Pearltruths

When I turned thirteen, our parents were split up and divorced. I had stopped playing with barbie dolls by then.  The problem with the divorce was my mom wanted to split us up, according to my cousins. Not my dad, but my mom did.  What kind of mother does that? I didn’t know about this til later on in life, and that’s another discussion.   Simply put, I’m a girl and all girls want to be with mom, so I thought I should be with my mom and for some reason, my brothers stayed with my dad by default.   For me, it was the worst decision I made as a child, choosing to live with her. I didn’t even like her boyfriend.  I called my dad up on the phone and told him I want to come home, and I didn’t know how to approach the subject with my mom, and he just gave me a hurtful “what to say” answer.  What did I know?  I only wanted to go back home, so I told my mom on the phone.  “Mom, I don’t want to live with you.”  “I love you, but I love dad too.” Teens don’t usually say things like that, not all. Or do they?  Ouch, that must have stung her big time!  My mom probably hated me from that day forward and I didn’t know it.  Thinking back on it now, I wouldn’t say such a horrible thing.  Now, I’m an adult, I know so much more and learn to think before I speak.

Consequently, all of us siblings lived with my dad.   However, my dad did not know how to cook, not that my mom did either, but every day with my dad consisted of eating hotdogs and eggs for breakfast.  And then steak for dinner.  I can’t say we had steak every day, but that explains my love for steak, and cooked rare, the way I like it. Oh, it was delicious.  Especially with A-1 sauce.  Anyway, to stay on track here. One day, I distinctly remember our roof was set on fire and apparently our neighbor across the street, his name was Henry. He was a big dude, always wore a hat, and a very nice guy. I think he called the police because he saw that our roof was on fire and in a few minutes, the fire truck showed up.  Later on, they were wondering how it caught fire.  Unfortunately, someone left the wings cooking on the stove and forgot to turn it off. We believe it was my dad and that was the end of his cooking days.  No more.  Not shortly after, on a later day my dad bought tiles for the kitchen floor. Even though he wasn’t a handy man, he bought tiles anyway.  The problem was, he didn’t teach my brothers how to be handy with tools, and I don’t think he was much of a handy man himself, therefore not much repairing was done around the house.  The tiles were left there on the kitchen floor unattended for months. Our dad was not a handy man, just a regular guy making a living for his family.