Life's Uncertainties

Monday we will move some of our belongings into a new house in Pacific Grove.  I am trying to be excited, but I only find myself plagued with unhappiness over the choices I am being forced to make.  I know that either way I choose I will never be truly happy again, because either way I am giving up something that I love.

Sometimes people's dreams change.  Mine have stayed the same - a home of my own with my own space, where I could decorate as I wanted, putter around as I wanted, with unlimited views.  A home where my kids and grandkids might one day gather whenever we wanted, without having to figure out days off, travel times, costs of tickets, etc.  But my husband's dreams have changed - he has no wish for our own place, or the space that I long for.  He wants to pursue his passions, no matter where that takes him.  And, at least for now, he wants me to be a part of it.  But as our shared dreams become more and more different I know that the day will come that our love for each other will diminish as we begin to feel more and more the differences between our desires.  So do I go along for the ride or do I bow out gracefully while there is still love?  I do not want to wait until the day that the sad acknowledgement comes along that it is gone.

Now I start the process of trying to accept having strangers ten feet away from my bedroom window, of not being able to look out my windows and seeing the sunrise or sunset again, of having to get into a car and fight with traffic to get to a place where no one is around and I can wander with my own thoughts while the dogs can finally get off of their leashes and run as they wish.  I wish I could find something to be excited about in this move besides being with my husband, but I can't.  It takes me away from everything else about my life that I loved.  He is all that is left, and I don't feel that I will be able to keep him happy for long since what he wants and what I want have become so different.

Leaving Part of My Heart Behind

I am not sure where this falls.  It is not a story from my past but a story of today.  Today I found that even when it seems your dreams are falling into place that they are in fact falling apart.  As I have gotten older I have wanted a place to settle, a place of my own, and hopefully one where I could have at least some of my kids close by, and possibly their kids as well.  I thought I was here.  I looked forward to days when maybe my daughter would call and ask if she could drop the kids off for a while so that she could go shopping.  Or nights where they would spend the night so that mom and dad could have a date night.  But what started out as a mutual dream with my husband is no longer his, and he no longer wants to be here.  In order to have him I must give up everything else that I loved about my life.  So I will follow the man that I love to places that he dreams of and leave most of mine here, in the desert, and hope that I can return and that, unlike the grandchildren I have who live far away, that these others yet to be born will know me well and not see me as a stranger that they only see once a year.  My heart had to break into two pieces - otherwise I could not bear what I know I need to do, so I will leave a part of me behind.

 

My Mother's Writings

Today I am cleaning out the spare bedroom and getting it ready for the visitors that I hope to have this summer - my oldest son and my granddaughters.  I came across an old appointment book from 1942 that my mother used for her journal.  If she began writing in it that year then she would have been about nine years old.  She, like I did when I was that age, obviously loved dogs and horses.  The first pages is a table of contents, followed by a number of pages of kennel names that she imagined and then the stories that she wrote about beloved pets.  There must be over 100 names that she came up with - names such as "Sunny Ridge", "Dardendale", "Broadlawn" and Wolveshampton". 

Then comes her first short writing.  Entitled "Gray Dawn" it reads as follows:

"Gray Dawn died on Memorial Day, 1929, falling quietly asleep on his rug close beside the desk in my study here in Sunnybank and forgetting to awaken.

Gray Dawn's color was a soft blue merle."

Further on is the story of Lad:

"Greatest of all Sunnybank collies was Lad.  he was the palaces first collie.  He was a great and gallant dog.  Sunnybank Lad died one September day in 1918 when, the sixteen year old collie should fall asleep in the cool angle under the back veranda hammock and should fail to awake again."

As I read some of these I began to wonder if they weren't stories that were told to her by her father, who was killed in a car wreck when she was 16, and if some of them aren't actually a legacy of dogs that he had before she was born, since some of the stories talk about sires and dams and are pretty factual for a nine year old girls imaginings.  I won't ever know.

Then there are what seem to be actual journal writings - descriptions of days - cold, gray days, stormy days and once she wrote of an "apple green day": "Today was an apple green day.  The sun was shining brightly as if ashamed of the way the weather has been for the past days.  The shadows were just beginning to settle when I took Mickey and went exploring in the old orchard.  The shadows fell though and we had to leave."

And as I thumb through the dry, yellow pages I start finding dates, so this journal encompasses a number of years and shows that my mother wrote in it sporadically (another trait I seem to have inherited!).  Now I find an entry dated January 1947, followed by one dated December 1946.  Both of these entries are dedicated to dogs.

