Daddys got a GUN

I never knew being available every two or three hours to feed a baby could result in serious sleep deprivation. Whew, this could be exhausting. I was a good little mommy. I sterilized bottles every morning and mixed formula afterwards. Filled and refridgerated them after the mandatory sterilization my mother had told me about. My mom had come over the first day we were home and gave lisa her first bath. This would later become a tradition in our family. The "grandma" always gave the new baby their first bath. So each morning after the bottles were made I would fill the kitchen sink with nice warm water and in she would go. Scrub a dub dub, baby girl is in a tub. Lisa loved to take a bath. She loved water and it was another great time of bonding for us. Still having no car, no phone and no neighbors meant that Lisa and I would spend a lot of quality time together. I had a television with rabbit ears and on a good day we got one clear channel and one fuzzy one. One a day that was not so good we got one fuzzy channel. But who needed television now? I had my own baby to play with.

I can't remember the exact date but I believe it was early September. It was a Saturday night and my hubby had borrowed one of his parents cars for the weekend so we could got to town to do some laundry. In the early evening of that Saturday he said he needed to ride over to a friends house to get something. I knew what he was going for (a bag of marijuana) and to get drunk but I still wanted to go with him. I always wanted to go with him. I loved him so much. I would go anywhere and do anything just to be with him. I must say I was shocked when he said we could ride with him. Here we go. Our first time out in public as a family. This felt like I had always imagined it would. I loved our little family. He had some money because he had just been paid the day before and I had that gut feeling that by the time we got home he probably wouldn't have much if any left. I was correct when I said he was going there to get drugs. What I didn't know was that there would be another purchase while we were there. His friend left the room momentarily and came back to the living room with a 22 pistol. He told my husband that he would sell it to him for $25.00. Of course my first thought was "why in the world would he need a gun?" And in a split second my next thought was "someone is going to get hurt real bad with that thing." After he purchased this weapon I was a nervous wreck. I could not get it out of my head that my situation with him was becoming more and more dangerous. Why is it that when your head tells you one thing (the smart thing) and your heart tells you another thing (a not so smart thing) you tend to listen to your heart. Another lesson better left unlearned.............."listening to your heart instead of your head." That was what I had done since we got married and it had proven to be a painful choice physically and mentally.

