I was 13 years old in 1975. My adolescent years rotted.
While the older siblings were off on their young adult adventures, Michael was in the Marines and Janie and I were displaced from our family home due to the divorce that began when I was 13 years old.
I remember begging Mom to take me and Janie away from all the testosterone and alcohol induced behavior that had a grip on our family home, but, I was too young to fathom the consequences of that request.
As we had for many years, in the summer of '78, Mom, Janie and I were living large at our summer home. The Buttonwoods Beach Club community was an enchanted place for a child to spend summers. I dread the day that dementia or Alzheimer's robs me of those childhood memories.
But, an August memory during that year was one that would change life the way I knew it. I remember getting excited to go back to the winter house because school was about to resume. I loved the beach house but I also always missed my winter house friends. I clearly remember Mom having some pretty serious sounding phone conversations at that time, too. I was too young and carefree to eavesdrop.
When the time was right for her, she sat me down and dropped the bomb, "we're not going home".
I barraged her with questions. "what do you mean? We have to go home. We can't live here. We have school. Where are we going to go?" Her reply of "I don't know" left me in a crying heap.
The day before school was to start, Mom got a phone call from my brother John. Told Mom that his lifelong best friend had an small apartment in our school district that we could move to. In my young mind, I credited that friend for saving our lives.
So then we were three. Mom and her girls. Out on our own. Displaced from our family home with nothing but what we could carry. That's what it felt like to me anyway. In an instant, we went from having a real home and a summer home, both full of childhood memories and familiar furniture, to being cramped up in a second floor apartment with slanted ceilings, old appliances and cots for beds. It was culture shock to me and the ensuing three year divorce took its toll on me like no other child in the family. I had already proven myself as Mom's right hand and Janie's keeper. Now I was to be the conduit for communication between the two angry adults that gave me life. I was not a happy camper.
Dad didn't want to get divorced. He loved my Mom until the day he died. Divorce in those days was rare. Churches even excommunicated divorced people back in those days. And Dad didn't want the divorce so he made it really hard for her. He's give Janie and I anything we wanted while we were with him, but, he put my Mom in a poverty's stronghold.
For 27 years, my Mom was married and raising children. Eleven full term pregnancies with two sets of twins resulted in seven living children by the time she was forty years old. The only job I remember her taking while growing up was as a gift wrapper at the Outlet during the holiday season.