Seven and Counting

In the three years since my parents, my mom has been in 7 relationships. They've all made a difference somehow, but each one has left something different behind. Here's their story.

When I was little, my dad was the only one. He might not have always been there. But he was the only way. For most of my childhood, my dad was the only man in my life, the only man in my mom’s. 

So when I heard about James, things in my head, my view on life, shifted. James was in the Air Force, and he lived in Wyoming. My mom had been talking to him since the beginning of the problems with my dad. He’d been there through everything, and my mom told me that she loved him.

After my parents announced their divorce, James was there. Not physically, of course. To this day (three years later), my mom hasn’t actually met this man in person. But he was there, the constant subject of conversation. Always on our minds, always in my mom’s heart.

It was an evil teaser that consumed our lives. Many mornings, I woke up, hoping that that would be the day that James showed up on our doorstep, ready to meet the family that he had grown to know so well, but only over chat messages on yahoo. I went to bed hoping that maybe he’d call the next day, telling my mom that he’d bought a plane ticket and needed her to pick him up from the airport. For a year, it was an unintentional torture tactic, picking away at our lives. 

In a way, James has been there the entire time, even up until today. He’s my mom’s friend, her counselor, and the man she really wants to be with. In between all the others, there has been James. Inconsistently constant, their relationship between my mom and James has taught me to believe that, no matter how much you love someone, it isn’t enough. 

My seventh grade year held four guys. There was James, the summer before. Brian in the fall, Bo in the winter. As Arizona spring came, so did JimBob. 

If you ask my mom, Brian was never her boyfriend. If you were to track down Brian, he’d tell you that they were madly in love. Yeah… not the best thing to have in a relationship, whether it’s a romantic relationship or not. I never really considered Brian as her boyfriend, but more of a friend with (limited) benefits. Somewhat limited, that is. Brian wasn’t there for long, but I still remember many things about him.

When I met Brian for the first time, he was picking my mom up for their date. They were going to the Cardinals and Packers preseason game. But when I first saw him, I didn’t know this. I was walking around the corner and saw it. A dark blue car (a Charger, I think), parked in my driveway. I ignored it, thinking that maybe my aunt had gotten another car and was over to help my mom with something. I pushed past the doorway, and the TV was on. I looked into the living room and was startled (literally- my feet were off the ground) to see a man on my couch. Even stranger was the fact that I’d never seen this man before. 

He has a short beard, silver and black intermixed. Behind the hair I saw tan skin, light eyes, and a small build. A bulky ring was on his finger. He was wearing a light-colored polo, beige shorts, and a baseball cap. 

I just waved, and took an immediate left, down the stairs into my mom’s room. “Did you meet Brian?” she asked me. I just nodded, deciding not to tell her that he hadn’t introduced himself or even waved at me. She was standing in front of her giant mirror, doing her hair and make-up. 

“Where are you going?” I asked her. She explained about the football game, then laughed as she thought about how jealous Jake would be. “Here I am, the person in the family that lifes football the least, and I’m the first to go to an NFL game.” 

A couple weeks later, Brian took my mom to a concert. Nickleback. She came home late, so I didn’t get to talk to her until the next morning. And when I asked her how it was, she just looked at me. “Cassie,” she said, “he proposed to me.” 

And so began what I like to call (or what I just decided to call) the Brian Era. Just like all the other eras (Victorian Era, Reagan Era, etc.), the Brian Era made a huge impact on the world. Or, at least, my world. But I couldn’t tell you exactly how it affected me, only that it did.

Brian, after having his marriage proposal rejected, settled for less, choosing to just be my mom’s friend. Their dates morphed into more family-oriented outings (the one that I remember the most was our trip to Uncle Sam’s in Peoria). He became our friend. Then, one day in October (the Brian Era started in September), something happened. I didn’t ever learn the exact details, but the Brian Era skidded to a stop. 

It was abrupt. One day, he told my mom that if she didn’t date him, he would kill himself. It was really the first time that I noticed Brian’s depression, because he always seemed so happy. His smile was always present, and he never made any comments that gave us any hints of depression. 

So my mom tried to cut him out. She figured that he was getting too attached, and she wanted to put some distance between us and him. So he became a part of the past, a recent memory that we tried to make distant. 

Except for the phone calls, text messages, and emails. You see, there was a reason that we tried to cut him out of our lives. He started to become what most people would call a stalker. He would show up at our house unannounced, and he counted the exact number of days since the last time he’d seen each of us kids. He was, for lack of a better word, obsessed. So my mom changed her phone number, blocked his emails, we moved (this wasn’t all because of Brian- our landlords failed to tell us that they hadn’t paid their mortgage and the house was being foreclosed) and he disappeared for real this time. 

Soon after Brian was gone, Bo was introduced into our lives. Bo was Catholic, which was good. We’re Catholic, and that’s always been something that my mom has looked for. But with Bo… things were a little different. He <font;_italic>used to be</font> Catholic. Then something happened between the Church and Bo’s family, and they fell away. But it sort of counts as Catholic, right? Sure.

