My parents divorced when I was young, way before I have any memory of the event that would change my life. In the course of events my Dad of course had to move out of our home in Maplewood and found himself a rundown shack that he would soon call home. The house was dark and ugly on the inside and outside. When you walked up to the blue sided house, the gray cracked wooden front door was the first thing to welcome you to the house. The darkness of the inside threw shadows onto the blue wax on the floor that he called carpet somehow making it appear even uglier.

As you walked into the house, my room was to the right between the kitchen and the living room (that wasn’t so lively). On my walls were white cloud shaped bows on top of each other, globbed on with bright blue popcorn paint that would cut my knuckles deep anytime I would reach between my bed and wall to reach an outlet that was sandwiched between the two. The ugly blue carpet was still laid in my room along with the other ugly furniture that came with the house. The house soon became a burden to see and be at. So I soon decided to stay at  my dad’s parents’ house in Fenton and spend my court dedicated weekends with my father’s parents instead of him.
After the first couple weeks of throwing tantrums to wind up staying the weekend with my Grandparents, my dad soon began to give up. I saw the defeat in his eyes every time I asked to stay with them instead of him. I saw the heartbreak when he wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. I felt the loneliness when he turned his back to head out the door. My dad had not only given up on our relationship, he had given up on me. I grew very distant from my dad in that time, and I didn’t realize how much it hurt him.

My dad was not one to like to be alone. Staying in that death trap of a house by himself, he never ate, filling the hunger with beer and killing time with vodka. He grew skinny, too skinny. This wasn’t my father any more. I tried to overcome my hatred for the house and started to spend time with my dad in the times I was supposed to. He grew happier over time, his smile got bigger, and sure enough, so did his stomach. I was feeling good about my decisions, and I thought I had saved my dad. But alas, all good things come to an end. He had a girlfriend.
Darla Halloran was a tall skinny woman with brown curly hair, long legs, and arms to about the same length. When I met this woman she seemed kind, funny and beautiful. Then I realized, she looked a lot like my mother. Darla and her four kids were around for a couple years. Zach her oldest son, had problems. He became bulimic and started to nest. Nesting became his comfort. He would steal bed sheets from around the home and shred them, forming them into a human sized nest. He was tall and skinny, much like his mother. My dad tried to help Zach as much as he could, but he was past saving. Zach moved out and into his dad’s house, who shortly after sent him to a boot camp some place and didn’t bat an eye to tell Darla.

Thomas, Darla’s second oldest was a Junior in highschool when we first met. The arrogant and rude personality that he developed rubbed off onto others around him. He made fun of me everyday because I had a speech impediment and stutter. He would greet me with phrases like “He-he-hey, ho-ow-ow-ow are you?” then laughing his ugly maniacal laugh. Needless to say, I didn’t like Thomas. Then there was Tara, Darla’s third oldest and her only daughter. Tara was great to hang with when I was growing up she was another sister added onto the three I already had. Also Charles, the youngest of the four children. Charles and I were the same age and got along great. He soon became my best friend when I was growing up. I soon began to spend more time with my dad,and I saw that he was finally happy once more.

A couple months went by when I started to realize we weren’t going to Darla’s house as often. I didn’t get to hang out with Charles every other weekend. My dad had lost his smile, and I soon lost my friend.

After my dad and Darla spit, it was back to square one. He dropped a lot of weight, to a point where I had never seen my dad like that. Almost unrecognizable. I continued to go to his house but slowly drifted away again… He finally tore up the blue carpet that coated the floors and replaced it with new hardwood. As his house was transforming, he was deteriorating.

My dad had slowly started to work on the house to make the appearance less ugly, but there was no way he could cover the wave of depression that hung like a cloud over the house. It seemed not even months after Darla, my dad had another girlfriend, Kim. I met Kim once, and that was that. Then came Sheila, then a few others that came in and out of my life so quickly I can’t recall their names. When I was ten or so, my dad surprised us and got two puppies. Mind you, he only got them because they were free and out of the bed of a truck at Wal-mart.

My mom was a preschool teacher at Christ Community Lutheran School, where I went to middle school. After the last bell rang to let us out of school for the day, I would always walk to my mom’s classroom and wait for her to go home. One day my dad came to pick me up from school because it was Wednesday, one of the court ordered dates I had to spend with him. When he walked through the door, he was carrying one brown fluff ball of a puppy and a tan not so fluffy puppy but seemed like half the size of the brown one. I guess being alone in that hell hole was becoming too much for my dad.

After the puppies, we started to hang out with my dad more and going to his house and actually having fun. A couple weeks later it was our weekend to go to our dad’s house, but at this point my sister could drive, so she drove us. Four kids crammed into a three person bench seat. I remember walking into my dad’s house one weekend and smelling a pasta dinner being made at the time.My dad never cooked pasta. I rounded the corner into the doorway of the kitchen and saw a short and stocky woman standing at the stove. “Oh great, another girlfriend”, is what ran through my head when I saw her, before she even spoke a word to me.

This woman’s name was Christene. she had a light brown skin tone from her indian descent. Her dark brown hair fell down her back and sat atop her big hips. It became every weekend I went to my dad’s, I saw her. She had been coming around more and more frequently to the point of comfort for my family. She had learned all of our names and started to form a bond with all of us, but given my father’s past, I didn’t get too comfortable with her.
Two years passed by, and Christene was still with my dad, even moved into his house and transformed it from a depression pit into a pretty and decorative home. She even brought her two horses up from Arkansas (where she was from). I knew she was going to be in my life for a while when they came. They had bought a new couch, a 57” Flat screen Tv to go with my dad’s stereo system that hooks up to surround sound, and even built rooms for me and my siblings to sleep in.

One weekend, I had gone out to my dad’s house alone and spent the weekend with him and Christene. My dad and I had just gone outside to feed the horses when he pulled me aside and asked me if I approved of him proposing to her. My dad asked ME if it was okay to make this life changing decision. ME. I of course said yes and demanded to see the diamond. He pulled a ring box out of his back pocket and showed me. It was HUGE, the band was covered in little diamonds with a big rock in the middle. He quickly closed the top of the ring box when he heard Christene open the back screen door to go out for her routinely cigarette. He turned to me, winked, went over to her and got down on one knee, and asked her to marry him.

It was an honor that I was there for the proposal. But even better, I was a bridesmaid in their wedding that happened a few months after the proposal. The wedding was held in our living room, in front of the fireplace. As we all stood in line next to my dad, who had dressed better than I have ever seen him, we were all anxious to see Christene and her dress. My sister Mallory,who was the the left of me, turned and asked in  a whisper, “Do you think this is going to last?” I turned to her and said, “Yeah… I really think it will.”

When she walked out of the door, the room grew quiet. She looked beautiful. I turned to my dad immediately and saw the tears in his eyes from joy, and he turned to me and mouthed the words, I love you.