(This is part 2 of my parents wedding story)

I think the thing that amazed me about my Mom was her amazing determination. I don't know what I would have done in that situation. But such was her strength of will that only one person ever dared suggest to her that she should "take care" of the situation and that was her stepfather and she never forgave him for it. She wanted me and she wasn't going to let anything or anyone stand in her way.

So she had me. The only hitch was that I was a girl. She had an idea fixed in her mind that if I were a boy, that was the one thing that might tempt my Dad to leave his wife, if he had a son to carry on the family name. And of course back then, they didn't have ultrasounds and all the fancy ways to tell the sex of the baby. So she was bound and determined that I was going to be a boy. How do you think I got a boy's name? And when the doctors told her that she had a daughter, she told them no, thank you very much but would they please go and get her SON? I guess she argued with them for quite a while, but when they finally brought me in, she changed her mind pretty quickly. My grandmother's summation - "All she needs is whiskers and she'd look just like that S-O-B". (I have been told that there is a pretty strong resemblance and my oldest son Matt is a carbon-copy of him.)

When she brought me home from the hospital, was pretty much on her own. I don't know if my Dad was living nearby or not, I think he wasn't. I think her mother and her stepfather were supportive, but I don't know if she had anyone else in her corner. My Dad was in and out of the picture and kept a pretty low profile due to the scandal factor. My half sister was 12 and her father was long gone as well, so it was just the three of us for the most part, but we were pretty content, and I remember having a pretty happy and very normal childhood.

She didn't even make him pay child support, which is something I would have done very differently. But she worked multiple jobs to keep us afloat and rarely, if ever asked him for anything, even though he was pretty well off and could easily have afforded it. He was the only man I ever knew who didn't need to cash his paychecks. He'd hang onto them until he had 4 or 5 of them and then Accounting Department would finally make him put them in the bank.

She finally asked him for some money when I was in the 5th grade because she couldn't afford to pay my babysitter. And then he paid without complaint from then on until I was in college, but it was only $80 a month and he never raised it from there. He wasn't a bad guy, but he didn't have much imagination and he paid exactly what she asked because he never really thought to offer more. Or maybe he was a little cheap and was relieved to get off so easy. I don't know. He was half Scots, after all.

Now that I'm an adult and I know how hard it is to manage a household without two incomes, I really admire her for all those years of raising us as a single mother. That's pretty amazing. We did live pretty simply, mostly in apartments without a lot of fancy extras, but we always had plenty of clothes, and food, and books, and everything else we needed, and a little bit extra to take frequent trips to go visit my sister or other relatives.

This went on through my whole childhood. Some times she would decide to make a clean start, so we'd move far away from him, but then she'd get lonesome for him, or worry about me growing up without a father, so she'd move us closer to him. There were times in my childhood when I saw him every week and other times when I'd only see him once or twice a year. It was kind of a strange way to grow up. And because of the continuing scandal factor, we had to keep a pretty low profile. My Mom had one good friend, a crazy old cat lady named Zelda, that we kept in pretty close touch with, but other than that, I don't remember us having company over, or having other friends or family around.

As I said, my grandmother died when I was six. Actually it was a lot more than that. My sister got married early and had her first child right away. So my grandmother died, my nephew was born, and I started Kindergarten all on the same day. Wow, that had to have been some kind of a day! I know my Mom never really got over the loss of her mother at such a young age. She was only 63 and had suffered from cancer for several years. And my sister was married to a man in the Navy, so she had moved hundreds of miles away to San Diego. My Dad was already living in Long Beach, so that was one of the times we moved to be near him, because my Mom was feeling so alone after the loss of her mother and with my sister so far away.

Naturally as a child, I was clueless about the whole situation. I don't remember thinking it was at all unusual for Daddy not to live with us, or that I never got to go to his house or talk to him on the phone. It never would have occurred to me to pick up the phone and call him in any situation. In fact, I only remember one time in my entire childhood when I called him on the phone. I was a teenager and my car had broken down somewhere and I couldn't reach my Mom, so I had to call him at the office. He came and got me, but I could tell he was very uncomfortable that I had called his office.

I was told they were divorced and I accepted that without question. After all, how was I to know that other divorced parents didn't get together for weekly dates? I had no basis for comparison. It wasn't until I was 15 or 16 that one of my friend's mothers who was recently divorced herself, questioned why my "divorced" father spent so much time at my house. Then I started putting two and two together and started asking some questions. I think Mom was relieved to finally tell me the whole story and I was completely supportive of her decision, although in retrospect, it might have been a good thing if she had married some nice man who would have been around more for the both of us. But it is what it is and that wasn't the choice she made.

Finally, when I was in my 20's, my father's wife began to have some health problems in addition to the mental illness. She had several surgeries and was hospitalized several times and those were the only times my father had the opportunity to come and stay with us for a few days. I remember very clearly the first time I had breakfast with him - I was 21 and in college and it was one of the rare times we'd ever had a chance to sit down and talk with just the two of us. I think in our whole lives we were only alone together maybe 6 or 7 times. It was kind of a strange way to grow up.

It was also strange to know that they were waiting for her to die so they could get married after all these years, but that was essentially the only way you could put it. She finally did die when I was about 25. They had been married for 43 years and he had been with my Mom for most of it.

Their wedding was quite a special occasion. They got married at my cousin's house in San Diego. By that time, my cousin was more like a sister to me. She was living clear across the country from her mother, so my Mom, being my Mom, pretty much adopted her. We've since fallen out of touch, but we used to spend a lot of time with her family and they put together a wonderful wedding in her backyard. Both my sister and I were there and a handful of other relatives and friends, then afterward we had a small reception at a local restaurant.

Having both my parents in the same house was kind of strange for a while. I was married by then and living in my our first apartment, but it took a little getting used to, to have a full-time Dad around. When I did get married, I insisted that both my parents walk me down the aisle. There was no way that I felt my father deserved that honor by himself after my Mom had worked so hard to raise me mostly on her own. He didn't say so, but I think he agreed with me.

After all that, my parents were only able to enjoy seven years of married life. He was 10 years older than my Mom, so he was in his early 70's when they got married and though he had lived a pretty healthy life, he had a stroke when he was 80 and sadly he only survived a month after his stroke. It was tough on my Mom and we were both very sad about it, but she said that she'd never expected to have any of those years with him, so she felt that those seven years was a pretty good deal. I think that's a pretty good example of true love, to wait for 30 something years for a man and then still be happy when you only have seven years of togetherness to show for it.

She's been gone now for 4 years, so I hope they've found each other again and are enjoying their time together in heaven. I love you Mama and Daddy and I miss you both terribly, but I hope you're happy together at last.