Three times in a lifetime

May 1st, 2009 

I grew up in a small town in Alabama in big house with white columns with three sisters. It had the usual, spacious, formal rooms, and a big den with a wall of books, the best TV available with all the cable channels available then, and a big fireplace that added to the warmth of the central heat in the winter.

The arguments were straight out of a sit-com. Nattering over the laundry baskets not being moved upstairs to the bedrooms in a timely manner; griping that daughter #3 ate a whole box of Thin Mints because everyone knew that the little neighbor urchin only ate 4 cookies; and constant admonitions to teenage girls to “slow down” when they drove.

Anyone who knows me, knows that this was not my real family. They were the Neighbors. And the gracefully tolerated my intrusion from the time I was about 10 years old. Their youngest daughter, “Joycie”, was two grades ahead of me and she was who I wanted to be when I grew up. She was an athlete, a musician and someone that everyone liked. It turns out, she never knew the realities of my real homelife.

Charlie, her dad, did. He was also our pharmacist. He knew how bad things were at my house—the medications that my mom took and on occasion abused. He, more than anyone else in Podunk, Alabama, knew my mom was crazy.

I remember sitting on the floor next to the sofa, crying, and him patting my head. He was the dad that my own father could not be. He was gregarious, funny, brilliant and caring and kept everyone’s secrets.

He joked with me when I “married out of my faith,” (I graduated from Auburn and PMS went to Alabama—hey, in Alabama that is more serious than a Catholic marrying a Jew) and was understanding when the union did not work out. For far more serious reasons. When I said that I would never get married again he said “Well, I guess you’ll be like Joyce.” 

Sorry, Joycie, but I snorted “No, not hardly.” Forgetting that we were forbidden from talking about THAT. He went right along…

This past Thanksgiving I was instant messaging Joycie, a reconnection after 20 years thanks to Facebook, while she was visiting him at the nursing home. Charlie wanted to know when I was coming over to watch “the game.” He thought it was still the ’70s. 

Charlie and Mary Frank were the parents I didn’t have in my own house. They showed me what parents should and could be. He didn’t talk when I needed that. And I could go in the kitchen and chatter to Mary Frank while she was baking. A never ending supply of pecan sandies.

Here in London, my Atlanta phone died last week. So I didn’t get the message from Joycie that he had died. She was as prepared as one can be because she had watched his decline. 

For some reason, I was not. I have lost my father in a car wreck, very young; then my sweet stepfather—suddenly from a heart attack and comparatively young; and now Charlie. I wasn’t ready.

But I am so glad that I got to be his youngest girl every now and again. 

Yes Joycie, thinking of your parents, I do have hope that I will someday find someone to share my life. Because I got to play in a house with parents who loved each other and all of their children, including the sad little neighbor child whose real parents forgot where she was.


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