My Cast Of Characters

Husband

In 1991, I married The One! in a sweet little ceremony at the Magistrate’s office.  My dress cost about as much as the luncheon afterwards at the McDonald’s next door.  Three people there were on their lunch hour.  Afterward, we went to my mom’s house and my husband changed into a pair of shorts (her’s, I think) and mowed the lawn, took a shower and put his wedding suit back on so we could go have dinner, drinks and dancing with our friends.

The early years were hard but we’re hanging in there and still tell each other every day that we love each other. 

It’s sometimes harder than we would like as Husband is a bit of a control freak when it comes to the chores, but that’s what you get if you want to marry a man who does laundry, right?  He also came with an ex-wife and a six-year-old son.  Luckily, we’re over the part of that where the ex-wife comes into play.

He comes from a big family.  The old fashioned kind where the whole family lives on the same property.  He was surrounded by Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and Grandparents.  His own family included two parents, a brother and a sister.  He’s the baby of the family and a little older than I.  My parents had me when they were young, and their parents were young in turn.  This made his parents the same age as my grandmother.  His brother is married and lives in Florida with his wife and two kids – a boy and a girl – both of whom have kids of their own.  His sister lives locally with her husband of forty years and they have two grown children – a boy and a girl -  and have recently been blessed with a grandaughter who is precious to us all.

Husband lost both of his parents in the same year.  Both of them a surprise.  His father, sick for many years with RA and complications from that, passed in January.  His mother was diagnosed with cancer in September and died nine days later in a reaction to the chemo they were giving her.  It was sudden and shocking to the entire family.  That year changed us both in many, many ways.

Boy

Five months after we got married, I got pregnant.  While we had planned on having a child, we hadn’t really planned on having one yet!  Too bad!  After a wonderfully easy and pretty uneventful pregnancy, I found myself being induced into 28 hours of grinding labor that ended with an emergency C-Section.  My son’s head was so large he had his own curve on the chart.  Perfectly in line with the other growth curve, just about an inch outside the upper end.  Hmmm.  I fell in love at first sight and have been stricken ever since. 

His diagnosis and treatment of ADD at age six has turned out to be a godsend from the first five years of, “Oh, my God.  Why do I suck at this parenting thing.”  Since then I’ve learned to work with his issues, be his advocate, and be patient.  After a few bumpy years in Middle School and one very bad adjustment period his first semester at high school, I can say with pride that he is ending his Sophomore year on a high note, bringing home the best grades we’ve ever seen.

We’ve been blessed in that he’s always been a very healthy, sweet child.  I do not take this for granted.  I see him growing into the best kind of man.  My only wish for him now is to have the kind of friends that I have.  People who will love him because of who he is instead of in spite of it.

Big Boy

Big Boy is my stepson.  He’s twenty four.  In 2005, he and his girlfriend (literally, the girl next door) came home from a trip to Arizona and announced that they were both quitting school and moving there.  Her mother brilliantly offered to pay for a wedding if they would get married before they left.  So they did.  They bought a house this year that they live in with their four dogs, two cats, snake and turtle.  They do not have any plans to make me a grandmother, which makes me happy and pisses me off at the same time.  We have not been to visit them because my husband will does not fly and won’t take the time off required to drive.  Estranged is not really the word, but it’s close.

Nana

Nana is my mom.  She’s my family.  She’s my rock.  Through most of my life it’s been she and me and my grandmother, raising each other.  We lost my grandmother in February and now it’s just the two of us.  It’s been hard for us both trying to blend into Husband’s large family.  They’re the big holiday table type and we’re the pizza on TV tray type.  But over the years she’s gotten more comfortable.

Nana was raised in her grandparents home by her mother, who was widowed while pregnant.  I was lucky enough to know and love my great-grandparents into my adult years.  My mother’s greatest compliment to me as that I am the reincarnation of my great-grandmother.  I think it’s because, when it’s important, I’ll roast a turkey and make gravy from scratch.  Nana, on the other hand, hasn’t had a working stove in six years.  She stores magazines in her oven.

I’m thrilled to report that she is a breast cancer survivor since 2007!  Whoot!  That was a scary, educational time for us both and pulling through it together was the only way to go.  I’m her people.

Pastor Daddy

My dad is a recovering alcoholic and a born-again Christian.  He and his motorcycle are on a mission from God.  Jesus is his drug of choice these days.  He’s been married to his current wife for twenty years.  She’s a sweet woman and they are good for each other.  (They drive everyone around them crazy, but they’re good for each other.)  They live kind of far away and live a crazy schedule so we don’t see much of each other.  I know he loves me, he knows  I love him.  Bless his heart, he tries.

Friends

I am so blessed with friends.  A really wonderful diverse group of people. I don’t know how I got this lucky.   I live in fear, every day, that they will find out what I’m really like and disown me.

Pretty, Pretty Princess Jasmine

For the better part of the five years, Husband and I argued about whether or not we would get a dog.  We had moved on from apartment living and owned our own place.  It was time.  But Husband said, “No.”  They were too much trouble.  He knew this because, over his lifetime, he had owned several dogs.  I, on the other hand, was raised by a crazy cat lady and was not allowed to have a dog.  He was adamant, however, and even carried around a list of twenty-plus reasons why we couldn’t have a dog.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a dog person in a cat person’s world?

My mother’s next door neighbors had a sweet dog.  Each time I would visit my mother, I had to get out of the car and stop to pet her or she would bark, bark, bark at me.  She was a pretty dog, but a little thin and mangy as she was kept outside about 90% of the time.  She was treated like a farm dog, only they didn’t live on a farm.  And there wasn’t a barn for her to go hide in when it was hot/cold/windy/rainy/snowy.

One November, right before Thanksgiving, we got a call from Nana that the neighbors had moved (Thank God!) and that the people who owned the house said they had left their dog behind and they’d be sending her to the pound if someone didn’t take her by morning.

Yeah, that was a big fight!  It ended with the Boy and running over there to pick her up in the car while Husband sat at home fuming about how she was not coming inside until she had been to the vet and been flea-dipped.  We picked her up and gave her a bath and she’s been sleeping in my Great-Grandmother’s chair since that night.  (Husband is such a softie!)

She is the best dog.  She’s quiet and doesn’t bite.  She’s not much of a watch dog, but she’ll sit right by you when you’re sick.  She won’t eat dog bisquits (they hurt her teeth) and she used to be so very afraid of men, but a couple of years of love and car turned her from an outside dog to an inside pet and a member of our family.  She tolerates the Boy, she respects, fears and loves Husband, but I am her people.