Hold Everything Lightly #6 {FIVE YEARS FOUND}

This installment was tougher than I thought it would be so I am re-stating what I said in part one.
 I do not intend to sully the memory of my parents but to tell the story as it was told to me and as I remember it. I am as imperfect as they were and I believe we are all damaged in some way. 
I loved my parents.
I love them still.

I did not see my mother in pants until she started working in the mid 1970's.

 It was a tumultuous time for our family. The thinly woven threads that she and daddy had made together had become unraveled. Mother, domineering as she was, never allowed daddy to participate in any parenting decisions. Daddy let her get away with that and missed out on my childhood and my siblings. As a result he found someone else.
Not that I approve of his affair, but she pushed him out the door. 

I remember being eleven years old sitting in the backseat of mama's car
and mama and big sis driving from motel to motel looking for daddy and his girlfriend. Eventually after an exhaustive search mama found them at a cheap, shady motel. My big sister, after being sent to a state girl's school, was tough and mean.  One really was best not messing with her.
Daddy had a bad day that day.

Not to be undone by daddy, mother got her a boyfriend.

 A hardscrabble type, big and muscular in contrast to my tall and skinny father. Mother's mantra was " all men are terrible, never trust a man, men will hurt you" and on and on she went. It was not a peaceful transition between men, if that is possible. I recall that man, Billy, banging my dad's head against a concrete wall.  Daddy moved back to our hometown of Jackson near the Savannah River Site, the nuclear plant where he worked. When I turned thirteen mother decided that I should live with daddy.
She dropped me off and that was that.  I felt abandoned and scared once again.
I had been told so many times how awful my father was.

Mother was completely and totally wrong about daddy as a parent.
 He was a wonderful father. He was quiet, kind, smart, and stern when required.  Daddy read three newspapers each day and watched the news every evening. He was informed about the world. I cooked for him most days. It was incredibly easy because he ate meat and potatoes and meat and potatoes. One of my duties was to drive daddy to work because he had lost his license due to drinking. Daddy was, at that time, a functional alcoholic. He drank on weekends and never lost his job. It was nothing for me to drive him to the plant in my robe. I didn't need my license because at thirteen I did not have one. After a while it got around in our small town that I was driving without a license. The Chief of Police eventually stopped me but it was the very week I obtained my license.
 He probably let it go all those years, a twisted version of small town justice.


 Daddy and I had five lovely years together.
I stayed out one night, with my church group, until the unwholesome hour of four AM bowling when I was sixteen. Daddy did not say one word he simply decided to hammer on the roof all day. He had a sense of humor like that. Daddy drove an El Camino, one of those silly half cars half trucks. After he retired (he got his license back and quit drinking) he would drive to the Savannah River and walk along the banks. I believe he found peace there. He often would dig up pottery and artifacts out of the clay banks of the river. He also had a love for the past. I graduated from our small town's high school as Salutatorian and daddy paid for my college education as a registered nurse.
He let me marry at age eighteen.
I wish he had said "No" to my marrying so young but he was not one to confront others.
Besides, we would not have my daughter CC and she is our special gift no matter what happened later.

My precious daddy died in 2006, after a long illness, but I am not finished with his story. 
Not yet.

"Hold everything in your hands lightly, otherwise it hurts, when God pries your fingers open."

---Corrie Ten Boom 1892-1983 

To read other parts of this series click on Hold Everything Lightly at the top of the page.  
Nuclear tells of daddy's family history.

 ♣

Bless you for reading

Olive