and it all came flooding back…
A couple of weeks ago I was trying to find my laminator pouches so I could laminate some stuff for one of my co-op classes. I looked in the cedar chest because I wondered if I’d stuck them in there (for some unknown reason). I came across a couple of letters that my dad wrote to his mom, my granny. He was writing from the hospital when he was in the Army in the 50’s. I wondered why he was in the hospital. I could ask him, I suppose, but we don’t really have much of a relationship nowadays.
Then… I came across a letter he wrote me almost 18 years ago, just a couple of weeks after my first son was born – so hormones were raging and I was feeling overwhelmed as a new mother. I remembered what was in it. He was writing to tell me he was marrying the woman that he was living with at the time. The one he cheated on my mother with. And he said he hoped I would accept it and not exclude her from my life. Oh, how I wept when I got that letter… rocked my baby and wept. It was awful. And then I cried again when I found the letter. I keep my distance from both my father and his wife but I have seen her a few times over the years and we even let them stay with us once when they were visiting us. But I really don’t like her much. Him either, I guess. Which begs the question – why am I typing this through my tears when I don’t even like him? For what I feel is lost? That my mother is not in very good financial shape to support herself the rest of her life without him? I sort of feel a mix of anger and sadness.
I also remember just days after my second son was born 14 years ago – my mom had been in town helping us with our 3 year old while we were in the hospital for the newborn. She abruptly left and went back home to East Texas. I thought it was kind of odd but she does that kind of thing sometimes. Well, she called me a couple of days later and told me she’d gotten married. I was so hurt that she didn’t tell me beforehand. I rocked my baby and wept… I cried and cried and didn’t talk to her for a couple of weeks – I just couldn’t because I was so upset. That marriage didn’t survive and left her in worse financial shape than she was before she married him. And I still get that mix of anger and sadness directed towards my father at this whole mess. As if it’s all his fault. I know it takes two. I know my mom’s not perfect.
I know these things in my head but I guess my heart hasn’t gotten the message.

