LJ Idol - Week 23 - Endurance
I didn't know the truth about my parent's marriage for a long time. When I was a child, all I knew was the fairytale, complete with true love and a happily ever after.
My mom grew up in Michigan. The oldest of eight kids in a very Catholic household, her father died when she was just 12 years old. One summer afternoon, as they sat watching television in the sweltering living room, he suffered a heart attack on the threadbare rug and she could do nothing to stop it.
She spent her teen years raising her siblings, so poor her youngest brother had to wear his sister's hand me down panties because they couldn't afford new underwear for him. They were the charity cases of the neighborhood. They received Welfare, and got scholarships to the Catholic school, and even the vineyard owners that lived nearby came to their aid, donating crates of grapes to the Joneses each fall so her family could turn them into jelly. My mom ate so much peanut butter and grape jelly that she still cannot smell the stuff without grimacing.
After her husband died, my grandmother grew distant and her face took on the faded appearance of curtains that kept out the light for too long. She found solace in cigarettes and bourbon and became a late night drinker. My mother occassionally found her passed out at the kitchen table, hand clutched around a jelly jar full of swirling amber liquid.
My mother needed to escape, so she babysat as often as she could and earned the money to join a Girl Scout troop. It was there, when she was 14, that a stewardess from Delta Airlines came and spoke on career day. My mom thought 'That's what I am going to do. That will be my way out of here." But she had seven years to wait - you had to be 21 to fly.
Much to my grandmother's frustration, mom moved out the day after she graduated from high school. She had saved enough money to rent a tiny apartment, full of doilies and the smell of lavender sachet, over an old lady's garage. She got engaged to her high school sweetheart, Bruce, but she broke it off after six months because he was always trying to get in her pants. She was a good girl and was never going to have sex before she got married.
My dad on the other hand, he was a complete lady's man from New York. A high school dropout, Army dropout, fast talker, Irish Catholic, so full of shit his eyes were brown, he moved from Buffalo to Detroit in 1969 because he loved MoTown music. He got a job as a d.j. at a club.
My mom had been working as receptionist and her "wild friend Lorraine" convinced her to take some of her paycheck and go to Detroit to relax for the weekend. Lorraine was "sort of trashy" and often wore her dyed hair and low-cut dresses in the same shade of strumpet red. My mom was far more demure in a blue cotton sundress the night they walked into my dad's club.
He was in the D.J. booth with one of his old Army buddies when the ladies opened the door. His friend Dale glanced up and elbowed my father.
"Hey man, look at those birds by the door," he said.
"Niiice," my dad replied, sizing them up. "I get the redhead."
"Naw, man, you got the redhead last night," Dale replied.
And that was how my dad wound up dancing with my mom, the brunette in a dress the same color as her sapphire eyes.
My mom hated him at first. "He was all Russian hands and Roman fingers, you know? " she'd laugh. But he also watched her face intently when she talked, and his easy attitude kept her calm and brought out a confidence she'd never felt before. He told her that he loved her, that she made him happy. So, at age 19, she gave up her virginity to my father, certain that he was "the ONE."
Two weeks later he called her.
"Shirley, Dale and I are moving to Georgia to live with some of his hippie friends on a commune!"
Stunned silence filled the line.
"But...what about me?" she whispered.
"Well, I guess you're staying here," he told her cruelly.
He left within days. My mother grieved for her lost virtue, cursing her naivete and berating my dad for his transient ways and changeable heart. But she was lovely, and tough, and not about to let one guy ruin her life. She entered a beauty contest and won Miss Dearborne and went on to the Miss Michigan Pageant. She started dating again, intent on hunting down her Prince Charming.
Six months passed before my dad called again. It was late, my mom had already been asleep for hours when the phone rang. She hurried to answer it before it woke her landlord. That was one of the old lady's rules - no phone calls after 9:00.
The connection crackled, like the wires hardly had the energy to carry my father's voice to her all the way from Columbus, Georgia.
"I love you," he cried. "I was crazy to leave you. Please can't I come back and see you?"
My mom considered his request.
"Sure, if you're want to drive that far. Why not?"
Over the next six months he traveled across the country to see her five times. What dedication! And when he finally asked her to move back to Georgia with him, she joyfully said yes, so sure was she of their love for each other.
Or so I thought.
When I was 22, and wrecked over leaving the guy I had lived with for four years, she told me an epilogue to that story.
The week before my dad asked her to move to Georgia, something life changing had happened to my mom. At 20 and 1/2 years old, she'd bravely taken a bus to Detroit, to the Delta Airline offices, and interviewed for a stewardess position. They gave her the job on the spot, but told her she'd have to go through training at their school in...Atlanta, Georgia.
