6. One Ending

I know there is probably a point in most children's life where they think that the life they have is perfect.  Maybe for most, it is when they are really young and they don't know better.  My disillusionment lasted at least until I was almost 7 or 8.  Then my mother and father got a divorce.  I think for a while, at least until I learned why, I almost hated my mother for taking our father away.  I don't know how she kept things together, and she probably should have divorced him years before.  But she tried the best she could.  My mother was married young, I think 18.  I believe she only got married to get away from her parents and their home.  My uncle, who I never knew, died at 16 years old in a jeep accident.  It changed my grandparents forever, my mother practically raised her younger sister.

To go from one broken home into another one ready to explode, and she never saw it.  Four girls to raise and no job back then was not an easy task.  She had hardly any work experience other than doing Princess House, Tupperware and the such.  She had not finished high school, because why finish high school when you're just going to be a homemaker.  Commodities were welcomed and helped immensely.  We were used to eating oatmeal with powdered milk and brown sugar.  Plenty of peanut butter and cheese, and prunes.  I always wondered, why prunes, but we got used to them and my mom was pretty inventive with them.  She would put them in a pan with water and brown sugar, I guess the precursor to those yummy little ones you find that are soft and moist and have other fruit flavors infused in them now.  We at least did not starve.

 My older sister became a wonderful cook.  Mom was gone at work and the duty fell to her to take care of the rest of us.  She once invented a drink for us with frozen orange juice and milk, not a lot unlike the Orange Julius drinks that they have in some of the malls.  Her spaghetti was wonderful, she even tried putting walnuts in it once and it was delicious.  Not fair though to have an 11 year old caring for 3 other children, the circle had come completely around where now my sister was basically a mom, where as my mother had done the same with her sister.  She had to grow up way to fast, so unfair.

And then my mom married another man.  I guess she thought that this would be the answer to her prayers, someone to take care of her and four girls.  And they did love each other, but she did not know him long enough and it was like going from the frying pan and into the fire.