My mother was unique for her time. She was not only divorced which was rare for the 1970s, but she had a job which was also uncommon for most women worked at home as housewives, cooking, cleaning, tending to the children, shopping, making the house a home and pleasing their man when he arrived back from work humiliated and abused as most jobs make you feel.
My mother not only was unique for those things, but she re-married a rat bastard, evil step father as well. My friends (I actually had friends at that time) would ask who is that man referring to my step father and I would say, "That is my step father." Once I asked a friend what was bothering him and he said, "Your stepfather hates me." I responded, "My stepfather hates everyone." Friends would respond with strange looks so after awhile I would just say, "That is my father." Just to placate them. But then my biological father would appear out of fucking nowhere and my friends would say, "Who is that?" And I was caught in a lie and a quandary.
My biological father would appear from time to time unannounced and put me in a panic how to deal with the situation. He was never charged with a crime for abducting us and keeping us abroad and on the road for over a year for at the time the incident was considered a "domestic matter." My biological father never paid a cent of child support, but would give us strange gifts from time to time and weird clothes that did not fit. My mother did not push the matter because she was just glad to keep him far from us and not causing trouble.
We moved into a gothic style home with an evil landlord next door and wicked upstairs neighbors, an elderly mother and her two sons in their fifties who delighted in meddling in our lives and trying to cause trouble and control my family. One of my most vivid memories was playing outside and feeling "watched." I would always look up and the old lady was at the window spying on me. I just pretended I did not see her, but one day I decided to wave to her and she moved away from the window. So that became my regular procedure when I felt being surveilled by the old lady.
Our home was described by my mother as a "shithouse" and it was in every way as she had little time to clean and if she did my stepfather was regularly trashing the place when he got drunk and abusive. We had a pet parakeet we let fly free most of the time and shit all over the place. The house was old and didn't smell right. We actually had an air conditioner which did not work and it was stifling hot in the summer and cold in the winter. We kept stuff in what we called a "junk drawer" but truth be told, there was junk all over the place. I bought these sham pets called "sea monkeys" once and put the water filled container on a kitchen shelf. Somebody knocked it off to my complete shock and dismay, so you could say there were dead sea monkeys all over our kitchen floor. Our toilet always overflowed, but my stepfather would not fix it or contact the landlord as he was afraid he would raise the rent which the landlord was always doing and nudging us towards homelessness and poverty.
We had an old color TV which one day decided to go eternal pink. It was amusing to watch my stepfather beating down the television trying to get it back to its previous state. It was a long time before we got a replacement TV as televisions at that time were expensive and my family did not have that much money. I still almost burst out laughing thinking about my stepfather beating the television thinking he could get the same results as he did beating my mother.
Those are just some brief post Mother's Day memories I recall. There are so much more I may release in time or not.
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