My father was 19 and my mother 20 when they met on Midway Island, February 9, 1973.
Mom was the only woman in the squadron training other Navy enlisteds on something to do with the P-3 Orion sub-hunters.
Dad was the only guy on the island who didn't drink gamble or cuss and offered to walk mom to her barracks. They ended up walking the beach and talking all night. Dad shipped out the next day.
They were married June 9, 1973. Four months to the day from when they met. Mom barely had time to sew her wedding dress.
Dad couldn't/wouldn't marry someone who wasn't a Christian, so mom studied up and was baptized at some point before the wedding.
It sounds like a fairy tale. If they had known each other for longer (or known themselves) things may have turned out differently.
Dad was shipped out three weeks after the wedding and was gone for six months. The first three years of their marriage was spent this way.
When Mom got pregnant she was given an honorable discharge from the Navy and had my oldest brother.
Dad's enlistment was up soon after. They had plans to use their GI bills and balance college classes with jobs and watching the baby, but on a visit to Mom's family in Nebraska Dad's fear of the unknown overwhelmed him and he took a job with an irrigation company. That job wasn't a good fit, so six months later he took a job with Burlington Northern Railroad. His electrical training in the Navy was valuable to the railroad and eventually he was able to work up to Signal Supervisor before he retired. However, in the beginning they were required to move often. Sometimes they averaged moving every 3 months, for 17 years.
During this time they added another boy. Mom wanted to try for a third baby, but it took 5 years for Dad to agree.
So six years after my brother, they had me.
From the outside they/we appeared to be and ideal family. Breadwinner, Homemaker, good strong Boys, and a little Girl. A Faithful Church-going family.
My brothers remember more than i do, but we don't talk about it. i only have snippets of memory and the stories to go by.
My father was gone monday through friday for years because of the territory he worked on or was in charge of.
There was abuse. There was infidelity.
My mother was raised in an abusive household with a philandering gambling father and had absolutely no coping mechanisms. Left alone in the plains of Nebraska she unwittingly repeated the pattern she had seen as a child.
Her actions are inexcusable, but in order to love her like God asks me to, I must excuse them. Learning not to repeat some of them is at least as hard.
The years have been hard. My oldest brother fell into drugs and trouble at 16, but was pulled out of it by his baby at 24. My middle brother struggled with anger in his adolescence and had a baby at 22, but is unbelievable successful now. I still get overwhelmed by anger with little warning, but i have the most amazing partner helping me grow in God.
My parents made it 39 years exactly before they decided to officially divorce. Things had been bad for a long time. I never remembered them being good.
My mother has been living as a single woman for a decade. Going to cancun with friends, going to clubs, hanging out with singles - except that she had a house-mate that paid the bills and (oh by the way) was her husband.
Neither of them has worn a wedding ring for at least 15 years.
The reasons things went bad are complex. Both bear the responsibility for failing. Its easy to take the side of the one that never hit you and never cheated. But is that the best thing to do?
I hate the failure. I hate the fact that they won't let God win. I hate the situation, even though i have longed for it since i knew what divorce was.
it is exhausting to think about all of these things. i have more to write, but it will have to wait for another time.