She didn't know how she was going to afford a place to stay, she was frightened to leave Michigan alone, and then my dad dropped the simplest solution in her lap. When he asked her to head south, she weighed her options and again thought 'Why not? If it's bad, I can always stay till I start flying and then find my own place.'
It was bad. My dad liked to invite his hippie friends over and smoke pot in the living room while my clean-cut mom hid in the kitchen, hating the smoke and scared she'd fail her Delta drug test if she got too close. Her Catholic guilt was ravaging her, living in sin as she was, lying to her mother about where she was staying so she wouldn't be disowned. To assuage the anxiety, she started pushing my dad to get married.
Months passed and she started flying, making her own money, and considering finding a place of her own. One evening when she got home from a trip, my father told her to put on a nice dress. She thought they were going out to dinner.
She absentmindedly gazed out the window as they drove through Atlanta but looked up with a jolt when they stopped in front of the courthouse.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"We're getting our marriage license!" my dad crowed and hopped out of the car to open her door.
My mom told me that her life flashed before her eyes at that moment. She thought of her future, and Delta, and Georgia. She remembered her sinful living arrangement. She considered her parent's marriage, her seven brothers and sisters, other men she had dated, and my father, looking earnest in his brown suit as he grabbed her door handle. She thought 'I could do worse,' and took his hand to step over the curb.
They have been married for 37 years.
For my mom, was it just a marriage of convenience? It explains the distance between them, and her frequent resentment and frustration. And my father, he likes to tell people that the reason he's put up with his wife for so long is because she was gone, flying, half of those years.
They do care about each other. There has to be some deep level of commitment to remain married through the stresses of two children and five houses, a bankruptcy, my dad's hearing loss and my mother's depression. Still married, but with a divide between them like the Grand Canyon.
And what of their daughter? There are days, weeks sometimes, when I look at my husband and wonder where our intimacy has gone. Has it evaporated, our friendship dissipating with the heat of mortgages and diaper changes and whose turn is it to mow the lawn? Having children stretches a person - and a relationship - to the point of snapping. Now that our babies are getting older though, my husband and I are determined to find each other across the distance, after four years, finally making the effort to reach across the emptiness and connect again. Some days are better than others, but we are finding ways to ensure we don't get separated in the fog.
My parent's marriage is more a case study in endurance than a tale of enduring love.
I pray every day that my story will be different.
My mom grew up in Michigan. The oldest of eight kids in a very Catholic household, her father died when she was just 12 years old. One summer afternoon, as they sat watching television in the sweltering living room, he suffered a heart attack on the threadbare rug and she could do nothing to stop it.
She spent her teen years raising her siblings, so poor her youngest brother had to wear his sister's hand me down panties because they couldn't afford new underwear for him. They were the charity cases of the neighborhood. They received Welfare, and got scholarships to the Catholic school, and even the vineyard owners that lived nearby came to their aid, donating crates of grapes to the Joneses each fall so her family could turn them into jelly. My mom ate so much peanut butter and grape jelly that she still cannot smell the stuff without grimacing.
After her husband died, my grandmother grew distant and her face took on the faded appearance of curtains that kept out the light for too long. She found solace in cigarettes and bourbon and became a late night drinker. My mother occassionally found her passed out at the kitchen table, hand clutched around a jelly jar full of swirling amber liquid.
My mother needed to escape, so she babysat as often as she could and earned the money to join a Girl Scout troop. It was there, when she was 14, that a stewardess from Delta Airlines came and spoke on career day. My mom thought 'That's what I am going to do. That will be my way out of here." But she had seven years to wait - you had to be 21 to fly.
Much to my grandmother's frustration, mom moved out the day after she graduated from high school. She had saved enough money to rent a tiny apartment, full of doilies and the smell of lavender sachet, over an old lady's garage. She got engaged to her high school sweetheart, Bruce, but she broke it off after six months because he was always trying to get in her pants. She was a good girl and was never going to have sex before she got married.
My dad on the other hand, he was a complete lady's man from New York. A high school dropout, Army dropout, fast talker, Irish Catholic, so full of shit his eyes were brown, he moved from Buffalo to Detroit in 1969 because he loved MoTown music. He got a job as a d.j. at a club.
My mom had been working as receptionist and her "wild friend Lorraine" convinced her to take some of her paycheck and go to Detroit to relax for the weekend. Lorraine was "sort of trashy" and often wore her dyed hair and low-cut dresses in the same shade of strumpet red. My mom was far more demure in a blue cotton sundress the night they walked into my dad's club.
