Blast to the Past

Now that I am a mother I really like to take weekends to focus on spending time as a family. I think that is because I never had that with my parents. They got divorced when I was 8 months old. My mother hauled me off to live with my controlling, crazy grandmother. You know, the kind of person that makes you want to pull your hair out. And that’s exactly what I did. For my second birthday, I had a little bald patch on the right side of my head. You think my mother would have noticed, actually I’m sure she did, but she has always been more into herself than me. We finally left when I was four. Moved north to Camarillo, CA. Who knows why, I suspect it had something to do with a man. That’s when she met John. Now I really could write a whole book about just John. He was really a winner. Now keep in mind my mom is about thirty at this point. And this guy is a LOSER. Is getting kicked out of his parents mobile home because it’s a senior community. Two divorces, four kids. Drug and alcohol problems. But he moved in. In the meantime, daddy is moving on with his life, picking up the pieces after my mom left him. He is definitely the good guy in the story. Meets Teresa and gives me a step mom. Now as obsessive compulsive, impatient, and sometimes downright crazy Teresa is, I could never say anything bad about her. She raised me, pretty much on her own from when I was 8 till 16. She got the short end of that stick. My dad was great, but he commuted so I could go to a nice school and I didn’t get to spend too much time with him. Had it not been for them, I would have never graduated high school or had any semblance of responsibility. So back to my mom. John knocks her up when I’m 6. And I get a brother. And then he knocks her up again seven months later. And I get a sister. So add those to the four he already had and you have a screwed up version of the Brady Bunch. Somewhere in between both kids, John and Mom are on their way to Vegas to elope, get pulled over, and John is drugged up on speed. So he does time. And Mom tells me he’s helping on his aunt’s farm. Which is somewhat the truth, he is working outside, she just left out the fact that it was in a prison jumpsuit. Fast forward to today and I get to have my own family and raise them the way that I wish I had been raised. So even when I've had a horrible day I just remember "It could be worse, you could be your mother."