Parental Units

Growing up was pretty normal I guess.  My parents were separated before I was born, but tried to make it work and then divorced by the time I was two.  So I don’t remember my dad ever being around.  My sisters do.  My oldest remembers the fights I guess.  I don’t remember a lot from being a kid.  I don’t know it that is normal.  My sisters seem to remember a lot.

My dad was very handsome when was younger.  A James Dean looker, but as he got older and smoked and drank his face off, he gained weight and didn’t age well.  Women loved him because he was happy go lucky and a smooth talker.  In my life I had only heard him yell once and it was because my sisters and I were fighting and he told us to stop.  He always had women every where.  When I was 14, my mom took my sisters and I on a road trip to New York.  When we left he was dating a lady named Connie, when we got there my Aunt asked us if we like his new wife Suzie.  What the heck??  We never met Suzie and why weren’t we invited to the wedding.  Suzie turned out to be the one of the worst humans I have ever encountered and there have been some doozies.

My mom, is a strong woman, but she is perfect.  At least that is what she wants the world to believe.  She will even tell you she is.  She is high strung and a total control freak.  She raised us to think that woman had a place in society, until we realized that we have to earn it when we got out there and I mostly had to use my looks and that would and could be a double edged sword.  My mom is smart, but she isn’t a looker per se.  She isn’t ugly, but She doesn’t look like me, the Milkman’s Daughter.  She has dark curly hair  which she keeps very short and brown eyes.  We joke that she looks like a female Gary Shandling.  My mom can be intense and no one can live up to her expectations, but I spent my whole life trying to be perfect to appease her.  Just realizing the past few years that I never will be.  Thing is, we all grew up so tight knit because a house full of four girls, how could we not be?

My oldest sister is a combo of my mom and dad.  My middle is totally my dad and I am my mom.  I could never be like my dad.  so careless and such a people person.  I can fake it very well, but I always walk away from people over analyzing everything I said and telling myself how awkward I am .

My mom remarried when I was 17, to a man she knew when she was a kid.  He knew my dad too.  He actually worked for my moms dad growing up.  He is really good to my mom.  I inherited two brothers.  My step dad is tough because we haven’t really bonded, but he is there when I need him.  I guess that counts for something.