The life story of a snow leopard - Part 1

[pardouncia]

I'm not quite sure why I'm sharing something this personal. Then again, few people still use LiveJournal. It's possible no one will even see this. That's probably for the best. The point of a journal is to keep a record for ourselves more than sharing with others.

I began writing this in 2019. The introduction and beginning to things is compiled from then and another file I’d begun late in 2020. Not that things are different enough to change the introduction. So I’ll leave it mostly untouched.

Finally, I began anew and got past the first few paragraphs this summer while my job was still a fiery mess. I set it aside again for some time before feeling inspired to finish just recently. I wanted someone who's special to me to read it. Perhaps, it might give a glimpse into the uncertainties of life, the winding path that rarely goes according to plan. We survive it. We make the best of it. We endure. Because that is life. I think it's more than that. Because there is enough good to live for. To hope for. No matter what we face, we find a way to persevere. And we're not alone. There's hope so long as you keep sight of that. I'll always be there for those who matter. I think that's what we do in life. We care about others. In sharing a sense of caring, we make life worthwhile.

*Names have for the most part been omitted as they aren't necessary for the telling of the story, and this maintains some level of privacy for those involved.


(I will say, however, that I have a few true friends in life. I’m adding this addendum upon review so as not to leave them out or make them think they don’t matter. That has changed since I began writing this. So I suppose not all is as it was. I’ll leave the introduction the same though; since it was how I was feeling at the time I wrote it.)

You want to believe you mean something to someone. That you matter. Everyone does. But lately I’ve felt more and more like I don’t. I’m not good with friendship or love. I can’t try harder and strain more no matter the constraints on my life, degrading my health and mental state. It won’t matter. I won’t matter. No matter the effort.

I’m not speaking of anyone in particular, though I’m speaking of many. It’s just a generalized reality for my life.

I look at the state of my life and wonder. What have I done? What have I accomplished? What value has it really? I’d say little at best.

The measurements I use have to do with friendships, bonds, connections, family, etc. These are the things that truly matter: jobs, careers, hobbies, what have you. All of it has next to no meaning without the aforementioned elements. I can reflect on mine and am left to wonder, how many true friends have I? What have I sown in this life that is of true value in relationships, people? I have tried. I’m admittedly not the best at things social. So maybe I’ve done it all wrong somehow.

I get the feeling I could disappear and affect few, if any. I don’t know why I’m feeling so lowly right now. I am though.

My family is fractured, with a chasm that runs between factions. I am always trying to bridge the divide, but it weighs heavily. My sister barely speaks with me, and I’ve no idea why. My mother is a dependent person, who feeds off being needed by others, and needs all the more in return. She gives and she takes almost equally, and I have to be careful with her. She’s done damage to my life that can’t be undone. One can never go back. I love her. I almost lost her a few of years ago to illness. So I understand the reality of death and what her complete absence would be like. We don’t choose our family. We love them regardless. My father is set in his ways, older, as we were his second family. He was already in his 50s when my sister and I were born. He’s distant, different of mind, and very stubborn. I do my best to get along with him though. It’s just not the most comfortable or always amiable of relationships.

I could use love. I’ve dreamed of it all my life. I remember when I was but a cub watching movies with romance and how I’d idealize. I always thought it would come true for me. It would happen. Yet despite all of the outpouring of love I’ve given, I fear it has never been given back in return. It is ever lacking. I’ll think I have it, only to be faced with experiences that contradict. I’m probably wrong. Insecurity plays a role, distorting reality. I’ll question, doubt, try to rationalize actions, or inaction. I try to be open and communicate, to understand. Seeing as I can’t simply turn it off once felt, I’m left faltering, withered and sapped of emotional energy and hope, while the other party survives unscathed, perhaps without concern. How many times have I loved now in my life? Perhaps three, I suppose. Three times suffering with no hope to look ahead toward. Or maybe now as I’ve taken to writing this again, as said I began in 2019, I can now count that number four. (It’s now been three months since I added the last sentence. Things have continued to change regarding friendship and love, but the longing and uncertainty are renewed. I'm trying to hold out faith in love, and someone who holds that special place in my heart.)

I fear I’m all over the place with this entry to my journal. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if I follow stream of consciousness. Few if any will likely read it, after all. At least I can get the thoughts out, and maybe that will be good for me.

It might also prove useful to provide some background on my family, or life in general. I’m not sure anyone knows the full story. It might help people understand why I am as insecure and cautious as I likely seem. It might even help some forgive my neediness. At least I’ve been told I’m needy. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

I was born in the 80s, a time before the internet, when PC’s were still rare, cellphones barely existed, and streaming services hadn’t yet been conceived of. This was the era of the VCR, and our TV still had an antenna used to pick up four channels. We’d eventually graduate to four when Fox suddenly started reaching all the way to our house, but that would be years down the line. I can barely remember how snowy the picture always was. The idea of a clear picture like we have today was unheard of. Even cable wasn’t perfect. Only the rich people with satellites had truly clear reception, and that’s when they were giant dishes meticulously placed in your yard that had to reorient their reception angle depending on the channels you tuned in to.

I’d been conceived almost by request of my older sister who wanted a brother so badly she begged our parents to have me. She was eight years my senior. My father was her stepfather, and she was my half-sister, but I’d not find this out until I was 9 years old. This is the sister who died in January of 2014. I remember her often, and the pain remains. I don’t think it will ever truly fade.

I greeted this world with an ailment doctors couldn’t figure out. Neonatal care was far less advanced than it is today. I was flown to see specialists without any answers early on. Specialists who worked on newborns were not as easily come by. I was flown across the country in search of answers. It was two weeks into my life when someone realized what was going on. Eventually, a doctor with some experience was able to diagnose me. I’d been born with a diaphragmatic hernia, one that allowed my liver to move where it should not inside my abdomen, as I recall. Details are scarce considering I’ve heard all this secondhand many years after the fact. Surgery was required to correct for this, which was a risky prospect due again to the time period. Surgery of this nature on babies was far less common with fewer doctors who could manage it. Survival rates today are between 65 and 70 percent. So, suffice it to say, I’m lucky to be alive.

