D D Should I let sleeping dogs lie?

Met the first husband in a roller rink in Long Beach,CA.

He asked if he could see me home safely and rode the bus with me to my stop. 

 Got off the bus at my stop with me and my wheels were turning. I didn't want him to know where I lived.

At the top of the street was an apartment building and a friend of my mothers lived there. 

 I'd been there and  knew it had a back door to the alley straight through at the end of the hallway. 

Walked down the alley to my house and figured that was the end of him.

Time again has muddied how we happened upon each other again.  Either he asked around that building and gave a description of moi or I ran into him again at the roller rink.

Whatever!!!.... I didn't lose him! :0(

HUBBY#2 was a chance meeting.

Actually, I had been asked by someone I knew when I lived in MA as a child  to drive them over to the Nike Base in Stanton,CA maybe  half mile or less from  us so she could see her boyfriend.  

Her parents and mine had been friends since thay were in their late teens.

 Was just teaching myself to drive and I was back in my house next door to my mothers until the bank re-poed it. She came over and watched the kids and out the driveway I drove.

Without a license. I was BAD

It was about a mile away. A straight run. See.... I can be daring and live on the edge. :0)

 Her boyfriend walked out of the gates and sat in my car talking to her awhile.

While we were sitting there a car came out the gate and drove past us.

Inside driving was this dark haired  handsome guy.  

Out of my mouth popped, "I'm going to marry that guy".

Still don't know what possessed moi to say that.   ?????

A few days later my phone rang and it was HE !  I shit you not!

He had been  told what I had said and wanted to meet me.

This could be arranged. :0)

Tall, dark and handsome and his laugh was infectious.

It was love almost at first sight for moi.....him ?

I remember our first kiss. He drove to the ocean . Huntington Beach to be exact.

We sat on the sand on a towel with his arm around moi.

He's on my left pointing up into the sky to my right .

Names this star, that star, the Milky Way and then he points up to the sky on my left and said something. 

I turned my head to look and he kissed me.

Corny, huh!  Maybe that's why I remember it so well....

FIREWORKS!!!

Neither of us wanted to be apart from one another after that first night.

The sex was dynamite. Whoaaaaaaaaa baby!

yeah....I put out on that first date.

I didn't find out until much later that he was a mommy and daddy's boy. :0(

Being that he was in CA and they were in TX he managed to conceal moi and his living arrangements well.  VERY WELL, INDEED!   I shit you not!

I was living in my own happy little world  with my head up my ass and thought nothing when he continued  getting his mail at the base where he was when we met and later after his discharge  from the Army he got his personal mail at the bank in Anaheim where he was working  as a Head Teller .

What he told them about as to why he stayed in CA, I have no clue. ???

All the signs were there.  No communication from his parents to moi.

At first he was a beer drinker, then beer and  vodka so I couldn't smell it on his breath, then it was whatever he could get his hands on, but all this came over time. Not overnight.

Little by little by little my respect for him ........went.

Use to sign my cards and pictures " You Have My Heart." When I told him each time he hurt me I took a piece of my heart back and someday nothing would be left" he would laugh like it was a joke. 

I MEANT IT !

Cry? Oh my efffin good word could he cry over anything.

Shades of whine bucket! I shit you not.

I won't drink anymore....boohoohoo. Let me make it up to you. boohoohoo. I'll clean the stove for you. boohoohoo.

That's not what I want , I would say to him. Just stop drinking.

I'll spare you all the details.

Drunk...repent. Drunk...repent

After our first child a son was born ...no congrats came from his parents.

My mother having lived a few years longer than myself figured he had not told them.

Put a bug in my ear to send them a birth announcement.

Will make this short too. He admitted they did not know about the baby to me.

His father came to visit ...alone.

Wasn't long afterwards that he told me the baby didn't look like him.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh but he did and for years I liked to rub it in to him after we seperated and divorced.

His son not only looked like him, he walked like him and has many other of his mannerisms.

The next visit was from both his parents.  Apparently the MIL from Hell thought he was her sons.

 Both were Looney Tunes and my son was her son while they visited.

She had sticky fingers and lifted a few items while with us.

His sister thanked us for the crib sheets we sent back with them.

HUH! We didn't. Ours was missing.

She had sticky fingers in the grocery stores in West,TX too and where she didn't pay with cash for her groceries and they were billed to the house for the ex FIL from Hell to pay....those items did not go un-noticed and were tacked onto the bill.

As I think back on things, I'm not sure she could read English.

Could speak it though, but was rude in stores and spoke Czech which embarrassed his sister, she told me.

Spoke Czech to my husband too in front of me so that I could not know what the conversation was about.

