Time passed just as it does with any household that has three young children. After I was born, and everyone got used to me being around, everyone settled into a routine. Mom stayed at home with us kids and Dad continued to work his brutal schedule. Thinking back, I couldn’t remember seeing much of Dad, at all, when I was really little. The only memories I had of him were of sitting with him (it was the only time I was allowed to sit in his prized leather recliner), on a Saturday morning, watching old Looney Toons cartoons and then later, sitting on his lap in church, the following Sunday morning. For some reason, I remember playing with his hands, twiddling his calloused thumbs and realizing how big they were in my tiny hands. I guess you would do anything to keep your two year old daughter occupied while the priest was giving his sermon.
A few years later, I had just started kindergarten, so I was about five years old during the winter of ’77/’78 (later known as “big blizzard”), and I remember when it was announced that we were going to drive to Florida in my mother’s parent’s RV to go to Disney World! I didn’t know what it meant but I was game for it. Little did we know then that it was the beginning of the end; the family trip was the last effort for my parents to save their marriage.
Again, I remember very little but the things I do remember are quite vivid to this day. The first memory was in the back of the RV with my mother, brother and sister while my Dad drove. As we were driving down the road, Dad walked into the back and joined us briefly, causing my mother to absolutely flip out and she started screaming at him!! At that, Dad ran back to the front of the RV out of my sight. I later found out that Dad had had the RV on cruise control and decided that he wanted a Pepsi from the back. Since he was tired from driving so much, and it was quite late, he wasn’t thinking clearly and just got up from the driver’s seat and walked back to get a drink. Mom clearly got his attention. Luckily, the alignment of the RV was really good and, apparently, the road was straight and level, so nothing happened other than the RV continuing down the road.
The second memory was at Disney World. All three of us kids were proudly sporting our Star Wars t-shirts (it was the year the first Star Wars was released; it scared me when I saw it but still loved my shirt anyway) and my mother’s parent’s, who lived at Venice Beach, at the time, had met us there and were with us. Apparently my Dad and sister wanted to ride the Tea Cup ride and somehow I was brought along, whether I insisted or not (and quickly regretted it!). Of course, Dad and my sister got the tea cup spinning as quickly as they could and I experienced the adverse effects of centrifugal force; the edge of the seat was cutting into the back of my knees and I was screaming bloody murder while bawling my eyes out but Dad and my sister were having a blast. I don’t remember what happened after that.
Later that night, we were joined by my grand parents to have dinner at a dinner theater that was located in Frontier Land. The theater was massive; the area where hundreds of diners sat, around large round tables, spread out before us, and it was an effort to get everyone through the maze of patrons in order to get to our table near the center of the room. Once we were seated, we were served our meals and enjoyed the singers performing on stage in the front of the room. After some time, our meals were finished, adult beverages were served (I don’t know what the adults had but I’m sure Dad had his Pepsi because he never liked the taste of alcohol) and the show continued. At some point, a young couple, dressed in red and white checkered square dancing costumes, came to the center of the large room, about three tables away from where we were seated, and when the spot light came on, and they began to sing a lovely, slower version of “Dixieland”. I had always known that my name was unusual so whenever I heard someone say my name, and they weren’t talking to me, it was always a wonderful surprise. However, to the complete horror of all of us, my Grandmother, already three glasses of wine deep into the evening, stands up in front of the hundreds of diners, in the middle of the song, and start’s shouting at the top of her lungs, all while pointing at me at the same time, and screams over and over, “Her name’s Dixie, her name’s Dixie!!” Thankfully, Grandpa grabbed her by the scruff of the neck, pulled her back down to the table and growled some unheard verbiage into her ear as my Dad was trying to drag me out from under the table. I don’t remember what happened after that but that memory is burned into my brain for life.
Other than brief flashes of memories that include The Haunted Mansion (the growing portraits in the elevator freaked me out, along with the dancing ghosts in the ballroom) and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride (the songs were catchy), nothing else stands out from the trip.
However, I do remember the day we got back to Michigan after spending three weeks away. The big blizzard had hit while we were away in Florida and snow was piled 6-8 feet high along the roadways; it was something that we’d never seen, in such quantities, before. The boy that lived across the street had the task of feeding our cat, Sebastian, while we were gone and the only way he could get into the front of the house was to climb over my Mom’s Oldsmobile, that was parked along the roadway and was buried in six feet of snow, and then he had dug down, through the snow, in order to get the front door open. We all stayed in the RV while Dad dug out the front walk way (so we didn’t have to climb over Mom’s car) and get into the house. Once we finally got in, our cat was asleep on the kitchen counter while resting his head on a loaf of bread that had been laying there also. He looked up at us sleepily as if to say “oh, you’re back!” and proceeded to greet us. Needless to say, we didn’t have school for a really long time as our town dug out from all of the snow so we were in a winter paradise of sledding and digging tunnels through the massive piles of snow along the roadways. It was a miracle that we didn’t get killed.
That was the last time I remember having a good time, as a family, because shortly after the excitement of the trip had died away, the hopes of Mom and Dad reigniting their marriage died too. Dad left soon after.
...then Dad flew away. 