I still bear the scars of the surgery that saved my life, correcting the congenital defect that almost ended it before it had even begun. They’ve grown with me, so they are large marks that mar my appearance. I remember getting teased about them growing up. I have a long, ugly scar across my back. There’s also a smaller one right next to it. My right wrist bears the marks of the IV, something not meant for something as small as a baby’s forearm.

This may have proved a strange foreshadowing of the life to come. I wonder.

I came down with pneumonia at least twice in my first two years of life. My early years were not so nice to me, it seems in retrospect. There were other maladies, of course, as infants get. I remember horrible ear infections later as I grew old enough to retain memory, some of the few memories I have from that span.

I do recall being rather bold and self assured in those years. I remember being a toddler and still getting a bottle. Was I even two? I’d get a child’s stepstool and stand in front of the microwave waiting for the bottle to heat. I’m not sure why my mother did it this way. It was something we did every night before bed. One night, I decided I was too old and wasn’t going to use a bottle anymore. Later, perhaps around the same age, I tried to help change my sister’s diaper. I don’t know why. I’ve just seen photos. I was always confident in those days. I wish I remembered more.

When I was four, I was riding in the old maroon pickup with my parents heading to check something at what we kids called the “noisy motor.” They were very loud water wells we had at various locations, probably related in some way to how irrigation was managed. You see, our family had a farm in the Texas panhandle. We raised mostly corn in the summer and wheat in the winter, along with a number of cattle.

Things were different back then. We had a number of outdoor cats. These weren’t vaccinated or fixed, so they’d breed unchecked. Many never were tame. This was considered normal on farms. It’s not even that uncommon today. So the various dangers such a setting posed kept their numbers from swelling too much. We rarely had cats last more than a handful of years. Even our favorites often disappeared at some point, so they came and went as I remember. It’s weird to think about. How was this considered normal? I had one kitten I’d adopt as my own and call “Hunter.” He vanished after he was fully grown, less than two years old I think. Then he reappeared, but with severe injuries. My mother knew how important he was to me, so she took him to a vet. He had surgery and was required to be kept indoors for a time in order to recover.

Initially, I’d been told he’d been attacked by coyotes. This was a common way cats were lost. Coyotes don’t like domestic cats as they see them as competition for prey, or they just find them fun playthings. They also likely see them as potential food, though it was common for them not to be eaten when killed. At least that, again, is something I was told as a kid. The perspective farmers have on coyotes is not a good one. Later, I’d be told teenagers from town came out to play at being “devil worshippers.” These sorts of things were fads off and on, with kids thinking they were cool and edgy for acting out “Satanic” things. I imagine it was more a game than anything at all real, but it’s possible such things occurred, so I consider this as an alternate explanation to the coyote story. Either was plausible at the time, but I have no way of knowing which, if either, was the truth. Kids can be cruel, and I know from braggarts who’d boast of torturing cats that such people existed in my hometown.

Either way, Hunter would survive. His meow was never quite the same though. He’d suffered a punctured lung among other injuries. That poor meow was something sad to hear, always reminding me of what he’d been through. He’d greet me with his distorted meow as he approached, or merely vocalizing as I pet him. Hunter would be around another year or two before disappearing again, this time for good.

Returning to the story I’ve sidetracked myself from telling, my older and younger sisters stayed behind to work on baking chocolate chip cookies. I’d opted to go with our parents because it sounded like more fun. It was always fun to go out with them. I was four, after all. Thinking back on it now, I might’ve been arguing with my sister about the cookies for some reason kids find to argue. So perhaps my parents took me along to get me out of the situation and stop our fighting.

On the way, they saw a rattlesnake crossing the road and stopped. My father used a spade to sever its head from its body. That was how farmers handled rattlesnakes back then. It probably still is. If it’s seen, it’s killed. I didn’t know any better at that age, and I was fascinated by the still-moving body of the dead reptile. They tossed it in the bed of the pickup for some reason, and on we went. It’s strange the types of memories you retain during a traumatic period in your life.

That leads to what happens next. While my parents went about their business, whatever it was, I was doing what I always tried to do when near the combine. That’s a piece of farm equipment most who read this might not know about. I climbed the ladder at the back to the top where I could spin the giant fan from the cage that wrapped it, appearing a bit like a water wheel. My mother didn’t want me to do this, but my father assured her it would be fine. We kids always wore leather boots due to the snakes. It was considered safer, both due to snakes and sandburs. Tennis shoes would not do. This would prove to be a problem. The soles were always flat and thus rather smooth. This did not provide much purchase atop metal. I moved my right foot as I was turning the fan, and I slipped. I remember yelling as I realized what was happening, then nothing. A while later, I woke in the pickup with my head in my mother’s lap as my father was driving us to what I’d later learn was the hospital. We got to the small town a few miles from our farm, and I think they had an ambulance take me the rest of the way, my mother riding along. I don’t remember any of this. I just know bits and pieces from what I was told later in life. I think they radioed my sisters at the house with the walkie talkie. My head hurt so badly, and I felt nauseous. It was a terrible feeling. Then, mercifully, I passed out again.

The next thing I knew I was in the hospital. I don’t remember which city this was in. Amarillo perhaps? I’d been there for three days by the time I was awake and began to form memories. By then, I was given a clean bill of health and released. I didn’t get taken to the exit in a wheelchair like adults. Instead, they had a special wagon for kids. I thought that was cool.

