you see today. You can still occasionally see snippets of her true self. Just writing this makes me want to go see her. Even though she once called me a whore after I called the family on the carpet for the way they were treating Niece, our family has an incredibly ability to forgive and practically forget. And so I still love my mom and she is still lots of fun to go out with once in a while. Emphasis on 'once in a while'. We have a lot in common but it just gets a little hard to listen to her complain all the time.

 

LOL the 2 people who actually read this blog probably find that ironic. Keep in mind, I complain here instead of talking to people in my actual life. It makes it easier to avoid driving everyone away by way of a nasty attitude.

 

One night, my future mom was out with her gaggle of girlfriends (Wow, I have successfully used alliteration. Thank God for spell check, or I would have negated my newfound ability by spelling its name wrong).  She was out at a bar, dancing and having fun. My dad saw her from across a crowded room and, in his drunken state, said to himself, "Secretary'sDad, if you're ever going to marry someone, that's the woman you should marry!"

 

I guess my mom was a bit foxy. She probably would have married earlier than 34 had she not been made unavailable by a married charlatan who continuously said he was going to get divorced. She still pines for that jerk. I wish I could convince her that he was a creep who wasted her prime years and prevented her from marrying someone more suitable, which then made her desperate enough to think my dad was a potential husband.

 

So, Dad walks over to Mom and proceeds to tell her that his name is Ian Murdoch, which I can tell you it most definitely is not. The only thing my Dad has in common with Ian Murdoch is that my dad was an Ian Fleming fan, and Fleming and Murdoch share a first name. Anyway, he then proceeds to sweep her off her feet in a whirlwind 3 month courtship, which culminated in a foolish move to Omaha, Nebraska, and an ill-advised marriage that produced Sister and I.

 

According to my Dad, children were the death knell to the relationship. Supposedly, they had great sex and got along famously prior to our arrival. I guess children can be a death knell to a relationship when you don't support your wife properly and then dive into whiskey bottles to escape your misery. Add to that a job that slowly destroys your family, your failure to get a different job for 30 years, and leaving your wife home alone with no friends, family, or money to handle your two growing daughters and all the issues. Two words: wrong priorities.

 

Two more words: slit wrists. My mom was tempted to kill herself many times because she didn't know how she was going to feed us. I have to remember to give her props for enduring all that. I could say she had all kinds of other choices she could have made, but did she really? It's pretty easy for me to look back and say she should have done this, should have done that. How can I say what I would have done had I been in her shoes? I can't. How well did I do myself when I was depressed and raising Niece? I don't think I did that hot.

 

What choices did my mom REALLY have? She lived in a city far from home. She couldn't go home again; my Grandma hated my father for not supporting my mother. I don't think my mom could have admitted to her mother how things were. She had no money. She had no friends. You could say that was her own fault, but was it really? If I were my mother, I don't think I'd have survived as well as she did.

 

So that's the story of my cuddly parents, mostly the story of my mom. Dad is the one who's more of a mystery.

 

Well it's 3pm and I haven't done a damn thing today aside from cleaning up the pit we call a bathroom. The mirror is now spot-free. Yippy skippy. Time to get moving. :) Au revoir!