It was Friday the 21st of September when all hell started to break loose. After coming home from work he showered, ate dinner and left to go party with his friends. It was in the wee hours of Saturday morning that he returned. This time it took all the energy he had to make it to the bed and pass out. "Whew" I thought. That was a close one. I usually took a pretty good smacking around when he would come home in that condition. Around noon on Saturday he started to stir. You could tell by his face and his walk that he had an awful hangover. "Served him right" I thought to myself. He immediately demanded that I fix him something to eat so with Lisa on one hip I ventured the 5 feet over to the kitchen to cook something for him. The afternoon was tense. Hearing a pen drop would make his skin crawl. As the early evening rolled around again he geared up for another round of drinking and drugging. By 7pm he was gone again. The next 24 hours of my life would change who I was forever. I felt it coming. My instincts told me something real bad was about to happen. I packed Lisa up and walk a half a mile or so until I got to a pay phone. I called my mom and asked her if my younger sister come stay the night with me. I explained to her that my husband was gone and that I wanted to go to church with her the following day and I would love to have some company that night. She hesitated but finally agreed to bring my sister over. Maybe she had that weird feeling too that night, I'm not sure. They arrived at the house around 8:30 pm and my sister and I sat and talked while we played with Lisa on the floor. I spilled my guts to her that night. She was only twelve but I needed a friend and confidant and she seemed to be the best choice. At least I knew whatever I told her would be kept between the two of us. I told her about all the abuse I had been putting up with, physical and mental. She said everyone already knew that due to the numerous times they had seen me black and blue. But to please me she agreed agreed to keep my so-called secret. It was around midnight when we heard a car pull up in the driveway. Oh my God it's him and the friend that had given him the ride home. He was TRASHED! Drunk out of his mind and who knows what kind of drugs he had been doing but it was a distinctly different high that night. He didn't stay long as his friend waited for him outside. He had me fix him something to eat real quick and then he went into the bedroom. Oh no! Oh God no! Please don't let him do what I think he is going to do. I knew him like the back of my hand and it was only minutes before he emerged out of the bedroom with the gun he had purchased in hand. Oh God please let him leave again. Please keep us safe. I can say I had never wanted him to leave before but I sure did want him gone if he was going to play with that. He walked out of the bedroom and right out the front door never saying a word. Whew! We made it. He was gone again. Maybe we would get lucky and this would be one of those times when he stayed gone a long time. There we sat. The three of us. Me, 16 years old. My younger sister 12 and Lisa one week shy of being two months old. My sister and I began to talk about how frightened we were and what we should do. We had no way to leave and we had really had no where to go even if we did. So we sat there and waited. And waited. The clock ticked away the minutes and it seemed as if we counted every one. By 3 am I think we felt we were in the clear. Looked like he wouldn't be coming home so we decided to go to bed. Besides mom was going to be there at 9 am to pick us up to go to church with her. At 4:30 a.m. I heard a car pull up. Oh no............is he back already? I heard him stumble as he came through the front door. And I heard the car drive off. I looked at my sister and told her to stay in the bedroom and not to come out no matter what! I handed Lisa to her and I walked out of the bedroom and closed the door behind me. I sat on the couch and he sat in a chair about five feet away from me. It was one of those chairs that you could spin around in circles. He just stared at me for the longest time. He was wasted. He had a look in his eyes that I had never seen before. It appeared as if he wasn't even there. Like he was possessed or something. It was frightening! Then all of a sudden he reached down and pulled the gun out of his boot. Oh god! What do I do now. He pointed it at me and then spun around in his chair. He would pause as he came back around to me and then he would spin again. Each second seemed like an eternity. Thoughts were flying through my mind at 100 miles an hour. Is he going to kill me? What about my sister? What about Lisa? The couch I was sitting on was against the wall that had our bedroom on the other side. If he were to shoot the gun and miss me it could very well travel through the wall and potentially kill one or both of them. So believe it or not this was my next thought. I am sixteen years old. My sister is only twelve and Lisa an infant. I had lived longer than either of them and it was my fault that we were in this situation so if anyone was about to get shot it would have to be me. After about the fourth or fifth spin he came to a dead stop. He pointed the gun directly at me and said "you know I am going to kill you don't you?" And my reply was "yes". As I looked down the barrel of that gun, praying non stop for God to protect us I heard loud "BANG" as I watched the trigger being pulled. Everything after that was in slow slow motion. It was amazing. I watched that bullet come out of the end of the gun hurling towards me. In an effort to keep it from hitting me square in the middle of my chest I leaned over slightly hoping it would graze my shoulder and not go through the wall behind me. I will never forget what it felt like as the bullet hit my body. I was numb. From head to toe. At first I thought it had hit me right in the belly because I went numb from my neck to my legs. I stood up believing I only had minutes to live. My sister came running out of the bedroom screaming with Lisa in her arms. "What did you do she screamed? Are you crazy? You've shot her! Now she's going to die!" She was pushing him and screaming in his face and all I could think about was getting Lisa a diaper bag filled with bottles and diapers and getting them out of there as quickly as possible. I don't remember him stepping outside but my sister said he went out the back door and buried the gun in the backyard. I told her to run to the pay phone up the road and call 911. Afterwards she was to call my mom to come pick her and Lisa up. I figured by that time I would be dead or on my way to the hospital. I remember hearing people screaming at each other as I opened the front door and laid on the floor just inside the door. I never closed my eyes because I was afraid if I did I would never open them again and besides I had my sister telling me not to close my eyes.. Pictures of my entire life ran through my head as I lay there. And there was an unusual calm about me. A sense of peace I had never felt before. All of a sudden I could see him leaning over me. Yelling at me. I remember telling him " stop yelling at me. I have been yelled at, beat on and pushed around for the last year and if I am going to die I would like to do it in peace". It was about that time that I heard the rescue squad in my driveway. They came running in and started asking a million questions. "What happened? Who shot her? Where did the bullet enter? Was there an exit wound? I remember looking up at one of the EMT's and recognizing him from school. He recognized me too after I called him by name and tried to reassure me that everything was going to be okay. I wasn't so sure but if he had hope I guess I could try to hold on to the same. I don't recall the ride to the local hospital but I do remember what happened once I got there. What I was not aware of was that my sister had managed to get a hold of my mom and she had come by the house and picked up Lisa and my sister and had taken them back to her house. Afterward she headed directly to the hospital to see me. Thank God she got there when she did. You see, because I was only sixteen I was still considered a minor and someone had to sign medical paperwork before they could treat me. My husband would not sign anything and I never did ask him why. But when my mom arrived she signed what they wanted to make sure I was being taken care of. One of the moments I recall was when one of the Drs. came in to see me. I only remember asking him one thing. "Am I going to die" I asked. He looked me straight in the face and said "I don't know. We're doing the best we can". Well that wasn't good news so I knew the fight for my life was on! GUNS are dangerous!!!! Another lesson better left unlearned.

