Where I come from...

   

I have always felt disengaged from my parents. I was a child of divorce before I was born. When mom's second marriage ended she felt she could not support four children on her own. So it was easy for my mother to give my older sister and me to my father when I was four years old.

My dad couldn't take us because he had moved on and remarried. My step mother, had her own two little girls and one on the way. She didn't want five daughters so we were sent away; therefore, my sister and I went to live with our grandparents, Maude and Elmer. They are gone now and I still miss them and the farm.

We were well loved and taken care of we rarely saw our father as he had another family to take care of. We didn't see mom again until I was in fifth grade. Mom came and got us for a visit and my sister wanted to stay. By then mom had remarried for a third time. She also acquired five step children and had given birth to another son. We stayed with mom for two years.

Our step father was very abusive and my sister asked to go visit dad and we ended up staying because she made me stay.  I stuck it out for a year and four months. I hated our step mother. She was always rude to me and refused to buy me anything girly. She also destroyed all my personal belongings in a fiery trash can.  We had to live in a dump and I hated it. My grandmother and mother never lived that nasty.

I called mom and told her to come get me. She overheard me and called dad who was in Dallas visiting my aunt. I had no idea he was not in town. I talked to him over the phone and told him he could stick her up his ass. I was ready to kick her ass. I was fourteen by then. I moved back to mom's mid-summer. 

In eighth grade I went to three different schools; because mom decided leave her third husband. Then moved my younger brother, sister and me to Oklahoma City where I attended Capitol Hill Middle School.  I was never so scared in all my life. I had never been around gangs, drugs or crime.  I was a full on country bumpkin. No city kid in this girl. 

Two months later mom got back with her third husband. We moved to the Pickwick Apartments on May Ave. I hated that place too because he was there. We attended Jefferson Middle School.  I hated it too but at least it wasn't dangerous to walk in the front door. When school let out we went back to Davenport.

There I married my first husband at seventeen and graduated high school. We had one son and then divorced a little more than three years later. I remarried less than two years later and had another son. After five more years I gave birth to my youngest son but, then when he was eight, that marriage too ended.

I am resolved to stay single the rest of my life. I have a wonderful man who lives fifty miles away and he brings me roses. We have both been married and divorced twice. We also have three grown children and a grandson. We have decided to only date and have fun. 

After nearly eleven years of being divorced, I think I finally like where I am at inside myself. I am still a country girl at heart, barefoot in the mud walking through the peanut fields and cow pastures.