UNCERTAINTY

  

ever wish you had a small peephole into your future?  ever wish God would send an occasional email as to what tomorrow will hold?  ever wish you would get visions of things to come, and be provided with the strength to face them? 

my life hasn't always been the way it is now.  i grew up in a upper middle class family, consisting of a mother, father and me.  though i didn't appreciate it much at the time, my father worked 6 jobs to make sure we had the nicest things, and that my mother had the latest appliances.  yes, my father was one of those men who thought birthdays and Christmas were for appliance giving......poor mother. 

i never had to really do much in my childhood as long as i studied hard and kept up my grades, and did a few household chores.  for some reason, still not clear to me, i have shut out the memories of my childhood, other than an occasional flash back when something in the present jogs my memory.  i do remember my father and i never got along, even though my first and middle names put together mean "father's queen".  i also remember snippets of his beating me, and verbally abusing me.  one of the worst memories i have is when i was about 7, my mother made me apologize to my father for something i felt i didn't do, and he wouldn't put down the paper to look at me, and when i told him i was sorry, he told me in a very angry tone he didn't want to hear my apology. that hurt me pretty bad, since it took all my strength to apologize in the first place.

you see, my father was not a very nice man.  and, though we should never speak ill of the dead, i feel i must address this here.  he was placed in an orphanage as a small boy, even though he had two parents who were married at the time. he grew up in the orphanage, with money being sent to them from his mother, for help in his upkeep.  she would visit occasionally.  when he was 14, he ran away from the orphanage and hitchhiked across the southeast.  he stopped in some small southern town and lied about his age to the owner of a diner, similar to the waffle house of today, and landed a job as dishwasher.  eventually he became a cook.  there was a story i remember him telling me about this woman, who came into the diner, and asked for two eggs, over easy, bacon, fried potatoes, grits and toast, with coffee.  he prepared the meal just as he had numerous other times for other people, and the waitress took it to the woman at the counter.  the woman called back the waitress, and told her that the eggs were way too hard, and the waitress sent them back.  my father fixed two more, a little less done, and returned them to the waitress.  upon receiving these latest eggs, the woman told the waitress, nope, still too hard.  the waitress returned them to my father once again, and he muttered something, but cooked two more eggs, and this time, he redid all the other food too, so that it would all be hot.  the woman took the plate, cut into the eggs, and told the waitress the cook must be an idiot, for the eggs were still not over easy, and she sent them back.  my father, quite angry by this time, cracked two raw eggs on the plate with the potatoes, bacon and toast, walked out to the counter, sat the plate in front of the woman himself, and said, eat, or get out.  the funny thing is, i actually don't remember ever hearing the ending to that story.  but we can all assume what she did.

my father had alot of anger in him.  i am sure he had every right to be angry, but he never had a way to vent his anger in a positive way, thus, when i came along, he vented it on me.

my father did work hard for his family.  we never did without.  well, without material things.  we hardly ever saw him except when we took vacations.  but vacations were a wonderful thing around my house.  we would pack and prepare for them a week before the event, and would always go somewhere exciting.  well, to me it was exciting.  the mountains, the beach.  in 1972, the year before my mother died, we went to toronto, canada, up through the states and around the great lakes, and returned back down the coast through niagra falls, new york (oh, yeah, forgot to mention, we lived in georgia).  a very obese friend of my mother's, sarah, went with us.  she couldn't keep up with us in new york, and the subways there are fast........doors open, you have to be on, and out of the way, and they close, and off you go.  we all made it on, sarah didn't.  had to wait for her to get there on the next train, lol.  we didn't know on this trip that both sarah and my mother were carrying a time bomb.......cancer.  my mother died the very next year in january, right after my birthday.  sarah died a couple of years later. 

my father would also take the family, and other relatives, like uncle emmett, on weekend trips.  uncle emmett always said he never knew whether to pack a bathing suit or fur coat, for my dad never planned these weekenders.  just got up about 4 am on a saturday morning, and packed a few things, and headed out.  drove my mother crazy, lol.  heck, i didn't care.  it was fun.

but though my father tried to do his best to provide for his family, he just held too much emotion and anger inside to be a good father and husband.  my parents were not "touchy feely" people, so there weren't alot of hugs and kisses, and "i love you's" spoken.  it was as if the "love" was supposed to be understood.  my father must have had alot of bad days at his many jobs, for when he would come home late at night, he would either go straight to bed, or i would hear him having words with my mother.  sometimes, if i were up still, i would catch it. 

i remember once, probably in the late 60's or early 70's, my father came home from work late, about 11 pm.  mother and i both had been cleaning house all day.  i remember specifically because i was really really tired.  my father stepped inside the carport door into the kitchen, and felt some grit under his shoes.  probably brought it in himself from the carport.  he yelled something about how he hated coming home to a filthy house, and that two women at home should be fully capable of cleaning grit off a floor.  he turned back around, slammed the door and stormed off in the car.  he allegedly spent the night at a hotel near work, and went straight there the next morning.  now that i am a mature adult i wonder what exactly was the motive behind that little tirade.

i guess my life wasn't too much different than alot of other people's from that era, but when you live it yourself, you feel you are the only one on earth going through it all.  i have never felt the urge to write about my past life publicly till now.  i guess though i have written for years in a private paper journal, i felt the need to expose myself openly to the public.  i hope no one rubs salt in the wounds, but if so, maybe that is the purpose of this journal.

i am going to stop writing for now.  when i started this entry, the emotions, and the power i felt writing about this, were immense, and were compelling me to pen (or type) my thoughts.  now, i feel sorta like the wind is out of my sails.  i am going to take this slow, and that way i will hopefully remember more, and be able to get alot of this out of my system.  if i have bored you readers out there, sorry.  but i guess this is something that has been a long time in the making.......something i really needed to do.  bear with me, ok?