Snapshots. There are just a few memories scattered through early childhood. I remember that incident. I remember how I often hurried to put my boots on to get outside, and this sometimes resulted in putting them on the wrong feet. I remember how I walked with my feet outward, probably due to being flatfooted, but it was something more. I would later learn that doctors wanted to do orthopedic insoles, and perhaps even surgeries, to help correct for this, but my mother never followed through. As a child, not wanting to seem different, I would will myself to walk with my feet twisting in to look normal. Over time this became normal. I think this may have something to do with my knee pain and balance issues now. I wonder what the long-term toll will be.

My father wasn’t good at keeping his temper in check. He and my mother fought often. He put on a good show to the world, but at home we feared him. He’d spank us, and even had a wooden paddle he used when we’d done something really bad. Thinking back, I wonder if I ever did anything that bad. I don’t know if he was physically abusive with our mother, but he was verbally abusive. He also acted out at times when strangers upset him, especially on our farm.

On my younger sister’s seventh birthday, he was in an especially bad mood. So it didn’t take much to send him over the edge. I’d been playing with one of my presents from my birthday a few months prior. It was a little toy jet that had lights and made sounds when you pressed the a spot on its back. I was flying it around the table, everything set for my sister’s birthday dinner. My mother kept getting onto me for this, saying I was going to pop my sister’s balloons with the toy, somehow. I paid her no mind and kept playing. When a kid doesn’t understand, sometimes they just do things. I didn’t usually ignore things adults told me, but this time I just didn’t get it. So on I went playing. I ended up getting yelled at and told to sit down, leaving me shaken. I never was as bold or confident after the incident with the combine. I know now that concussions can leave you changed, even on the level of personality. It could have been that, or it could have just been the response to having such a harrowing experience. Either way, I wasn’t confident now. … Maybe it was just because of the way my father treated me, built up over years of trauma.

Dinner was being served, and I went to try to pour some salad dressing on my salad. I stood to handle the bottle, thinking it was like most with the small hole at the opening to allow just a bit out at a time. Instead, it was a completely open top where everything came pouring out. It was unexpected, it was an accident, and my father lost it. You’d have thought I did something truly abhorrent. He couldn’t decide if he’d spank me or what, so he grasped me by my arms, held straight down at my sides, and lifted me up and down a bit like Godzilla vs. Megalon if anyone gets that reference. This was truly strange, frightening, and had my older sister yelling at him to stop while my mother stood appalled but … I don’t think she did anything. Was our grandmother there? She usually came down every year after Thanksgiving, staying through New Years. She might have been as my sister’s birthday is in December.

The evening was ruined. It didn’t leave me feeling very good, frightened, my face tear stained, and knowing I’d been the reason my sister’s birthday was ruined. I now remember that’s the year I was able to buy her something all on my own. I’d saved up my own birthday money, and perhaps money from Christmas the year before. I got her a glass unicorn figurine, just the head, with sort of pearlescent swirls throughout. It cost $7. She’d end up dubbing it the “Uni Caller” because we watched “Dungeons and Dragons,” and the baby unicorn’s name was Uni. So now in our games of make belief she could call Uni with that.

This ordeal with our father reminds me of an earlier occurrence when I was perhaps five. We had children’s plates and cups, but the cups hadn’t come with the plates. This resulted in them not sitting well in the spaces meant to hold the cups. We were eating fried chicken, and my hands were greasy. I tried to pick up my little cup of milk, the handle like that of a mug, and it slipped. Because it didn’t sit or fit right in the space on the plate, it tipped over. Milk spilled on the table and dripped onto the floor. Our father hated things being spilt at the table, and he especially hated milk being spilled because it could sour in the carpet. Whether or not it was an accident didn’t matter. He was enraged, and I was in trouble.

He picked me up out of my chair. I was already blubbering from fear and dread. Standing me in his chair at the head of the table, he began to spank me with his hand. He was a farmer, and strong for it. These were not light swats. They were meant to hurt. With terror now met with pain, I peed my pants. It’s not a good memory. I wonder when the last time I thought of it was. Typing all this up might not be as cathartic as I’d hoped.

I’ll fast-forward to kindergarten. I was bullied from the beginning. The first day was good. Our teacher, Miss Rojas, led us on a grand adventure to find the Gingerbread Man. It was a neat idea from a gifted teacher. First, she read us the book. Then we went on a quest to find where the elusive character had gone. She had us convinced he’d slipped away from the cookie tray in her classroom. This led us through the school in our search. In the end, we’d all get to eat bits of Gingerbread Man. Okay, it probably was a little messed up, but have you read most children’s stories?

Of course, it couldn’t all be good. I was bullied because kids could read I was an easy target, I suppose? I remember getting a punch in the stomach in the first week. Later, I’d get kicked in the head when the punching wasn’t as much fun. The teacher was never in the room when it happened, usually right after we all gathered before class started.

I didn’t have many friends. I think I’d have acquaintances, but friends might come one a year. I’d get along with and befriend someone, stick with them, and we might be best friends, or we might just be okay friends. The first couple years it was the latter. At least he tried to defend me sometimes when others bullied me. It didn’t help that my mother thought I was her dress-up doll, so while others wore normal kid’s clothes, I was dressed in slacks and button-up shirts with sweaters or sweater vests. I hated it.

I liked Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The Real Ghostbusters. I remember wanting a certain transformer toy when I was in fourth grade. I never got it. Was it in third, yes, when I checked the big cat book out of the library our homeroom teacher had in her room. Mrs. Trailer. I’d always thought snow leopards were my favorite animal, but for a while the cheetah took that place. You see, I was very good at rationalizing why something should be my favorite. Yet the poster that hung over my bed even then was of a snow leopard. I also imagined myself as an anthro snow leopard back then, sometime with wings as some angel to defend the world like a super hero or something. This began when I was six or seven at most. That is, when I wasn’t imagining I was Godzilla. Because Godzilla was awesome.

I was the Super Snow Leopard Godzilla Everything All Kind of Dinosaur super hero. Okay, I was a polymorph. I just didn’t know such a word, or thing, existed. The snow leopard is what I felt most at home as though. I still do. Who’d have thought?