Finally a child is born

Spring is finally here. The flowers had started to bloom again and I loved having the windows open and smelling the freshly cut grass. I was now 5 months along in my pregnancy and getting anxious about giving birth. It was 1975 and there were no such things as ultrasounds to let you know the sex of your baby. I remember sitting on the front porch praying that God would bless me with a "little girl". Even at 5 months into this pregnancy we were still totally unprepared for the birth of this child. We still had not purchased a thing for this child. No bottles, no "cloth" diapers, no clothes, no nothing. I had acquired a crib and mattress but that was about it. I spent many hours standing over that crib during the last 5 months. Staring down at the little mattress. Wondering if things would change any after our baby was born. And what would I do if it didn't. Would he hurt our baby too or was that kind of behavior just towards me. All I knew was either way it was going to be up to me to make sure our baby was safe, fed and clothed. I knew a baby shower was out of the question. I had no friends and my relationship with him had alienated me from all of my family. It was up to God now to make sure me and our baby were taken care of.

April and May seemed to go by so slowly. Maybe because the same things happened week after week. He would work Monday through Friday. I would clean and keep the yard work done. Friday would roll around and his partying would start. He would usually leave home around 7pm after having eaten dinner and taken a shower. Your guess was as good as mine as to when I would see him again. Whenever it was, I knew there were some questions I dare not ask. Such as "Where have you been?, Who were you with?, I'm afraid by myself when you're not here, Don't you love us anymore?" All of these questions or any others even remotely similar were reason for him to fly off in anger towards me. It also seemed the more I would coward away from him the more aggressive he would become. Maybe when I would curl up in a ball on the floor or on the couch he thought I wasn't listening to him and he wanted to make sure I heard him. So he would push me or hit me when actually all I was doing was trying to make sure this little baby I was carrying made it into this world safely. As mid May rolled around he found himself unemployed again. Fired this time. Probably for not showing up or showing up high. I had no idea why I just knew that we were back to square one again. So we packed up our clothes, the few dishes we had, the crib and our dog and back to North Carolina we went.

This time we rented a small mobile home just ten or so miles outside of town.. This put me about 20 or so miles away from where my mom lived and about 35 minutes away from his parents. I remember hoping that this move would change things for us. Maybe he would stop the partying and the abuse. We were getting closer and closer to our due date for our baby and I was ready for things to calm down some. For the first couple of weeks things were great. He came home on time and for the most part and he would spend "some" time with me on the weekends. However I guess old habits die hard because by mid June he was back to the same old thing. We had no car so he always used the excuse that he couldn't find a ride home and that was why he was always so late getting home. We had no phone either so he couldn't call me and let me know when he might be home either so the "waiting" game continued. My mom had helped me find an OB/GYN just over the Virginia line that would give me and our baby medical care based on our income. Of course we had no way of ever getting me there to see him so I counted on my mom to take me to my appointments. The Dr. had predicted that I was due sometime around the tenth of July so by the 20th I was beginning to think this baby was never going to be born. During my last visit to see him he agreed to induce labor on Tuesday, the 29th of July if I had not gone into labor by then. As it turned out that was the case, so on the 29th of July my mom came to get me and off we went to have a baby. Of course we couldn't find him anywhere so we just put the word out that we were headed to Virginia to give birth hoping that he would get the message and would come as soon as he could get there.

