Last bit of background. After this, everyone is caught up to the present-day Fringe happenings.
Beware of what I’ll post after my relatively structured history posts are finished.
By the time Little Man was two weeks old, I’d been unemployed for more than nine months. Buttercup and I were in our apartment, but it was getting harder and harder to pay rent and other expenses bringing in only sporadic income. We had a really nice apartment and, geez, collecting aluminum cans just wasn’t getting it done.
I called packers and movers and, in one day, all our stuff was loaded into a moving van and the three of us had nowhere to go. I bullied the storage receptionist into renting me a unit even though it was ten whole minutes until closing time. How rude of me: all my personal belongings needing a space before the storage place actually closed, but she’d planned on getting off early and now she had to work until exactly 6 p.m. by handing me a form to fill out and assigning me a unit number. The humanity.
The movers unloaded the truck and my 2-week-old and my six-year-old were buckled into their seats. All day, my family had been calling one another, asking if anyone had heard from me. My cell phone had been off for weeks, so no one could call me directly. They knew I was moving out of the apartment, but no one had heard where I was going. Ordinarily, my in between apartment gigs would find me at my mother’s, but my sister and her husband and their two kids were camping there while waiting to move into their new house. Mom’s house was full and I didn’t know if she’d let me stay there long, anyway.
My dad called my sister and I can only imagine how worried everybody was. My sister told him, “I don’t know for sure, but I have a feeling she may be headed your way.”
In the parking lot of the storage place, I put my car into gear and began to drive. No particular direction, just away from storage, in a what have I gotten myself into kind of daze. Little Man was so tiny and Buttercup was so trusting and I had no idea where we were going.
I entered the freeway knowing I couldn’t go to my mom’s, so I passed her exit and kept driving. And driving. And, having no other choice, drove to my dad’s, our usual destination for family gatherings and football parties, but not my first thought for refugee housing.
I pulled into the driveway and my dad and stepmom met us at the door. My stepmom took the baby from my arms and my dad took Buttercup. They led us all inside and that’s when I saw the kitchen table set for dinner–for Buttercup and me. My stepmom had already cleared room in the refrigerator for bottles and had turned down the bed in the guest room. Expecting us. Preparing a place for us.
She said to me: You can eat or, if you like, you can just go to bed.
I quietly asked if I could just go to bed and, in her wonderful drawl, she answered, “Of course, baby. We’ll take care of these babies while you sleep.”
We tried to leave a few days later, I promise. But, breakfast, lunch and dinner and snacks and dessert were served everyday. My dad ran errands. He helped me pay my bills by actually writing the checks from my account and taking care of any shortages. My stepmother loved my kids like they were her own. We tried to leave a few months later, I promise. Both parents told me to relax and take my time. “We want to see him walking” said my stepmother when Little Man was only six months old.
They saw him walking alright. I think they saw him reading, if I remember correctly. We were there two and a half years. What a wonderful safety net. What amazing sacrifices they made for us.
Why am I typing in past tense? We still see them everyday since my dad picks the kids up from school and feeds them dinner and buys their school clothes and fun incidentals. My stepmom has been trying to decorate our current apartment, but I can’t let her in until the kitchen is clean and the closets are organized and the bathrooms are sparkling.
I have never been a stereotypical single mom. I was never given the chance to be, thank goodness. I can’t even imagine how much harder this would be completely on my own.
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