The bullying continued throughout school. I had a friend with mental “retardation” as they called it back then. He wasn’t really, but he’d heard his own mother call him that. It hurt him more than he let on. While he was supposedly slow or whatever euphemism adults wanted to use, we got along well. He seemed fine. We were best friends. I had a best friend for a year. Then he moved away come summer. My mother was supposed to get his address so I could write him. That never happened. She didn’t like for us to have friends.

At least he liked to pretend. He was Robocop, and I’d be a dinosaur, or some sort of super hero. I was a cowboy Robocop sometimes. I don’t know if I ever had a friend as good as that ever again all through my years of school.

I remember little of school sports. P.E. for the most part was something I disliked. I’d had an early introduction to sports that might’ve negatively impacted my perspective for life. We went to church, sometimes different ones throughout the course of a year. It was strange, and sometimes our father would even just read from the Bible on Sunday morning. I’m not sure why our early introduction to church was so disorganized. Some churches had Sunday school, and we’d be put into those, for whatever time we’d go to that particular church. One of these is where I’d be told to head out onto a field to play baseball with the other kids. I had no idea what baseball was. Going back this far, I was probably around five years old. “Play left field!” What’s left field? “No, not there!” I was treated by both the pastor, coach, whatever he was, and other kids like I should know. How? I’d never been taught anything about sports. My father had his first set of kids, and those were the ones he put energy into. He treated us a lot more like grandkids. He interacted with us when he felt like it, but we didn’t really have a close relationship with him for the most part. So I’d been left to my own devices in play, and he’d never so much as tried to show me anything about sports. Come to find, my half brother from his first family was a basketball player and later a college basketball coach. So it’s obvious he was more involved in those kids’ lives.

All I know is that it was a traumatic introduction. I was lambasted for not knowing what “everyone knows” when it came to playing baseball. That wasn’t the only sport I’d be introduced to in such a way. Similar experiences came with kickball and others later in P.E. class. Nothing made sense. I still don’t really understand sports. They seem trivial and pointless. That society cares about them baffles me.

Time passes. I missed some milestones in talking about school. At nine my mother began to divorce my father. She’d been having an affair. Later, many years later, I’d learn it was not the first. He was her third husband. She’d married young and had our older sister, which I just found out about during the year of divorce. It shook me as I had no idea up to that point that she was my half sister, or even what that was. The idea of being married before, having siblings I wasn’t “full” siblings with, all seemed so surreal. I felt betrayed as I’d not been told before. Moments in life shake our preconceptions. It just goes to show things are never quite what we think. Our entire perception is just a fabrication of what we believe to be real.

Our mother began to try to nurture the fear we already felt for our father, probably to aid her in the divorce proceedings. We began to distrust him and fear him entirely. We wanted nothing to do with him. He moved out, but only across the farm to the scale shed. That was a small shed with equipment used to monitor the grain scale semi trucks drove onto in order to measure their weight before and after loading or unloading. We had a granary as well as the farm itself.

While we were made to fear our father, our mother suddenly up and went on a trip with our older sister, leaving my younger sister and I to stay with our father. We were supposed to stay with someone else, I guess, but it didn’t happen. We were petrified when he showed up at the school to pick us up, but what were we to do? We went with him and stayed at the house while our mother was away. He explained she’d betrayed him, she was away on a trip with the man she was cheating with, the man’s eldest daughter, and our sister. They’d gone to Mexico. He told use he was filing for divorce. We were all sad at the state of things, but as kids we didn’t really understand. I still don’t know why our mother left us without telling us anything that was going on, just taking an impromptu trip to Mexico.

She thought the man she was with was going to follow through and leave his wife, so everything was a grand adventure for her. He had money, a successful farm, and he was younger than our father. I know our father was a jerk at the time, but she was her own version of awful. I’d learn in time how her life was always driven by selfish inclinations. Leaving your two young kids behind without them knowing what was going on in order to go on a trip with the man you’re cheating on your husband with just doesn’t make sense.

He wouldn’t end up leaving his wife. She threatened his finances, and you know how rich people are about those. I wonder if my mother would have stayed with him had he left his wife and become less financially appealing.

Far later in life, I would learn about her other affairs. She’d cheated on her second husband with our father. While he was dying of cancer, they took charter flights to see specialists for his treatment. This was when cancer of most kinds was far more likely to kill you. Imagine who the charter pilot turned out to be. Yes, it was my father. So they had a budding relationship while her current husband was dying. When he finally passed, they were able to be together. Our father had been separated from his wife for 10 years at that point, but it upset his first set of kids when he divorced her in order to marry our mother. Those kids are all twice our age and despise us to this day. I’m not sure why people hold others accountable for actions they had no control over. I suppose we’re living evidence of the wrong they see their father did their mother. It was all strange anyway. Our mother and his ex wife became friends. We knew her as kids, evidently. I don’t remember it myself, but so I’ve been told.

Another affair we’d find out about happened earlier during our mother’s marriage to our father. Our sister might’ve been 13 when she was woken from bed and drug along to town to wait in the car while our mother went into the house of the other man. That had to do something to a little girl. It’s no wonder she didn’t grow up to have a good life. So many things led to her downfall, but I’m getting ahead of myself again.

So let’s go back to before the divorce, before she met our father, before she met her second husband. Her first is was who she had our older sister with. He was someone she knew in high school. This still is only tangentially important. Perhaps during the time when she was living with her grandparents, as she and her mother didn’t get along, and her husband to be was living there, too. I think this was when she met a rather famous individual. He liked girls young. It might’ve been more acceptable back then, but it shouldn’t have been. He was rich and famous, she was young, and men like that can get whatever they like. She was 17 at the time.