I had no idea what "birthing babies" was like but I was only hours away from finding out. The Dr. came in to examine me and started an IV with the medicine in it that would induce labor. The first couple of hours were a breeze. I remember telling my mom "this isn't so bad, you guys made giving birth sound horrible, I can do this, it's not so bad, no problem, I have everything under control". Then it happened! My first REAL CONTRACTIONS! Oh my God I thought. Now this is not what I bargained for. This is going to kill me. Mind you that natural child birth with no medication such as epidurals was the only was there was to give birth in 1975. And I wasn't liking it! At all! The next thing I remember telling my mom was "I don't want to do this". She just looked at me with that look she had and said to me "well, it's a little too late for that don't you think?" From the look on her face I could tell she had that silent sarcastic snicker going on. As if I was getting what I deserved for getting pregnant at 16. "Push, push" Dr. Walker said. "Come on. One or two more good pushes and we should have a baby". It seemed like forever, then it happened. I heard a baby cry. My baby. It was here. Dr. Walker leaned over to me and said. "It's a girl, you have a beautiful baby girl! Would you like to hold her?" Ahhh.....The moment I had waited so long for. I reached out my arms and as he handed her to me I remember thinking "Thank you Lord, she is beautiful, she's perfect". My heart melted in that very moment as I held her for the first time. I knew immediately that for the rest of my life I would have someone to love that would love me too. This was the most wonderful day of my life. I just wished her father had been there. Shortly after giving birth I was taken to my room where I was supposed to spend the next couple of days. Several hours later, just after dark he walked into my room. "It's a girl" I said. "She is in the nursery and she is absolutely beautiful." Over the past 9 months I had thought of many names I wanted to name her but before I could get a word out he said " We're naming her Lisa". I agreed. I wasn't about to argue with him. It made no difference to me what her name was. I was too tired and plenty sore so if Lisa is what you want that is fine with me. I didn't care what "you" called her I called her "MINE"!!!!!!! She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. Seven pounds four ounces and 21 inches of pure wonder. I couldn't believe she was mine and I promised her that very day I would spend the rest of my life loving her and doing my best to protect her from all the ugly things I have discovered in this world.

Needless to say we didn't stay in the hospital the average three days. By the following afternoon we were headed home. Him, me and baby makes three. I couldn't take my eyes off of her. Or my hands. I held her every minute of every day. I was so afraid something terrible would happen to her if I let her go for even one minute. Even though I had her little crib ready for her when she got home, she never made it in there. When she would sleep I would lay down in my bed and she would lay across my chest. I knew if I had her there I would never run the risk of her disappearing or getting hurt because you would have to get past me first. Wow, I had no idea you could love someone so much! She was perfect. And I needed her. All the hours I spent alone without him there were now filled with loving her. She was a good baby, so precious and so small. She needed me and I needed her. It was perfect. I believe he loved her too but it seemed he wasn't around much more than he was before she was born. His party days didn't slow down any just because she was there. I must say now that I am a grandma, that having a baby at sixteen is nothing more than a child having a child. Oh yes, I thought I was all grown up and in many ways I guess I was. But at sixteen I was still a child myself. I want you to know that I have never had any regrets about having my daughter at such a young age. But it did force me to grow up faster than I believe God had intended. Teen girls raising children of their own is much harder than it appears. We all know that little girls dream about their wedding day all of their lives. And during your elementary school years we dream about junior and senior proms, dating, cheering at footballs games and graduation. It can be lonely at age 50 when all of your friends are reminiscing about their high school years and you have no memories to share. I was fortunate that when my daughter was in high school and college she shared these special events with me as if they were somehow my special day too. Every mother is not that fortunate. "Another lesson better left unlearned"

The first 4 of a long nine months

The day I found out I was pregnant I knew it would be a changing day in my life. I had never been around anyone that was pregnant before. I was only 4 yrs old when my mom was pregnant with my little sister and I was too busy playing in my own world to even notice or care. One day there were four of us in my family and the next day there were 5. That's about all I remember about it. Oh yes, I remember the day mom came home with her. An "ugly" little thing I thought. Lots of hair sticking up in every direction. Wasn't mom going to make her brush that crazy stuff. And kind of pink in color too. Didn't matter to me. It was the first week of August and all I could think about was only having about four weeks of summer left and I had a lot of playing to get done. So out the door it was for me. "See you guys on Sunday" I thought. "I'm outta here".

