My mother (Helen) and father ("Stretch") were separated since I was two. I remember the night she left him and came back to New York from Los Angeles. I told my mother I did and was able to describe it to her; she couldn't believe it. What I remember is I was too small to walk up the steps of the plane and my father had to lift me up. When we were on the plane, the stewardess took Darlene for awhile to give my mother a rest. I wanted them to open the window so I could touch the clouds.
My mother loved my father, but she left him because he couldn't settle down to being a father. When it was just the two of them, she said they would party off one check and pay bills off the other, but she knew she couldn't do that after I was born, then Darlene a year and a half later. She said she told him when he got himself together to call her.
Mommy was never supposed to have children; she thought I was a tumor. She had been told she had an underdeveloped womb. When the doctor examined her he said "Brownie (she worked at the hospital), you'd better sit down". She said "that's alright, Doc, I can take it." "You're pregnant." She definitely wasn't expecting that! After all, she was 37. Uncle Buddy and Aunt Tee Tee married in their late teens/early twenties and began having children then. But she was a great mom. I didn't even realize she was so much older than other parents of children my age until I came home one day and told her my teacher was really old at 40 or so and she told me she was older, which I couldn't believe. Then PTA night was revealing also. All the other parents looked much younger than Mommy.
She had to take pregnant pictures and send to Daddy's mother for her to believe it. Even though they were already on the outs after I was born, Daddy begged Mommy to go with him to take me for his mother to see - and also not to tell her they were having trouble, so they slept together at his mother's house and Darlene was conceived! 2/1/2008 Tanya
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