Unfortunately, this was a time period where powerful people in not so good circles interacted with famous people. People of this underworld took advantage of famous people where they were manipulated, used, or worse. They’d found out he was seeing my mother, so they set her up to witness something in order to use her as a bargaining chip in a manipulation ploy. Because of what she’d seen, she couldn’t be allowed to live, but they’d allow her to if he just … something. I don’t know what the deal was, but she was allowed to live, and for many decades would be followed by the specter of this whole nefarious affair.

I know it sounds unbelievable, unrealistic, and far-fetched. It’s the truth as I know it though, and many sequences of events to come would corroborate this.

Our mother did a lot to rake our father over the coals through the proceedings of their divorce. She’d use us kids as means to garner sympathy, have us tell the judge how afraid we were of our father, and spend lots of money on expensive lawyers to push her case. In the end, they both paid more for lawyers than was sane. Lawyers are kind of evil in the money they charge. Divorce lawyers are pretty evil in general. They all probably made out better than our parents did. At one point, our mother and father both were found in contempt of court for their own terrible behavior during proceedings and put in jail. Our mother had a meltdown during this. She put it on our older sister’s shoulders to work with lawyers to get her out. I think she was stuck a weekend anyway, instead of 30 days as originally sentenced.

In the end, our mother was awarded enough money to last her many years as well as take care of her children. Money was to be put away for our college education. We’d move into town, while our father would stay on the farm and retain ownership. She ended up with most of the liquid assets though, which don’t help a farm that relies on the continued reinvestment of crop profits each season to keep operating.

These were the early days of farming at such a scale in the Texas panhandle. They’d initially only bought the land to have farmed from Illinois, where they lived. He had farmland up there and a charter flight business with his small airplane. When the bottom fell out of the market, they were forced to pull up stakes and move to Texas to run the farm themselves. Our older sister went with them. I would be the first to come along a year or so later, and my sister a year and three months after that.

With the divorce outcome, however, our father’s time running the farm was ticking. He couldn’t maintain operating expenses without the money awarded to our mother, as well as all the loans involved. So he’d eventually sell everything for less than it was worth, just to get out of the loans and not go bankrupt. He wasn’t left with a lot at this point. He kept the house, a little bit of land around it, and whatever money he hadn’t needed to pay off the farm debt.

He married a few years later, this time a woman who was his housekeeper. She had a young kid who was, well, a brat. I don’t imagine this went over well with our father. It didn’t last long, and she was able to leave with more money than she came into things with.

Prior to this, he’d had limited visitation with my younger sister and I. Those instances were strange. He tried to round off his rough edges and do whatever he could to get us to want to spend time with him. We just didn’t trust him though. After a few years of battles with our mother over visitation rights, and our reluctance to go, he would stop trying. He might’ve had many flaws, but he was still our father. Our mother did this for her sake, to be spiteful, more than anything. He had tried at least. He’d have us every other weekend, and we’d often go to a nearby “city” to stay at a hotel with a pool. This was a big deal. Or he’d try to do other things to make the time he had with us stand out. As I said, we didn’t trust him, so there was always an unspoken discomfort involved. Our mother fueled this. It’s no wonder he gave up. Though that was his fault as much as hers. He had a strong will when he wanted to have it.

During the divorce proceedings, we were evaluated by a child psychologist. Her name was Ann. I’m not sure if it was mandated by the court. I was too young to know the details. We also were taken to speak with the judge, mostly regarding our father and our thoughts about him. Since our mother had reinforced our fear of him, we showed little discomfort with the divorce. We spoke about how we were glad they were getting divorced and didn’t want to be around our father due to his behavior. I don’t know if this made a difference. It might have. The psychologist spoke with us about our feelings regarding the divorce, had us read books about children being sad their parents were splitting up, and tried other tactics to steer us to a more objective perspective. I realize this years later, but all those years ago it didn’t make sense. We weren’t like the kids in the books. We didn’t like our father. He was a bad man. We understood why our mother was divorcing him. We didn’t even realize he was the one who had filed for divorce. He was an erratic, arrogant jerk at times with a temper that was frightening, but we shouldn’t have been encouraged to hate him.

I remember the psychologist worked out of a house. She must have made good money to afford a house just to hold sessions in. It always had the scent of cookies. I think snickerdoodle. I always liked those. I also like cinnamon more than just about any scent. That scent is memorable, as was the room she’d speak with us in. There was a sandbox with the finest sand. It was in a raised platform with various instruments you could use to manipulate the sand. I suppose it worked a bit liked a Japanese zen garden. She’d ask us about various things other than the divorce. I told her I wanted to own a sprawling wilderness area someday, where the back yard spread out to house all kinds of wild animals like a zoo. I dreamed of having big cats. All of the big cats. We all dream as children.

Our mother was awarded custody, with our father having the aforementioned visitation rights. He won the house and farm, and we moved into town. This was a “city” of 7,000 just eight miles from the farm. We moved into the new house on my tenth birthday. As kids, we were excited as we’d never lived in town before. It was new and different. I even convinced our mother to let me have the old 9-inch black and white TV that used to be our grandmother’s, her mother’s. Sure, it could only tune in 13 of the 30 channels we now had with cable, but it was in my room. I could watch “Batman: The Animated Series” and all the after-school cartoons.

I remember leading up to the move-in date we’d helped paint our new rooms, and the house had quite a few renovations as well. But the date itself was my birthday.

I also remember walking to Ann’s house. It was several blocks from our new home, direct, and along the route we usually walked our dog. He was a Keeshond we got not long after moving into town. Oliver the rambunctious, yet dumb pup. He had so much energy. Our mother had no idea how to train a dog. That combination did not turn out well.

There was a brick retaining wall on the way leading up to her house. My younger sister and I would often climb up and walk on it, elevated three feet from the sidewalk to the right of it. It’s things like this I remember now as I write out these thoughts, things I’ve not thought about in years.

