THE POWER OF TIME

This True Story is shared at “Tell Me a True Story.”

My continued story will resume soon !

THE POWER OF TIME

While it isn’t always the case but time has a way of softening the harshness of the reality of the failure of parents and their parenting skills. For the most part children are severe judges of how they were raised and render strong opinions of the perceived failures of their parents.

Seldom is it made part of the equation that the raw material the parents were working with might have had some defects that were somewhat insurmountable.

In any case I find my judgments have been modified somewhat by time and experience.

Mom

Now as to my mother I conclude that she was one hundred percent a country girl and no amount of travel, or becoming being citified would not ever change that, nor did she ever try to adjust her persona. 

Early in life I felt I had sufficient intelligence to function at the level I wished to live my life, and from that time I rejected most of her input into the formation of my attitudes toward life.

She became more like an older sister whose opinion carried little weight in my decision making.

But time has garnered a new respect and fondness for her I wasn’t capable of as a youth and a desire for the impossible which is to go back and relive those days as a better and more understanding me.

She was greatly limited by the hard headedness of the child my parents had spawned. 

Dad

Now as for dad, what can you say? He saw himself as a bit of a Jim Dandy! He dressed himself in nice suits and often wore a stylish straw hat.

As a young man in 1917 he had driven all the way from Georgia to California in a T model Ford. The roads were poor and the road across the Mojave Desert was made of wooden planks. 

He had been married to a nice lady who had borne him a son. After some time he decided he wasn’t cut out to be a father and husband so they parted.

It was some number of years later when he met up with my mother and she wasn’t one to let go like most of my dad’s former girl friends were.

She managed to get him to the Justice of the Peace and he once again reluctantly said the knot tying words “I do.”

It was the second time around for him and Lo it wasn’t long before I made the scene and began to demand a piece of the pie.  My early years were spent traveling from city to city and living in boarding houses.  The service company my dad worked for sent him all over the south servicing machinery they sold.

After five years we settled in a mill town where passion prevailed over protection and mom became pregnant once again. Toward the end of the pregnancy an aunt joined to help out during this time. She was a lot of help and company for my mom until passion overcame propriety and she was caught in the outhouse with dad in the act of pleasuring themselves.

This wasn’t acceptable behavior for mom and she in great displeasure explained that this wasn’t the kind of help she had envisioned and it was the time for auntie to return to her home. S

ince I was the one who made the discovery of the forbidden actions I was confused by the whole event and following hullabaloo.

Peace returns

As it turned out we were scheduled to move to California and the almost 3000 miles separation from the unsavory event settled everything down.

Things went well for about 8 years until dad decided to take a job in South America. Of course we went south also. We went to the south of North America in Tennessee and he to Peru.

After the divorce that followed I managed on my own, and time came when ole dad returned and he took me to Oregon with him. Things didn’t work out and he returned to South America leaving me in California at the age of 15.

Back to “Time”

There were a million things that happened during those years, I obviously haven’t mentioned. Years later after me getting married he returned to California from South America for a couple of days to visit the family members that now lived there.

That was the last I saw of him. He died some three years later.

It took a long while for me to forgive his failures as a dad or at least what I supposed his failures were; but time has done what nothing else could do. The good stuff has come to the forefront and the other stuff has all but faded away.

Allowing this to happen has changed me a bit and I feel more kindly toward those who gave me life for without them I wouldn’t be here.  It is difficult to forget, but at least I can forgive.

Are you willing to let "Time" do it’s work with you?  Are you willing to Forgive?

This post is shared at “Tell Me a True Story.”