It was a beautiful night by Jordan Lake. The darkened sky was clear, and the moon was full, rising into the night sky. It reflected on top of the slow ripples that carried across the lake, illuminating the bonfire they made to keep themselves warm that fall night. Tomorrow, tomorrow is the day he goes away. He was going to be locked up for almost two decades, and this destroyed her soul. She wanted him; she needed him to be with her, but she knew this was impossible. So in her desperation, in that late hour, she seduced a married man. On the beach, under clear skies and a warm fire, only forbidden love conspired.
Before I start my story, I would like to give you a little background on my mother’s history. My mother was one of six sisters. She was the only redhead out of the bunch. The rest all had dark brown to jet black hair. They would tease her and call her the mailman’s daughter. In the end, the truth died with her mother. She was an alcoholic and didn’t like taking care of her children; she found the life of a mother was all too much for her to handle. Her father worked fifty hours a week and smoked two to three packs of cigarettes a day until the day he died of lung cancer. Mom went from being a child to an adult way too young. She learned to clean meticulously and cook extremely large meals for her fellow orphans. Sadly, the orphanage stayed at full capacity. Oh, did I mention that it was a Catholic orphanage? No? So scrubbing floors with a toothbrush and peeling large sacks of potatoes for days on in until she aged out had to be bruttle. She met my adopted grandmother at a church service one day. When it came time to age out, mom became so close to grandma that she ended up unofficially adopting her and her future children.
Mom fell in love with a military man. Love was new to her, and she quickly married her military man. They ended up getting married young, but their marriage didn’t last. He had orders to move to Germany, and Mom had found out she was pregnant young. Within that year of marriage, she noticed a change in her military man. He was doing things that could get him put in jail. So, when the topic of moving to Germany, well, let’s just say, mom wasn’t ready to move across the world with a man she no longer truly trusted. Mom was honest with her military man; she brought up the things he had been doing behind her back and the fact that she didn’t feel safe stuck overseas with him. During this time period, Mom had found out she was pregnant with my brother. She wanted to ultimately keep him safe from whatever military man had planned. She gave herself some time to think about the whole situation. Her first option was for her to tell him before leaving, and risk him possibly getting violent. Or, she can let him fly off to Germany and then tell him.
Upon seeing her military man’s reaction to moving to Germany, she decided it was safer to wait to tell him. She waited approximately a month before spilling the beans. This way, he could get settled into his new position and get his new address. Landlines were a thing, but only used for emergencies. So she had to wait. When she finally received his new address, she sat down and wrote him a letter, letting him know about the child she carried. The reasoning behind her decision to wait and the reason she was going to ask for a divorce. His reply didn’t come as a complete shock; he never took accountability for anything. He simply wrote a reply stating, “You will rue the day you decide to have this child. You will never get help from me, and he will never be my child”. This phrase stuck with my mom for many years, through many struggles with my brother. Come to find out, within the years to follow, he ended up getting caught up with drugs and ended up in a foreign jail. He was extradited to the US and then dishonorably discharged from his service. When he died of testicular cancer, on his deathbed, he acknowledged my brother’s existence, and only then did my mother get help from him. I will speak more about my brother at a later time. For now, I am finished.
Obstacles of Love 