Mom brought me home from the Drs. office, kissed me, said goodbye and off she drove. I couldn't wait for my hubby to get home so I could tell him this wonderful news. I just knew he would be thrilled. I was right! He hugged me and put his hand on my tummy and we just stood there in a moment of "Awe". I was so excited and it appeared he was too. And even though my mom felt the way she did about "him" the fact was, she was going to be a grandma. This news didn't seem to impress her much in the beginning but she did seem to drop by a little more often during her lunch hours from work to check on me. Maybe the idea was going to grow on her. Needless to say this pregnancy was going to be a real "eye opener" for me. I had morning sickness for the first three months. Lord, if this is what being pregnant is like I'm not finding it very pleasurable. Our money was running short because construction was slow and we were finding it harder and harder to be able to pay the rent. Shortly after the first of the year we were forced to go live with his parents. We certainly weren't welcome at mine. By this time my mother had remarried and her new hubby wasn't fond of mine either. "Who cares" I thought. They didn't have to love him or even like him for that matter. I did and that was all that really mattered to me.

We packed our few belongings and moved in with his parents. His younger sister was still living at home and within a week of us moving in she informed us that she was pregnant too. Boy oh boy! talk about a house full of hormones! A menopausal mother-in-law, two pregnant "teenagers" and two males who had only two things on their minds, "beer and naked women". His mother did some part time private nursing, I didn't work outside the home and neither did his sister. She never did confess who the father of her baby was so she had no financial help from him at the time either. I would dare say that between the 5 of us and the lack of work the way it was for the men folk we probably had the income of one person working a full time job. It was at this time that I had my first experience with pinto beans and mashed potatoes made with potatoes and water mashed together. Oh it was awful! I thought I was going to starve to death. I do remember once or twice my father-in-law bringing home a squirrel or two to fry up for dinner. HOLY COW I thought. Who in the world eats varmints you find in the trees of your front yard? What happened to COWS and PIGS? Isn't that what normal people eat? When did we start eating wildlife for supper? There was one thing for sure. I didn't have to worry about gaining too much weight with this pregnancy. The days were long and the nights were longer and all I had on my mind was praying that my baby would be born healthy.

In late February my father's mother passed away and his father was in a state of despair. Dad decided to move in with him for an undetermined amount of time. He offered his home in Virginia to us while he was living with his dad. He contacted a friend of his that had a construction company and talked him into giving my husband a job. Maybe this will be the break we needed. Oh well, that dream didn't last long. It only took about a week for him to make friends with one of the guys at work. He too had recently married a girl who would soon become my only friend in the world. We spent our days watching out for each other since our husbands spent all their spare time partying. For the most part we never knew where they were much less when they might be home. Sometimes they were gone for 5 or 6 hours, other times it could be 5 or 6 days. You never knew. You would just sit and wait. And wait and wait and wait. God be willing he will have sobered up by the time he would return or you knew what was going to happen.

I don't know what I ever did to make it happen. The abuse that is. It wasn't as if I had done anything wrong. I had no transportation and only one friend in the world. It wasn't like I could go anywhere or do anything. About once a week my dad would stop in on his way home from work. He worked the night shift for the railroad which made it possible for him to stop and check on me after my husband had left to go to work. There were many Sunday and Monday mornings that I prayed he would not stop. It was getting harder and harder to explain away the bruises. And the further along I got in my pregnancy the angrier my dad would become when he would find me with bruises all over me. There is one day in particular that I will never forget. My husband didn't go into work because he was still hung over from the night before. Dad stopped by and even though it appeared as if I had run face first into a train he knew that wasn't the case. He got fired up mad and the two of them started arguing. They got louder and louder and I became more and more afraid of what the outcome was going to be. "Oh dad" I thought. "Just leave". You are just going make this harder for me when you leave. I talked him into leaving and they argued all the way out to his car. Dad opened the door and got in leaving the door open so they could continue to yell at each other. Then I saw dad reach under the seat of his car and I knew BIG trouble was coming. I knew dad had his gun under his front seat, he never drove without it. Next thing I knew I was standing between them. Four months pregnant and here I am standing between my father and my husband with my dad pointing a gun at him.