I would ask him later what certain words were that I thought were derogatory. They were!

They always sent him Care Packages. Cartons of his cigarettes, underwear, stamps, etc.

Long story short...they never fell in love with moi and let me know it during our married life.

Oh well, you can't please everyone.  They never liked any girl he brought home.

Including  the one he was engaged to when he was drafted and  went into the Army. 

Up until then  they had scared every girl away,  he later told me.

Maybe they saw the warning signs... where I didn't.

Wasn't supposed to get married they told moi..many,many times in shrill, contempt filled voices.  

Was supposed to stay home and take care of them in their old age. So said THEY!

My  Son ee check . They called him Sonny and it sounded like that, but the Czech spelling is off. :0)

Being in the Moose Hall which once was the Idle Hour... that Saturday for the Comedy Show last month , I could still picture him as he walked past each booth towards the door picking up drinks left at closing time and drinking them.  sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Melted ice cubes with a hint of what drink they were...chug...chug!

Once I told him if the sea was full of booze he'd still be there kneeling at the shore lapping away.

How sad that a once handsome, laughing man became a blubbering, drunk, baby boy.

His sister warned me when we moved to TX and into his parents house that he was a mama's boy.

One time when we lived with his parents hubby got sick as a dog. His dad told him in Czech that I was poisoning him.  Hubby thought it was funny and related it to moi.

A lightbulb went off in my brain. Hubby sold Fuller Brush when we lived in CA and we had some capsule vitamins left over. They had an UGLY taste to em.

Ex FIL from Hell use to always rinse the tobacco out of his mouth using the same glass cup in the bathroom.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I would break open a capsule and run it all along the rim of the glass with my finger.

I'M A BAD, BAD GIRL !

After awhile he began using a different glass each time, but for awhile I had myself some humor in that Hell Hole they called home.  I shit you not!

These people were the in laws from Hell and I will fast forward here.

Have touched on it in past posts.

We finally got out of that Nut House into a house in Waco and after a year of being in TX we moved to MA.

Packed up what we could fit in a UHaul trailer and the 7 kids in the station wagon and rode off into the sunset. :0)  To MA.

I was rid of his parents, but nothing changed.  :0(

The kids would be jumping off their bunk beds when I would come back from the grocery store.

They would have their rooms torn apart and he was oblivious to it all. Nothing fazed him or upset him.

He was stewed...baked...fried..smashed!

The  Jekyl and Hyde personality came out over time.

Scared...you betcha.

Had to call the police a few times when he would go off his rocker and smash stuff.

Then I was the enemy!!!!

Out of the blue after he had been down in the cellar sneaking booze ( unbeknownst to moi ) and while we were in bed.....he would grab me and hold me tight...pinning me down.

"Why? Why? Why did you have me locked up?"

This was not the man I married.

Began sleeping with a Church Key in my hand. You know what a Church Key is, don't you?

It's a sharp metal pointed thing you open beer bottles with.

Figured I couldn't fight him off, but maybe with a few rakes on his face and body with that item he would release me. Thankfully it didn't come to that.

Found alot of empty vodka bottles in the cellar after he left.

He was always on the phone with his parents and they were always telling him to come home as they needed hiom. They needed him.

Long story short... he up and left one day and never came home.

Got a call from him when he was at the airport telling me he had done something terrible and I would never forgive him for it. Could not get what this was out of him. He cried and cried. Told me it was too late.

I'm imagining he killed someone. sigh! Remember telling him that it depended on what it was.

Told me he'd call me the next day. Can't remember if he did, but when he did call and  I found  out where he was...........at first I was hurt and then  pissed.

Later I wanted to thank him for doing me the favor. :0)

He wan't all bad...never treated any of the kids different. We were one big family. He worked and provided what he could.. We never had much on his salary, but we were warm, fed and had a roof over our head.

Then the booze took over and he became someone else.

He took care of his parents until the day each of them died. Had no life. Worked in the West Haven Rest Home while an aunt stayed with his parents during the day and cared for them at night. Then his dad went into that same rest home and he cared for him there and his mother at home. Tube feeding her, giving her bed baths...the whole nine yards.

I still feel sorry for him even though I read some of his letters he sent to his parents when we were in CA  , telling them a whole different story when I went back with Jill to clean out the house and make it ready for sale.

They saved every efffin letter, card and anything else that came into that house since he was born and probably before.

We dumped out box after box taped up and with each year written on them. 1936,1937,1938 right up to whatever year they were too incapacitated to do so.

Read some...some I wish I hadn't. It disgusted me that he was so afraid of their wrath that he lied,lied,lied.

He wasn't a man...he was a MOUSE. 

