My husband’s parents have been married for 33 years now. Meanwhile, my parents have both been through what seems like a plethora of relationships. While Adam was raised learning what you do in a relationship, I was raised learning what you do not do (by example). And somehow, this combination works for us.
My parents divorced when I was a very little girl. I believe I was at the tail end of 3, nearing 4. Even at that age, it was so difficult.
At some point during the split, my father accepted a job some distance away. Prior to the divorce, I remember my father being my main caretaker. My mother worked full time and was a full times student with classes at night. So my father took care of me at night while my mother was in class.
So the new arrangements which involved my father living separately from us were very difficult for me.
Within a short amount of time, my father was offered a very important promotion an hour and half away from where we lived. He took the promotion and made the move. The move began the first of many shuffled road trips.
Since I am, and was, very prone to car sickness the rides were increasingly difficult to me. The ride there was always exciting because it had usually been about two weeks since I had last seen my father. However, the rides back were quite arduous.
When they would meet, my parents always exchanged me in the parking lot of a local Shoney’s. While they generally got along, they needed neutral ground for them and the parking lot there seemed to work. So after a long weekend with my father, usually filled with dinner at Showbiz Pizza and other fun activities, I was ushered back to the parking lot and exchanged from car to car again outside of what is possibly the shittiest buffet restaurant in the world.
For years my mother drove an older Oldsmobile with velor upholstery on the seats, said upholstery held heat like a kitchen in July. I always felt it cooking my legs.My mother knew that the ride was difficult for my brother and I. After all, it was difficult for her too. So she tried her best to cheer us up with enthusiastic cassette tapes that played children’s songs and stories.
The songs were sang by chipper children with voices so high pitched dogs would howl from miles away. I usually ended up crying long, lonely tears. Because there I was, stuck in the back seat of a two-door car, roasting on the velor seats, body aching from nausea induced from a combination of car sickness and broken-family syndrome, and forced to listen to ‘The Little Engine That Could’.
Can I please tell you how much I hate that story? How much I hate the moral of the story? And not because it lacks meaning. More so, because to me, it represents that trip back home as child, after being exchanged from parent to parent like a shared commodity.
I had to listen to that damn cassette tape for years. Mostly because my younger brother loved it. The narrator was a lady with a voice that could have cut through the strongest of titanium. It was raspy and sharp. And I swear, she would draw the story out for what seemed like hours. And the whole time, I would attempt to hold back tears and vomit, hoping the damn cassette tape would spontaneously combust or be eaten by the tape deck. All I knew was that if I had to hear that damn engine complain ONE more time, I was done.
Why is this significant? I’m not entirely sure that it is. To you, anyway. But I had sort of blocked these trips out of my head. A few days ago, Allie brought me a book from her many piles and asked me to read it to her.
Of course, it was The Little Engine That Could. And I couldn’t read it.
I just threw the damn thing away (when she wasn’t watching), and asked her to pick out a new book.
It’s so stupid. But it’s almost as if the story represents that period in my childhood for me. And I can’t hear about it or read it without feeling like my legs are on velor seats and my body is wrecked with nausea. And how did I ever forget memories so vivid? And why does that stupid book trigger it for me?
To top this off, I can’t eat at Shoney’s restaurant. Aside from being scared that I’ll come down with food poisoning, it just represents something else for me. I feel like if I go to Shoney’s I’m going to be exited out of my car and put into another for my visit. No Shoney’s for me.
Tonight my husband wanted to eat at Shoney’s, and it was total no-go for me. (And seriously, Shoney’s? how nasty.)
Things like this are sometimes hard to explain to him. Not because he doesn’t listen, but because he doesn’t understand what it was like.
Luckily, I tell very humorous recounts of random encounters with the counterparts of my parents and their families. I have thousands of funny stories about meeting a new person one of my parents was dating and how strange they were or what they were wearing. Or I have a funny outlook on most things of that nature. For him, it’s like a set of stories to hear about. But for me, it was reality.
I suppose it’s just funny when you think about it. How two people from completely different background and families can fall in love and it just works.
I’m so grateful for that.
(also, I tried to fix the spacing on this entry like 8 times. But Wordpress would not allow it. Sorry it runs together.)
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