"DAD" I cried. "PLEASE DON'T. Please leave, just leave. I don't want him dead and you in prison. Please dad, for me, just go. I'll call you tomorrow and let you know that I'm okay." Standing between two men when one has a gun is a very dangerous place to be! Another lesson better left unlearned.

The heartache begins

Things seemed to change the very day we got married. We got home to the small house we had rented ( and I mean small, maybe 600 sq. ft.) around 9 pm. There we were. Married and on our own. No one able to interfere with our lives ever again. The first week was wonderful. I loved cleaning our little house while he was working and I was learning to cook so I could have dinner for him at the end of the day. Then Friday came. And a paycheck. And it was time for the guys to go out after a week of hard work and get drunk. I don't remember this being a part of our dream. What has happened? We've only been married a week and you are leaving me for the guys. Maybe I should complain when you get home. Maybe I should ask you why you didn't take me with you. Maybe I should cry when you get home and tell you how hurt I was that you would leave me like that. Next lesson better left unlearned? NEVER confront a man when he has been drinking!!!!!!!!!!! Never Never!!!!!!! " For hours I had been sitting here worried about where he was? Who was he with? When would he be home? Is he coming home? Has something happened to him? Things that over time I would ask myself a million times. The door creaks as he steps in. It is sometime after 2am and I have been here alone, afraid and worried. What happened? Just 7 days ago we were spending every minute of our lives together and now here we are like strangers. I had never seen him like this. As soon as I begin to ask him where he had been, expressing my fears and concerns, he lit into me like there was no tomorrow. At first he just yelled at me. And the more angry he became the more aggressive he became. What happened to him? Who had he been with and what in the world had they been doing to cause him to jump on me like this. After the yelling peaked he gave me his first push. "Get out of my way", "It's none of your business what I do". I began to cry. Hanging my head as if I were the one who had done something wrong. My goal now was just to get him to go to sleep. Maybe he would be sorry about what he had done in the morning. Things will be okay if I can just get him into bed and let him sleep it off. This time I was right. Morning rolled around, it was a new day and it was if nothing had ever happened. Did he remember what he had done last night? Does he remember yelling and pushing me? I loved him......so much. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt and hope he didn't realize what he had done. I never mentioned the night before. Maybe I knew he would remember and I didn't want to believe he would hurt me that way so I consciously decided to put that memory into the closet of my mind. That was my first big mistake. Hiding and denying verbal and physical abuse just makes it easier for that person to do it to you again. Little did I know that very day I had set myself up to live in a world I never knew existed. One week led into another and one night out with the boys turned into 2,3 and sometimes 4 depending on if he had to work the following day. Each week the nights got longer. Each time he came home the yelling got worse. The pushes turned into hitting and before you knew it I was explaining the bruises away by saying I had fallen or run into the cabinet door again. The same excuses most abused women give to hide what is really going on. Thanksgiving was coming around soon and I felt certain we would be spending some time with our families over the holidays. I hadn't been feeling well the past few weeks and I attributed it to the stress I was under. I felt as if I had the flu and I had no one there to help me. Since we had been married he rarely let me go anywhere and no one would come to see me because they were afraid he would hurt me if he found out. I had no phone and no car so I was physically and emotionally trapped there. And I stayed and stayed. I loved him. More than life itself. I would put up with anything just to be with him. He was the very air I breathed. Didn't he know that? Didn't that make him happy? What was happening to us? One morning, a few days before Thanksgiving my mom stopped by to check on me on her way to work. I was laying on the couch when she arrived and a little washed out in the face from vomiting all morning. She convinced me I needed to see a Dr. and quickly helped me to the car. I remember wondering where she was going as we passed the road we would normally take to go see our Dr. As we approached a new Drs. office she explained to me that now that I was married I would need to see a different Dr. I shrugged my shoulders not knowing why but to sick and exhausted to ask questions. She knew all along what she was doing and I was about to find out too. It's amazing what mothers know sometimes. It would be this very day that I would learn what an OB/GYN was. Oh yeah........at that time I had no clue. Just because you are rebellious doesn't mean you can't still be naive about some things. So, in I went. Through the blue doors and into that little examining room with the funky bed with foot thingies at the end. What in the world could be wrong with me to need to see a Dr. like this? Well.......it didn't take long for me to find out what all this was about. One "pee" test and an exam like I had never had before and walla.............I'm pregnant!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I am being honest when I tell you I had no clue I would be pregnant. I guess I thought that wasn't going to happen until we wanted it to. Oh well.............guess what? My mom knew! Before I did. Guess that's why she drove right past my other Drs. office. Sometimes mothers are smarter than we give them credit for. And sometimes "LOVE" really is blind. Another lesson better left unlearned.