And now, I find an entry written after she lost her father.  She was barely sixteen years old.  It is titled, simply, "My Dad" and is dated January 20, 1950.  It reads:  
    "It's been a long, long time since I've written, almost three years now.  My life has changed so much that I feel as though the Jeddy of yesterday, carefree, happy, dreamy little Jeddy was just a dream.  Maybe a can put down on paper what I feel and ease the pain in my head. 
    Dad is gone now.  Gone to a better land than this, I know.  But I'll never, never forget my dad, for to me he was the greatest man in the world.  I can still see him about 12:00 on Saturday afternoons, packing up the "old car" to go on one of his hunting or fishing trips.  The old khaki pants on, a brown shirt, and an old straw hat.  On these days, he was always happy for he was doing the thing he loved most in the world.  Going on his beloved trips into the country.  Maybe he was by himself, maybe not.  Either way he was happy.  It was his life and the life he loved most."

This is it - and it leaves me with questions.  Does this answer some of the questions surrounding my mother's later problems?  It sounds as if my grandfather left every weekend without his wife and daughter.   I know that even back in those days families went on camping trips together, but it doesn't seem to have been the case here.  I know that there were times when my grandmother had to warn my mother to stay away from him when he was out on the porch - days when he would sit out with a gun across his knees, obviously suffering from some mental disorder that he may have passed on to my mother.  Did his passing leave her idolizing a man who was disappointed that he didn't have a son, scarring her in the process? I could go on and on coming up with more questions that will never be answered, but there are days when I wish that somewhere, part of the mystery would unlock.

Moving On

After a few years in Lake Forest I guess Daddy's latest job switch affected our income, so we moved to Fairhope.  This house was much smaller - I am guessing that the place in Lake Forest was somewhere in the 3000 square foot range, while the new place on Morphy Ave. was definitely under 2000.  It was a small ranch-style brick house with a separate garage, which served as our laundry and storage area instead of a place for our cars.

My favorite part about the new house were the woods and the gulley that ran behind it.  The schoolyard for the public school was also nearby, which meant we had a playground at our disposal when school wasn't in session.  What fun we had here in those first years!  The gulley occupied a lot of our time when we were kids - the explorations and adventures that we had!  It's walls were about 35 or 40 feet high, and there was a large drainage pipe jutting out of its far wall.  The sides were deep, dark red Alabama clay, and when it rained they would get oh, so slick!  We ruined who knows how many items of clothing sliding down those sides after a rain shower.  One time Daddy brought home some telephone cable on a large spool.  The spool became a table under our treehouse, which stood at the top of the gulley, and the cable became a zip line that Daddy attached to a branch and ran to the bottom of the gulley.  We had a blast.  

We also had a small empty sand lot on the property on the other side of the garage.  My brother and I would build roads with his Tonka trucks, and then drive his Hot Wheels on them.  I still played with Barbie dolls too, but driving cars was more fun.  

We had some good neighbors here.  The people next door used to smoke mullet in the back yard and would always give us one of the fish.  I loved it!  There was an elderly lady across the street who had the same name as Hitler's mistress, Eva Braun.  She was very sweet to us and had a cat and a old Lab mix.  I still remember her out in the yard with her pets following her around as she tended to her plants.  Sadly, she collapsed one day and went to the hospital.  She passed away a few days later.  Her cat went to live with a sister but the dog stopped eating and followed its owner to doggy heaven shortly after.  I remember how incredibly sad it made me.

At some point I guess Daddy began looking for another job.  He found one in Birmingham and went up to get started and find us a house.  When he called my mother to tell her that he had a place for us to live she informed him that she wanted a divorce.  I must have been about 11 years old.  My father told me years later that he was devastated - despite the fighting and her indiscretions, he still loved her and had no idea that she was contemplating a divorce.  We weren't told right away - so since we had been used to his traveling when we were young and just thought he was away working maybe it didn't have the same impact that it does on children whose little worlds are torn apart so badly when their parents split.

It was also about this time that my grandmother moved from San Antonio to Fairhope.  During my mother's trial I was told that she had done it to protect us from our mother - with my father out of the house permanently she apparently feared for her grandchildren.  I was so happy when Grandma moved to town!  I spent so many happy hours at her house - I think I probably spent more time at Grandma's then I did at home.  Thinking back this probably suited my mother - and if I got sick during that time she usually dropped me off.  I can remember running a high fever and being in my bed at Grandma's house while she tended to me patiently - singing "You Are My Sunshine" and laying her wonderful hands on my burning forehead, making sure I was tucked in and constantly at my side.