Speaking of dogs, the dog our family had since before either my younger sister or I were born did not get to come along with us for the move. Prior to this, he’d shown signs of paralysis in his hindquarters. He’d begun to drag his back legs around as he couldn’t actually walk on them anymore. It was terrible and not safe or pragmatic for a farm dog to live this way. Our mother tried to get him treatment at the vet, but only so much could be done at the time. I’m not sure what options were available. Again, I was young, and I knew very little about what happened. After months of trying to treat him for pain and paralysis, our mother decided to have him euthanized. I don’t think I fully understood what that meant at the time. I just knew our dog had died.

He was a beautiful, yet goofy looking German shepherd and husky mix. Those big ears and that silly muzzle made for a friendly appearance, especially with his long tongue ever hanging out. He was dumb enough to chase porcupines, endlessly needing quills removed and never learning his lesson. He’d found a rattlesnake on the path to a well our mother was checking once. His nose took the bite instead of her foot, or that’s how she tells it. She always thought he was trying to protect her. He’d chase the pickup to get a ride, which he’d also try to leap out of while it was moving at times. He’d also chase semis as they came and went to the granary on our farm, and he’d been hit by a truck and trailer at some point. I don’t think that was of the semi variety, but it still did a lot of damage. He chased jackrabbits, and as far as I know never caught one. And he, of course, got sprayed by skunks. So in other words, he lived a farm dog’s life. He was a dork, but he was our dork. All of that rough living took a toll. Thus, the final outcome with his paralysis. I think it had as much to do with pain as with nerve damage. What a mix.

Our older sister’s graduation would come less than a year later, the next spring. She’d invited her father, whom she had not seen in many years. Our mother seemed to have forgotten why she’d divorced him, and as she’d explain years later, she thought we needed a father. I get the idea she remarried him more for herself than anything. She doesn’t like to be on her own.

He turned out to be a lazy man who’d meandered through life without any real direction or purpose. He could do excellent woodworking, but he only relied on our mother to pay for tools and equipment, then rarely did much work. I don’t recall him selling many of his pieces during the time they were married. He was a Bible thumper with grand ideas on the subject of religion. They’d get us into church, as he was big on this at the very least. Suddenly, we were going to the Methodist church, and they became friends with the pastor and his wife. Our older sister was friends with one of their daughters. I haven’t thought about all of this in years. I’m remembering as I go along.

As was usual with our mother, she’d pour herself into her new endeavor, with us coming along for the ride. The closeness to the preacher and his wife wouldn’t last, as she ended end up divorcing her new, first, and then again ex husband. I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Also during this period after our mother divorced our father, prior to and after she remarried her first husband, we traveled each summer. For at least three years we’d head to Vegas and then California on two-week-long road trips. She knew people in Vegas and liked staying at a hotel there. Then we traveled along the coast of California and even got to see the Redwood forest in the northern part of the state. We saw Siegfried and Roy’s show in Vegas a few times, which was cool for those days. We didn’t know any better as far as captive cats being used for show business, or the breeding of white tigers and issues with that. I don’t think they meant to do harm, but often people ignore what they must when necessary. They needed white tigers as they were a big part of their show. So the issues with the gene pool and breeding such cats were probably conveniently ignored. Money our mother had been awarded in the divorce funded all this, and she never went to work or tried to maintain an income outside of alimony and child support. I don’t know the details of those.

While I was in public school, my younger sister was put into Catholic school, a small private institute in our town. It was difficult to get into, so I was put on a waiting list. She’d spend three or four years there, while I only got in for one. By this time I was 12. The school was fairly good for what it was, with small classrooms and multiple grades being taught by a single teacher. I spent 6th grade there, with the 5th grade class in the same room.

Our teacher was good in some ways. She was strict and pushed us to do well. I think the work ethic she instilled in me helped me get through the rest of school. After her class, public school seemed somehow easier. She wasn’t great at explaining things if you didn’t get them right away though, and thus was the way of things when it came to negative numbers in math. I wouldn’t figure out how those were meant to work until a year later when I was in junior high. There I had a math teacher who could make things click.

My teacher at the Catholic school did, however, teach art. This allowed us to learn water color painting. I’m not speaking of the kind kids typically do. She was an artist, with quite impressive work to show, and her passion shined through in how she taught the subject. I wish I remembered more. We learned about layering, doing paintings in stages, and more. Who knew water coloring could be so complicated? That most of us ended up with passable paintings was a testament to how good she was at teaching the subject.

As I said, I’d move on to junior high in public school, and my sister continued a year behind me for her third year in Catholic school. She became close with the nuns and hung out with her teacher in particular quite a lot, even after school. I think it was actually a good influence for her at the time. It helped with our tumultuous home life to come, also.

That’s the next stage in this adventure. But I haven’t quite finished telling about the current one. We traveled using the money our mother had been awarded in the divorce, seeing states across the western U.S. We saw much of California, including the Redwood Forest. It was beautiful there. I loved the hikes, but it would be many years after the trip there before I’d get to hike again.

Sometimes our grandmother would come along, others not. She began to show signs of Alzheimer’s eventually, and our mother took us to help pack up her house, sell off some of her things, and get her into a senior care facility by the time I was 13. I’d only get to see her a couple more times before she died. It was a few years later, and I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral. I was left behind in Texas while our mother took my two sisters and her next husband to Illinois where the funeral was held. And again I’m skipping chronology.

Our older sister was still living at home, as many kids do, attending college in the nearby city, this one with a population over 150,000, and commuting back and forth several times a week. Somehow she met a man from New Mexico who was a jeweler working in Native American jewelry with skill in stone cutting and metallurgy. She introduced him to our mother, and thus began the downfall of her renewed marriage to her first husband. I’ll never quite understand why our mother was always trying to find a better match, and not even ending things with the current one at the time.

