Our new life - my mom, my 2 sisters and I.......my brother had stayed with my dad........ left the only world we knew and moved into the city, to an area that was not the most pleasant, to a life we had never imagined would be ours.
My father had laid down the gauntlet with the ultimatum that if my brother went with his mom and his sisters he would never ever inherit the family farm. My brother was the only son of a man who was the only child so the bloodline ended there. At 8 years old my poor brother was forced to make a decision that most adults could not even dream of making. Sadly, my father was far from a great role model and my brother more or less raised himself. Today my brother is an amazing man.......he married a wonderful girl that he met at high school and they raised a beautiful, intelligent daughter who is now in University.
One important note: My mother had given my father an amazing opportunity - clean up your act, stop drinking, stay sober for a year and we will be back. What a gift - which was thrown out with yesterday's trash. My father not only continued to drink but with wild abandon and created oh so much heartache and headache for those in his life.
My mother's divorce decree nici came thru and although she was granted sole custody of all of her children her lawyer gave her some very very wise advice - leave my brother with my father and allow my brother to come to her on his terms willingly. To force him to move would be disastrous. Weekend visitations arrived.......each of us saw those weekends thru different eyes. I was angry with my father, angry that he was articulate in his disgust for me because in his eyes " I had sided with my mother". I was angry because the first Friday that he picked us up he took us to dinner at the K Motel restaurant and what did he do? He cried. Mortifying to a 15 year old. Ridiculous to a 15 year old who knew that he had brought all of this on himself. Disgust because it was "all about him". Another Saturday morning he took us into town and to visit one of his drinking buddies. So our visit with our dad took place watching him visit with his crony. I was so done with that sideshow.
By then my mother had taken her portion of the divorce settlement and bought a sweet older house up near the hospital. She was into "Flip That House" before HGTV even existed!! She turned it into a delightful house and promptly put it up for sale and moved kitty corner across the street to a bigger house and "Flip That House" started all over again! I loved both of those houses and the joy it brought to my mom to be busy and happy. I spent most weekends on my own as my mom worked part time at a flower show - but I loved being on my own. I baked, I sewed, I puttered.......my siblings were at my dad's and the house was quiet.
But as per usual.......no gentle serene life for us.......no siree........for some reason I think my dad wanted my mom to fail and to fall on her face and come running back to him. This was the beginning of the second perfect storm.
Three things that I remember vividly as if they happened yesterday.........in the days of simpler life all kids walked to school - from kindergarten to Grade 12. My littlest sister walked to and from kindergarten freely but one day.....she did not come home. And oh my God.......the world blew apart. She was with my dad but how she came to be with my dad has so many variations of the "truth". There are many stories but I think the realisitic person would say that a 5 year old did not walk 5 miles from school to my dad's farm. But that was one of the version of events. It was said that she walked out that way and my father saw her and picked her up. Ok....highly unlikely but everyone is entitled their version of events no matter how screwed up they are. The police organized her safe return.
My father also disowned me. He had his will changed. In his mind I had abandoned him. I did not receive birthday cards, Christmas cards .......and the piece d'restance was the year he outfitted all 3 of my siblings with new ski equipment from top to bottom and took then to Lake Louise/Banff to ski. I, on the other hand.....had become invisible. Whether he knew it or not it was my mother that he hurt the most with these actions. I came to expect nothing and then I wasn't surprised. I grew to hate a man who would cast aside his daughter because she didn't give him the "pass" that the rest of the world continually did.
The final blow was a direct hit. Unbeknownst to my dad the fellow who had moved in across the street from us was an RCMP officer. The police contacted my mother and told her that my father had been spotted on numerous occasions parked kitty corner from our house ( we lived on a corner lot) with his car facing our house and had open liquor in the car. A stalker ahead of his time! His last hurrah was to be caught in this position with a loaded shotgun in the car. Now, nothing good can ever come from an inebriated man with a weapon. The police advised my mom that my father's actions were escalating and now would be a very good time to leave the city. Huh, so my dad doesn't get his sorry ass hauled off to jail but we get to put our house up for sale and my mother and my sisters moved 2 provinces away. This was the summer of my graduation ( and what a fiasco that was until my father just announced he would not be attending because he did not have a daughter in Grade 12) and things moved fast. The For Sale sign went up on the house, the moving van came and loaded up and headed west with my mom, her new beau ( my father in carnate) and my 2 sisters - both very upset about moving. The house sold weeks after they left. I stayed with friends because I was working for the summer and then off to University in the fall. The day the moving van left and I said good bye to my family I walked into that empty, sad house where so many hopes and dreams lay shattered amongst the dust and I sank down on the living room carpet and sobbed. I cried for a life that should never have come to this. I cried for a "normal" world that I wanted so badly. I missed my family so much and I knew that my world was forever changed. Well, I thought my world was forever changed - what I did't know is that in about 3 months time it was going to be CHANGED forever. Sad sad times. 17 years old, a father who really hated me and whom I hated just as much, a mother so far away and buried in a brand new mess and I was lost. So very very lost.
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