All stories have a beginning..
so, let's just start there.
My mom is the youngest of four children. When she was 16 years old her father passed away from heart complications -- no one truly knew what or how then and they still don't know now. From what she says he was the kind of man that loved his family and provided what he could. When he passed away, things changed.
Isn't that how it always is?
Her oldest brother, Bill, was always violent growing up but it got worse after Grandpa's passing. I wouldn't find out until years later just how bad it got; choking his mother and his sister to the point that they would have bruises on their necks. I wouldn't find out until I was 20 that those weren't the worst of his habits but how deeply it truly went. In a confrontation (I don't know what else to call it -- but, I will go into more details about this later on during this blog series) with my father, my sister, my mother and myself - my father would let it out that, "no one will touch you after they know what Bill did to you." She later explained that she had been sexually assaulted by her brother for years after her father passed away.
My mother met my father when she was just 18.
She says that she knew right away that he was the man she was going to marry. She said that she didn't believe him to be her soulmate but knew that she would marry him. And, sure enough.. she did. They married and moved to California when she was just 19 years of age. Maybe her past pushed her to runaway and not truly think things through.. maybe she saw her escape and took it for everything she could.. maybe marrying young seemed like a good idea.
She had me just three days after she turned 21.
She really never spoke (nor does she speak of it now - not that I would ask) about their first years of marriage and how they went, nor the first couple of years after I was born. I know that he was in the army and that we lived in housing until he injured his shoulder and was discharged. They decided at that time to return back to Minnesota while pregnant with their second child who would arrive when I was three..
[to be continued..]
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