The relationship with her first and now fourth husband did not end well. He was understandably upset at her behavior. Not that I was that unhappy to see him go. He’d become verbally and emotionally abusive toward me. I now wonder how much of my insecurity and lack of self confidence stem from that. He would denigrate and degrade me until I fell to the floor in a sobbing pile of tears and whimpers. How our mother allowed this I don’t know. She never was very strong when it came to defending her children from unkind husbands. At least he wasn’t physically abusive, but there was still damage done.

So he was gone, and she went on to marry her new suitor. Her again ex-husband would try a little bit to be in our lives, visiting once and taking us camping, but just in a hot desert campground outside the nearby city where our older sister went to college. Either it was too painful to try to be around what with our mother having a new boyfriend, and soon husband, or he just didn’t care that much. I don’t know. He moved back to Illinois, and he wouldn’t do much to stay in our lives after the camping trip. That was done outside our mother’s knowledge while she was on a trip with the new man.

Speaking of her new husband, it turned out he was arrogant, egotistical, judgmental, ignorant, and politically charged. He’d examine and over analyze every TV show and even commercial, standing in front of the TV and telling us why it was brainwashing in this way or that, from liberal Hollywood. One of the worse memories I have of his skewed attitude was in December after we’d gone to the theater to see “Star Trek: First Contact.” I’d loved the movie, but as we drove around to look at Christmas lights afterward, I learned our new stepfather did not. Patrick Stewart was bad because he was a Frenchman. So he was foreign white, so not the right kind of white. Who cares if he’s actually English and terrible at accents? No one ever took him for French even though that’s what the series proclaimed. I digress though. The vitriol went on for quite some time that night as he spewed hate about the movie, the actors, the story, anything and everything he could pick apart. This was his way. I’ve never met a more negative person. Well, perhaps other than my mother. They’re both negative in their own ways. A match well made?

He would also turn out to be verbally and emotionally abusive. He actually broke our mother’s wrist once. She tried to make up a lie about how it happened, but we knew. He liked parrots and would get a few. One he half drowned once when it made him angry, then threw it to the ground. It had a broken foot or leg. I’m not sure how that parrot survived. It was all so crazy.

Here we get to the next stage of crazy though. While my sister and I were 12 and 13, into ages 14 and 15, our mother and stepfather began to go on long trips. According to what we knew, the nefarious underworld had caught up with her. Someone who had been protecting her within the network had died, and the power struggle left behind involved her. So her past came back to haunt her. I don’t understand much about this as I was never told many details, and I was young at the time. For the purpose of taking focus away from us kids and keeping her on the move, with our stepfather as supposed bodyguard, they began to travel. There was always a reason. We were never told what.

Our older sister had moved out by this time, and thus she’d become the black sheep. No one left our mother’s control. Yet she would be enlisted to help take care of us while they were on the road. Since she was barely old enough to take care of herself and had no idea what to do with us, we were mostly left on our own. This would be for weeks or even months at a time. She would check in on us, bring groceries our mother had given her money to buy, drive us to and from school, but it was haphazard and disorganized. We’d often find ourselves without a ride after school, walking home. We’d need groceries and have to figure things out with what we had. Fortunately, our mother believed in having more food on hand than made sense, so we could make do. We did have trouble with school lunches. By the time we were 14 and 15, we would have to watch our lunch cards for purchasing school lunches, making sure they lasted for as long as possible. Our sister was given money to take care of these things, but it didn’t always make it to us.

Since our older sister was the black sheep, my younger sister was the new confidant and go-to person for our mother. She called her and kept her updated on where she and her husband were, what was going on, what the plans were, when they were supposed to be back. I was never kept in the loop and rarely had any idea what was going on, despite my protests. I just wanted to understand. I still don’t know why I was kept in the dark. That my younger sister was given the information and kept apprised while I was shut out still bothers me. I was not the favorite. It had gone from my older sister to my younger sister instead, leaving me the middle child and insignificant as usual. This was the case for most of my life growing up. All I remember is being very confused at the time, never knowing what was happening or why my mother wasn’t home, nor when she would return.

A year into this whole ordeal, our mother and stepfather decided we should have more supervision at home. Seeing as it was coming to light in the schools and various child service groups that we were perhaps home alone a lot, they probably feared getting in trouble. Ironically, our biological father had secretly stepped in to help us, or perhaps it was more to help our mother. He still cared about her somehow, for some reason. So he pulled some strings to try to keep us from being removed from our home.

In the end, our new stepfather’s mother would be brought in to watch and help care for us. She was not exactly capable herself, already a senior citizen and having diabetes, which had already resulted in the loss of one of her legs. She had a prosthesis. Her old-fashioned ways were not great either. These included methods of cooking that would scare most people. Being sanitary and safe just didn’t factor in. There were many meals we’d just have to pretend to eat and throw away. Sometimes she even made herself sick. She was nice enough early on, and we were glad to have someone there of course. But her ideas weren’t helping. She had many racist and homophobic beliefs, was also very religious and thought she knew everything there was to know about the Bible, and her warped ideology would begin to seep in. I’m glad I eventually got the internet and learned to grow out of these beliefs. They were not healthy or sane.

Of course, you could tell where her son got many of his own inclinations. It’s a shame as she wasn’t a bad person. She just had completely warped views on the world. Perhaps that’s somewhat her fault, and I suppose you can judge a person by the beliefs they hold. I just don’t want to be judgmental in retrospect. She had come to help us out after all. The first summer she was there, we went to get snowcones often, walking the few blocks to the stand. We also went to the library and made a habit of checking out and reading books. I loved that. But things would begin to deteriorate as we realized she wasn’t all there. Her life or something had made her way of thinking and behaving a bit amiss.

In the fall of my freshman year of high school, there was a fire in the house while our mother and stepfather were away on one of their ever-longer trips. We weren’t sure if some of the nefarious group my mother had been mixed up with in her past had caused it or what. It seemed suspect. It was electrical, according to the firemen, but at the time we couldn’t figure out how it had started. It’s possible our imaginations ran away with us.