Married at "15"

My friends and I had a favorite place to hang out in the small town next to ours. It was a pizza place that had live music on Fridays and Saturdays. They had Foosball tables, air hockey tables, pool tables and would serve you beer if you were 18 or if you had an I.D. that "said" you were 18. My friend and I either looked much older than we were, had great fake I.D.'s, or there was no fear of the consequences of serving beer to minors by the owner. So now we have found a place where we can "rebel" in public. This would prove to give us exposure to a whole new world. So, there we were. Every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night and every night in between that we could find a ride there. As I sat there one Friday night, beer and cigarette in hand (waiting to play the next game) "HE" walked in the door. And friends, my head was not the only one that turned. He was gorgeous!!!!!!!!!!! Blond hair and the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen!!!!!!!! AND low and behold he was looking at me. Chills ran down my body like rain. I just had to talk to him. It wasn't long before we found ourselves sitting at the same table. The table we all sat at if we were waiting to play the next game or shoot some pool. I would be 15 in a few months and I was falling in love and we hadn't even spoken a word. A determined young (lady) girl I was, so it didn't take me long to find a reason to strike up conversation with him. We exchanged names and had light conversation. I can only assume he thought I was older than I was because I had a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Dear Lord, I prayed. Please let me see this man again. I say man because I would soon find out that he was 22. Oh well, age didn't matter to me if it didn't matter to him. After spending several hours there together that night we decided to meet there again the next day. Seeing him became like a drug to me. A drug I could not live without. I was hooked and I loved it. Mind you that my mother hated him and our relationship. He was seven years older than me and she knew this was going to be nothing but trouble. But who cared what she thought. She just didn't want me to be happy. She took me away from my dad and now she was trying to take me away from the love of my life. Not gonna let that happen mom. No way-No how!!! She did everything she could to make seeing him difficult for me but by this time I had mastered the art of rebellion and she didn't stand a chance. We were two rebels ready to take on the world. I turned 15 in February and we saw each other almost every day. If we couldn't see each other we would talk on the phone for hours. By mid-summer we were quite a hot item. I knew he was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. If this is what love is, then "I'M ALL IN"!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We spent our days listening to Rod Stewart and getting high. Dreaming of our future together. Where we would live? How many children we would have? Or maybe we would just live on the road going from one place to another seeing the world together. My dream came true in late August. He asked me to marry him. That is when the real trouble started. You see, my mom hated him. He was 7 years older than me and his appearance to her was that of someone that was "BUCK WILD". Which was no secret to me. We were both buck wild and having the time of our lives. We set the date for October. I soon found out that I was too young to get married without my parents consent in every state but South Carolina. There I only had to be 15 so I passed that test by the skin of my teeth. My mom was furious! Between August and October she realized that I was going to do this with or without her blessing. So a week or so before our chosen date she gave in and said she would ride to South Carolina with us. Maybe she thought she still had a chance of talking me out of it as long as we hadn't said our vows yet. But I was not about to let that happen. On October the 4th 1974 we all made a trip to South Carolina, his mother included. No tension in that car!! If I remember correctly it was about a 4 hour drive down and 4 hrs back. A long time to be in a vehicle with the enemy. As I repeated my vows to him I knew I would love him until the world came to an end. It was euphoric. The happiest day of my life. Walking out of the office of the Justice of the Peace at "age 15" married to the man of my dreams. "Another lesson better left unlearned".