He was in the D.J. booth with one of his old Army buddies when the ladies opened the door. His friend Dale glanced up and elbowed my father.
"Hey man, look at those birds by the door," he said.
"Niiice," my dad replied, sizing them up. "I get the redhead."
"Naw, man, you got the redhead last night," Dale replied.
And that was how my dad wound up dancing with my mom, the brunette in a dress the same color as her sapphire eyes.
My mom hated him at first. "He was all Russian hands and Roman fingers, you know? " she'd laugh. But he also watched her face intently when she talked, and his easy attitude kept her calm and brought out a confidence she'd never felt before. He told her that he loved her, that she made him happy. So, at age 19, she gave up her virginity to my father, certain that he was "the ONE."
Two weeks later he called her.
"Shirley, Dale and I are moving to Georgia to live with some of his hippie friends on a commune!"
Stunned silence filled the line.
"But...what about me?" she whispered.
"Well, I guess you're staying here," he told her cruelly.
He left within days. My mother grieved for her lost virtue, cursing her naivete and berating my dad for his transient ways and changeable heart. But she was lovely, and tough, and not about to let one guy ruin her life. She entered a beauty contest and won Miss Dearborne and went on to the Miss Michigan Pageant. She started dating again, intent on hunting down her Prince Charming.
Six months passed before my dad called again. It was late, my mom had already been asleep for hours when the phone rang. She hurried to answer it before it woke her landlord. That was one of the old lady's rules - no phone calls after 9:00.
The connection crackled, like the wires hardly had the energy to carry my father's voice to her all the way from Columbus, Georgia.
"I love you," he cried. "I was crazy to leave you. Please can't I come back and see you?"
My mom considered his request.
"Sure, if you're want to drive that far. Why not?"
Over the next six months he traveled across the country to see her five times. What dedication! And when he finally asked her to move back to Georgia with him, she joyfully said yes, so sure was she of their love for each other.
Or so I thought.
When I was 22, and wrecked over leaving the guy I had lived with for four years, she told me an epilogue to that story.
The week before my dad asked her to move to Georgia, something life changing had happened to my mom. At 20 and 1/2 years old, she'd bravely taken a bus to Detroit, to the Delta Airline offices, and interviewed for a stewardess position. They gave her the job on the spot, but told her she'd have to go through training at their school in...Atlanta, Georgia.
She didn't know how she was going to afford a place to stay, she was frightened to leave Michigan alone, and then my dad dropped the simplest solution in her lap. When he asked her to head south, she weighed her options and again thought 'Why not? If it's bad, I can always stay till I start flying and then find my own place.'
It was bad. My dad liked to invite his hippie friends over and smoke pot in the living room while my clean-cut mom hid in the kitchen, hating the smoke and scared she'd fail her Delta drug test if she got too close. Her Catholic guilt was ravaging her, living in sin as she was, lying to her mother about where she was staying so she wouldn't be disowned. To assuage the anxiety, she started pushing my dad to get married.
Months passed and she started flying, making her own money, and considering finding a place of her own. One evening when she got home from a trip, my father told her to put on a nice dress. She thought they were going out to dinner.
She absentmindedly gazed out the window as they drove through Atlanta but looked up with a jolt when they stopped in front of the courthouse.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"We're getting our marriage license!" my dad crowed and hopped out of the car to open her door.
My mom told me that her life flashed before her eyes at that moment. She thought of her future, and Delta, and Georgia. She remembered her sinful living arrangement. She considered her parent's marriage, her seven brothers and sisters, other men she had dated, and my father, looking earnest in his brown suit as he grabbed her door handle. She thought 'I could do worse,' and took his hand to step over the curb.
They have been married for 37 years.
For my mom, was it just a marriage of convenience? It explains the distance between them, and her frequent resentment and frustration. And my father, he likes to tell people that the reason he's put up with his wife for so long is because she was gone, flying, half of those years.
They do care about each other. There has to be some deep level of commitment to remain married through the stresses of two children and five houses, a bankruptcy, my dad's hearing loss and my mother's depression. Still married, but with a divide between them like the Grand Canyon.
And what of their daughter? There are days, weeks sometimes, when I look at my husband and wonder where our intimacy has gone. Has it evaporated, our friendship dissipating with the heat of mortgages and diaper changes and whose turn is it to mow the lawn? Having children stretches a person - and a relationship - to the point of snapping. Now that our babies are getting older though, my husband and I are determined to find each other across the distance, after four years, finally making the effort to reach across the emptiness and connect again. Some days are better than others, but we are finding ways to ensure we don't get separated in the fog.
My parent's marriage is more a case study in endurance than a tale of enduring love.
I pray every day that my story will be different.