At this time our stepfather’s son was staying with us. Memories run together. I’m not sure what I recall clearly anymore. I was trying to attend school and keep up with a very difficult honors biology course, which I wasn’t doing well at. Who knew having intense stress outside of school could impact your ability to focus or do well academically?

Upon later reflection, we’d consider maybe our stepbrother had something to do it. Unintentionally, but still related. There was a thunderstorm a few days prior, and we’d unplugged items in the house that lightning and corresponding power surges might damage. This was common practice back then. In our mother’s bedroom, we’d disconnected her TV and various items via the power strip they were plugged into. He’d been trying to watch TV in there when we had to do this, I believe, and might have wanted to do so again. So it’s possible he went back to the room the next day or so and plugged it back in without our knowing. At the time, we were sure it was unplugged so didn’t understand why the firemen insisted the power strip plugged into that outlet was the source of the fire. They said it tried to pop its internal breaker but was pushed between the chest of drawers and wall behind it. This kept its reset button from popping out properly, and it shorted, eventually setting the outlet and wiring in the wall on fire. How he’d have managed to connect the power strip to the outlet and then get it sandwiched between the chest and the wall still seems suspect. He was only 10 or 11 years old.

Moving on, I think we adopted Murky, our beautiful part-Siamese cat, in this year as well. It was October of the year I was a freshman. So that makes sense. We got her as a “gift” for our mother’s birthday, which was in October. Our mother wasn’t thrilled. We needed something though. That little kitten really helped us in a bad time. Sharp of claws and teeth as she was, pouncing you whenever you moved in your sleep. Your hands were a fun toy to attack. Who needs sleep before school anyway? I do wonder how this was considered cute and resulted in happiness. My younger sister and I fought over who she got to sleep with.

Our older cat, Marmalade, had been adopted while we still lived on the farm. He was always ornery and not very nice, born outdoors and chased by dogs the farmer’s down the highway had. He’d spent much of his first year dodging them and practically living in a tree. So our older sister had insisted she adopt him, and so many years later he was still with us. He was also not thrilled with the kitten. Yet she LOVED him. Not only was he a great playmate, but as she grew up, she came to treat him like a beloved mate. It was funny how she fawned over him. Even as he grumped and growled, she’d groom him. Even as he became old and cantankerous, getting gum disease in his later years, and she’d scowl as she licked for he must’ve tasted terrible at that point, she still adored him.

He lived to be 19. That’s pretty old for a cat. We had to put him down when his kidneys failed. That’s a fairly common way for older cats to go. It was a hard day.

During the fire, we managed to get Marmalade out of the house, and I’d wetted a towel, put it over myself, and crawled into our mother’s room to remove the parrot our stepfather had gotten. I’d be admonished by the EMTs for doing this, but I didn’t want to leave it in there to die. Evidently, I could have died for having done so. I didn’t know this. I just wanted to save the animals.

Back to school, moving on from the sad story. After the fire, which occurred in the fall before we got Murky as I recall, our mother and stepfather would finally be drawn home. When they found out, they rushed back, our mother chastising us for not letting her know what had happened. We were afraid the “bad men” had something to do with it, and we were trying to protect them. I realize how off the wall this all sounds. Well, it seems so normal when it’s the world you live in. It didn’t seem weird to us. Such people do exist, and there is no point in going into all the details. I endeavor not to do so anyway as knowing more isn’t necessary. At this point in time, I don’t think whoever of that underworld who remains really cares about us kids, or our mother for that matter.

That reminds me, while on these long trips away from home, our mother had to fake a few pregnancies, evidently because this kind of criminal element takes family seriously. So while we were being left behind for our own protection, being pregnant would protect her from them? I can’t pretend I really understand. But it was supposed to have worked, keeping her safe. Whatever happened, when they came back after the fire, they weren’t taking such long trips so often anymore.

I had my first girlfriend in my freshman year. She was a close friend of a good friend I’d had in eighth grade of junior high. David was a nice guy, if a bit of a dork, and he thought messing with me was fun at times. So he was half a jerk who picked on me and made me miserable at times, and half a friend. At least he spent time with and talked to me. I didn’t have many people who did that. Best friends came and went after that first one in elementary school. They usually moved away after a year or two. Years later, David ended up joining the army and going to fight in Afghanistan. He didn’t come home.

The friend of his I mentioned was paralyzed from the waste down. He’d help her out getting things from her locker and meet between classes like that. Since I hung out with him some, we three would interact. They were both a year older than I, so they went on to high school while I spent my last year in junior high. The next year, I didn’t see David, but I did see Julia. I’m not sure where he was or why he wasn’t around. I imagine he must have moved, or I’d have seen him as he’d also be hanging out with her. Somehow Julia and I ended up having the same lunch period, so we’d eat together. She was great. I’m glad I knew her. Thinking back now, I almost wonder what might have been.

It took time to realize I liked her way back then. I was young and had no idea how emotions and relationships worked. I’d idealized love since I was a cub, of course. I just had no experience, and I was nervous as I called her to ask if we could date. That was an anxious phone call for us both. We’d end up dating for the rest of the year, though we didn’t as much as kiss! I guess we both were shy and unsure what we were doing, or supposed to do. We mostly just continued as we had been.

Things were tumultuous with our mother and stepfather back home. While we’d had to be far more self sufficient for the past few years, suddenly we were treated as kids without any facility for dealing with daily life. Being shown no confidence but instead lack of faith was undermining. The instability of our home life was catching up with us, and things being so chaotic meant my younger sister became so anxious she kept missing school. She was often put in the middle of our mother and stepfather’s fights, having to referee to try to calm them down. I can’t imagine this helped her mental state. What came next would be the final straw for her.

The life story of a snow leopard - Part 2