LowDown

This page is meant to be some of the back stories of my family.  There are 6 of us: Mom, Dad, Tina (self-less sister working round the clock when she’s not on Myspace), Davis (truck driver with a cheating ex-wife), Will (baby of the family, bit of a manho, incredibly crafty/skillful, and has the occasional brush with the law), and me (the oldest). I’ll be adding to it and editing it over time.  Want me to add something?  Just leave a comment below.

 

 

 

My father and mother were (are if you live in Mom’s world of “I didn’t sign no papers”) married for over 40 years.  It was insanity pure and simple.  They fought like cats and dogs about 80% of the time.  At the age of 8, I remember thinking quite clearly, “Why don’t they just get divorced?”  (any of you staying together for the kids might want to make a note of that)  They split up once for a few weeks after Mom found out that my Dad had co-signed a $4K loan for another woman he’d met while hanging out at a bar with friends.  I’d have ripped his balls off, but she took him back because my baby brother Will missed him so much and kept asking for him (he was only 3). 

 

To be fair their marriage hadn’t been the same since our baby sister Catrina died just a few hours after birth (she had a birth defect which kept the top of her head from forming to cover her brain…it must run in my father’s family because my Granny Annie lost a baby to it too).  My father had went out and gotten drunk instead of being with my Mom, and she never forgave that.  It changed her from an extremely docile, 1950’s-the-husband-is-king wife to a person who stood up for herself more, and I don’t think Dad took that well.  Their marriage had a lot of rough years after that.  Dad finally got a regular job, but it only put him with people who were drunks and sluts, and he never was one to fight peer pressure.  They fought constantly; they ignored each other at times; but, they kept it together.

 

Then Mom was diagnosed with cancer, and my sister, Tina, and I became her sole caregivers (on the rare occasions when Dad was forced to see her sick, he would become crazed and demand that we put her in a home…there was nothing a home could do anymore than there was anything we could do).  She was never the same after that, and then she had a series of strokes.  Dad was actually quite supportive for a few months.  Mom was childlike much of the time and obviously certain wifely duties weren’t being performed.  Then my Mom overheard a conversation between my Dad and another woman.  This trashy ho (she’s one of several local whores but she was the sister of a local drunk that Dad occasionally hired for odd jobs…so Mom didn’t like her but she didn’t think anything of it when she came around with her brother) had been hired by Dad to paint something.  When she went to Dad to ask for the money, Mom overheard Dad say, “Can I get me some later for it?” or words to that effect.  The meaning was pretty darn clear.  Things went downhill after that with Dad moving into an RV camper in the yard and eventually quitting his job, cashing out his retirement, and buying a plot of land in Mississippi (all without consulting any of us…did I mention that Mom’s insurance was through his work?…he just left Tina and I with a 15 yr old kid and a chronically, severely ill mother to care for…peachy, huh?).

 

Dad has been in Mississippi for about 6 years now.  Over the years, an uneasy peace developed between my Dad and the rest of us.  Will even lived next to him for a few years (kind of amazing because they’re just alike and butt heads constantly).  Dad had it pretty rough at times trying to live there on his own.  He’s been ill quite a bit with serious liver damage (Dad had been a raging alcoholic for years although he quit when he went to Mississippi until he married his current slag…going through a case of beer a night easily…I still have no idea how he kept a job) although it was always hard for us to know just how ill because Dad is a compulsive liar.  He always exaggerates to the point of ridiculousness (as a child it takes you a lot of years to figure out that you can’t trust what a compulsive liar says…especially when it’s a parent…you want to believe them…and you learn the hard way).  Somehow, we’ve kept going and tried to keep Dad as a part of our family.

 

 

My SINGLE sister, Tina.