A rebel at 14

Amazing what can happen to a person in 15 months. That's how long we had been in North Carolina when I turned 14. And that is also how long it took me to successfully master becoming a "rebel". Mothers beware, if you have a teenager in your home who was a good kid yesterday and a rebel today keep in mind that fear, frustration, and hurt are expressed as anger. Anger being one of the easiest expressions for a child show. Most of them don't even realize the difference. When my mother packed us up and took us to North Carolina with her I don't think I had ever in my life been so "ANGRY". Looking back now I can see that I was just afraid, hurt and frustrated with the situation and wasn't familiar with any other way to express those emotions other than being angry. And the easiest way to express my anger was to become a rebel. If she said "yes", I said "no". If she said "don't", I said "do". I'm sure you have heard people say "you are what you eat" well that is also true about "children live what they learn". And with all my new wonderful friends I was quickly learning how to rebel. Like I mentioned before, smoking, drinking, lying, dating and many other rebellious actions soon became second nature for me. I mastered climbing out the window to go party with my friends first time out. It was so easy and no one missed me. A few extra hours out with my new friends then back in the window for a few hours of sleep before I would get up and start this same old crazy cycle again. I thought I was being "cool". My girlfriend liked me and the guys we hung around with loved me. I was young and fearless and nothing was going to stand in my way. I really hurt my mother during this time. She rarely knew where I really was or what I was really up to. I had mastered lying so well I believed it myself. My mother worked a full time job to try to take care of us as best she could. I had never known my mother to work outside of our home before so having her gone at least 8 hrs a day gave plenty of time to work on my new rebellious life. I had one girlfriend and we were together almost all the time. She had 2 brothers that were in high school and they could drive so being around them gave us a link to a older group people to hang out with. I grew up real fast. Fifteen months ago I had no idea what cursing was, never had the "sex" talk, (that was never mention in our family) and I had never seen or heard of alcohol or drugs. But I was coming to know them all very well. They were my new tools for self expression. I have often wondered what my life would have been like had we never moved to Carolina. I had spent the first 12 years of my life in a very loving very christian home and now at age 14 I went to church kicking and screaming and always making a deal with my mom that I would give her no grief about going to church on Sundays but once we were home she had to let me go and do whatever I wanted to until I was ready to come home. I should have never had that much control of my mother but looking back I think she hoped that if she just kept trying I would turn around. But willpower flowed through me like blood and the more defiant I was the happier I was. "Lessons better left unlearned"

she said it was cheaper than therapy

Let me start by thanking my daughter one more time for giving me a use for my laptop other than having Internet service for my youngest son and printing scrap booking pictures. Whenever I need a good laugh I read her blogs (toobusytoclean). I was not blessed with the sense of humor that she has but she tells me all blogs do not always have to be funny. She claims that blogging can also be therapeutic. In the past we have discussed writing my biography because most people are shocked when I share parts of my life with them. My life reads like a novel with what seems to be one tragedy after another. Truthfully it is more like one bad choice after another, hence the title " lessons better left unlearned".
I guess I could go back to my earliest memory and share with you what a wonderful (normal) childhood I had but I'll save that for another day. Let's get to the meat. I was 12 yrs old when my mom and dad divorced. The first of many causes for my poor decisions and the aftermath of each of them. Mom moved us to North Carolina (in the boonies) and dad stayed in Virginia (in the city) Not only was this backwoods country life new to me, I also had a great deal of difficulty acclimating myself to this new environment. Boredom can prove to be the devil's workshop. I made it through the second semester of 7th grade without too many problems. Making new friends was hard. These girls had obviously been bored a long time because they were way ahead of me when it came to doing things you had no business doing. It didn't take long before I realized that being the only green pea in a pot of black eyed peas was not very comfortable. So my first mistake...........changing colors to fit in. Hey, that was easy. Not long before I was one of the crowd. Now am I willing to give of all the morals and standards I had been taught to stay in the crowd. Unfortunately my answer was YES! I needed friends and they were really interested in having a "CITY" girl in the group. My the end of the 7th grade they had taught me to Lie, Smoke cigarettes, Drink a little Boones Farm Wine, have a boyfriend and how to climb out my bedroom window after everyone in my house was asleep so I could indulge myself in each of these. There you go........everything my mother had ever taught me "out the window" in less than one year.