His dad tried like Hell to get him out of the service.. Only son..that kind of thing. Wrote letters to whom ever would read them.

I was referred to as the blonde harlot/hussy in some of his dad's letters to him after he first met me in letters he sent to the bank.

It's funny to think of it now, but it's still sad that he ended up having no life and died a few years after his mother at age 58  ....alone too.

What makes it hard on Jill is that he died on her and her brother's birthday 9/10 , but was found after midnight on the 11th.

In a bathtub that was stone cold as he was when the police broke into the house, that was red hot when he ran his bath and stepped in.

He always did that and in later years had high B/P. Not good, not,not,NOT!

The tub was one of those old deep claw footed ones. Thankfully the shit he released in that tub was cleaned up before his 2 grown kids got there for his funeral. .

He lived a penny pincher life. Chewed tobacco where he once smoked. Lit large wax candles for his evening light on the kitchen counter, every single piece of underwear was hanging by a thread at the waist.

 I shit you not!

Left them a pretty penny and while Jills ex squandered her inheritance as it being his...his son invested his money wisely.

Did I learn from that?????    NO!

I never had any high ambition other than being a wife,mother,homemaker.

Still don't feel I missed out in life. My kids health and well being was at the top of my Wish List.

Just let me live long enough to raise them up was my prayer.

Have no Bucket List either.

Feared being on my own and making my own way. How would I feed and clothe my kids.

How, how, how!!

Well after a month or better wait and eating surplus foods ( hey , that stringy pork in a can made some great tuna fish sandwiches :0)   I began receiving Welfare.

I had seen hubby #3 behind the bar when hubby #2 and I would go out to the Idle Hour together now and then.

Usually he went to bars by himself, but occasionally I found a sitter.

That would be my best girlfriend Nancy whom I met through my kids in school with hers and she lived a street over back when we met.

Then she and her 7 kids moved next door to me in the sixplex I rented  a  year later.

She was married to her second husband , a much older than she alkie. They had one kid together and she had six from her first marriage. Another... a baby girl had died from SIDS. Michaela  was her name.

Nancy was born March 31st the same year as I. I was the big sister being ten days older than she. :0)

Any wonder why or how we became fast and forever friends.

When I met my now hubby her marriage was on the rocks too and she divorced Tom.

Her next hubby was a looser. Only met him a few times.

She had a son by him and they moved to Alaska. :0(

They divorced and she remarried.  I met Norman when  they moved to Alabama for a year or so and we visited them. :0)

Then they decided the Bible belt wasn't the life for them and went back to AK and built another home up in the boonies..

Sold it and moved closer to medical care when she almost died from a bleed inside her and had to be revived a few times on the 2 hour ambulance drive. The blood loss was significant.

Since then there has been another closer in move into an even smaller in square feet house she designed and she and her hubby built.

About a year ago now he had a stroke that has left him partially paraylized. 

She has become his care giver.

A few weeks back on  Dr.Phil,  this husband took the cake.

 He even tells his wife how to pray.

Dr. Phil eventually said to her. Let me guess.

You have never been on your own:.... Yes

You married young:  Yes 18

You went from your father's house to your husbands house: Yes

Then you went to the next husbands house: Yes

Then you went to the next husbands house: Yes

You feel the need to have a man in your life. Yes ....AND that would be a yes from moi as well.

 

So here I am at marriage #3 and this might take awhile to look back on. .

Need to be honest with myself .  We have 43 years together .

Being the mother of seven when we met... I overlooked alot of shit.

No that wasn't it!

Watching my mother's marriage made me think that everyone lived this kind of life.

I remember visiting her in the hospital with my dad. She had just had gall bladder surgery.

On the way home he stopped in a bar. Nothing new. I remember lots of times as a child us kids were parked in front of a bar with him bringing out to us an occasional bag of chips and tonic.

We were sitting up at the bar and I can't remember what he said, but I do remember what I said to him.

"My moms a better woman than I am dad, because I'd have shit canned you a long time ago."

She put up with so much from him. My brothers and sister were B/S at her because she wouldn't leave him.

To her marriage was forever.....in good times and in bad.

Can still picture her and hear her voice as she said on the day of their 50th anniversary May 11th 1986.

" We made it Henry".  Four months later she was dead.

Mostly I grieve for her because I never saw her happy times and wonder if she had any.

I was told some awful things dad did ....by mom when I was an adult.

Believe I touched on some things in other posts. If not...not now.

May find the words to write more  about the Here and Now another day. 

Hubby has always said that he wasn't God, but he was the closest to him whenever he efffed up or his Irish temper flared up before he knew the facts. . .

I say BULL SHIT !!!   I shit you not!

That's All Folks!

yeah... I wish!