Richard and his family left yesterday, driving back to Iowa. Micah and Jasmine left this afternoon and I always hate when my children leave me. I get this icky, empty feeling cause I know that I won't see them in a long time and I just hate that. He lives so far away, but now I live so far away from all my kids and grandkids. I'm just going to have to plan visits more often, that's all.
So everyone has gone and it's back to just me and Bob. I would never call him Bob to his face, of course, but it's kind of funny in writing. Not that he can do anything about it anymore; it would be him chasing me and we both waddle and wouldn't get very far.
But it wasn't always this way. My dad was very formidable when I was young and he scared me to death. And even though I was scared of him, I did some really stupid things during my youth. When I was a teenager, I would come home late at night, stoned or drunk out of my mind and my dad was always sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me. He would be doing some kind of paperwork and when I walked in, I tried not to look him in the eyes, thinking he would realize I was stoned. He always looked up and I always looked down and said, "Hi dad," and he would say "Hi sis," and I would head straight to my room. He never did know about my getting high, unless he just didn't let on. I would guess that he didn't know because he wouldn't know what weed smelled like, so he probably thought I was just smoking cigarettes. He no doubt smelled the alcohol though, and it was probably those nights when he gave me the evil eye. He had, and still has, one of the meanest looks known to man. As they say, if looks could kill, well, let's just say I would be dead ten times over.
In the same vein of parents not knowing what their children are doing, my mother was a prime example of that. She worked as the secretary in my junior high school, Lincoln Junior High, which was a real drag for me because I began going behind her back by wearing make-up and jewelry (which she prohibited me from doing), and I had to be very careful as to not letting her see my face during the day. I would put this stuff on before school and take it off after school, and she never was aware of what I was doing. When I had to walk by her office, I would open my eyes up real wide so she couldn't see the eye liner that was so obviously on my eyes. Black, thick eyeliner and sometimes black mascara too. How can you not see that? I even bleached my hair with peroxide in the summer and she never noticed. I would take the peroxide bottle she kept in the bathroom cupboard and with a tissue, simply swipe it through my hair, then sit in the sun. It made my hair stink real bad, but she simply thought the sun was lightening it up, even though one year it was actually blonde when I was naturally a brunette!
It was during Christmas break the year that I was 16 years old that my parents decided to take a trip to Florida. I didn’t want to go with them, and so they took Danny (Richard was in the service) and foolishly left me at home alone for 2 weeks! I really couldn’t believe they did that, but they did, and so I took advantage of the situation. They also left me their car, which was very convenient, as I drove down to the south side of Chicago to pick up my boyfriend, Michael, so he could stay with me. As it turned out, I had a party in my parents’ home for the entire 2 weeks, with people coming in and out, some of whom I didn’t even know. We smoked, drank the liquor in my parents’ liquor cabinet (filling the near-empty bottles with water afterward), used drugs and just sat around listening to music all day and night. I tried to air the house out before my parents came home, as they didn’t smoke at all, but that was impossible and they smelled it as soon as they walked in the front door. Apparently my dad had written down the mileage on the car before he left (which I didn’t know about) and wanted to know where I had driven to put so many miles on the car. He was furious of course. It was not a good situation when they came home, but I deserved every bit of their wrath, if not more.
Someone told me this week that they read that it's usually the wayward or rebellious child who ends up taking care of the parents in their old age. I thought that was interesting and just smiled, because in my situation, it's true. My brothers never put my parents through all the grief that I did. Now, which one of my kids....
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