The thing with Bo is that he drank. A lot. This was a well-known fact that he tried to keep a secret. He wasn’t a mean drunk. Actually, he really was only nice to my mom when he was drunk. When he was sober, he wasn’t mean, just grumpy and he kind of ignored her. So Bo didn’t last long. 

He didn’t really have an impact on our lives. Not long term, at least. So why did I include him in this memoir/journal? Because that man made the best pot roast that I’ve ever had.

My birthday in seventh grade brought JimBob. His family and my family had been friends for a long time, but I never got to know JimBob personally until that year. Now, I can tell you all sorts of things about him. I know that he drowns his ice cream in chocolate syrup (there’s literally more chocolate than there is ice cream). I know that he always carries a gun with him when he goes for a trail ride. I know that he mooched off everyone, and I know that he gets attached easily. I know that somehow, he finds a way to be arrogant, but it seems humble at the same time. But let’s go back to the day when he became a temporarily permanent part of our lives. 

It was my thirteenth birthday. I had two friends staying the night. It was his first date with my mom. I was the first to fall asleep, and when I woke up, I regretted it. 

Both of my friends told me that they hadn’t been able to sleep because they could hear my mom. With JimBob. In bed. 

This broke my heart. First of all, it was their first date. Who does that on their first date? Also, it was my birthday. Just… what the heck? But the part that made it the worst was that my two friends were spending the night. The worst part was that my friends heard my mom. With JimBob. In bed. It was, to say the least, embarrassing. 

It took a while for me to be able to trust my mom again. And the trust and respect that I have for JimBob? He had to work hard to earn every bit of it. Now that I think about it, it’s not even a lot of respect and trust. More like acceptance. The beauty of having a single mom in a relationship is that even if you don’t like someone, you have to learn to accept them. 

And that’s what I did with JimBob. I didn’t like how fast they moved. Exactly a week after my birthday, my mom came to me and said, “He told me he loves me today. And I love him too.” Two months into the relationship, they were engaged and planning to move into the same house. I didn’t like it. But my mom seemed happy, so I accepted it. 

Although I thought they were moving too fast, I had to admit that JimBob was fun. He taught me how to ride a horse, and after school got out, we went on daily rides for a couple weeks. He’s a judge for Professional Bull Riding (and also a two-time world champion bronc rider), so he was able to get us free tickets to PBR when it came to town. Because of JimBob, I met Flint (PBR’s rodeo clown), along with several  (very sexy) Brazilian bull riders. Because of JimBob, I learned what it’s like to love a horse, and because of JimBob I got my first job (his parents own a restaurant, so JimBob put in a good word for me). 

Now, two years after he and my mom broke up (yes, they did break up- my story is far from over), JimBob is still a friend. When we’re at the restaurant, I’ll usually eat my food with him and just talk, catch up. I also know that if I ever need anything, I can always go to JimBob.

If JimBob has taught me anything, it’s that fun doesn’t equal quality. We had fun with JimBob. There’s no way that I could deny that fact. But the relationship between my mom and JimBob had no quality. 

After JimBob, my mom stayed single for quite a while. Then in January, things changed. In January of my eighth grade year, I got a purity ring with the girls in my youth group. One of these girls was Taylor, and her single dad was at the ceremony. So was my single mom. It didn’t take long for them to become a thing. 

Rick only dated my mom for a couple months. And there wasn’t really anything special about him, except that he was one of my best friends’ dads. Because of Rick, I got to experience that feeling that you might get to be sisters with your best friend. 

I never really thought that my mom and Rick would get married. But it was fun to play along, pretend that we would be able to combine our five kids and his three at the dinner table. And then Rick slipped out. Another guy who was here and gone in only a couple months. 

After Rick, softball season rolled around. And that brings us to the most recent (but not the last) guy. In my eighth grade year, I played on the softball team, and so did Stephanie Amaral. Ken, Stephanie’s dad, met my mom at one of our games. They went out on a couple of dates, and a relationship formed. There was one difference that I noticed in Ken. 

He was very reserved. Unlike all the others, he had waited until their third date to even kiss my mom. It wasn’t until a month after that that he would kiss my mom in front of us kids. 

We went camping with his family in June, and in July he went with my family to Idaho, where we used to live and we visit every summer. In October, we all moved into a house together. 

So that should be it, right? That should be our “happily ever after.” Ha! Will we ever get one of those? Do they even exist?

It’s May now. And… we’ll be moving soon. Again. Since we’ve moved to Arizona, we’ve lived in four different houses. Soon to be five. 

Ken is… he’s a lot of things. He’s funny, sarcastic, fun. But he doesn’t ever do anything. Actually, he does too much. But that’s the problem. He’s so busy working on the cars and doing stuff outside that he doesn’t have time to spend time with my mom or us. They’re together, but alone. 

Ken can also be mean. Not in front of anyone else, of course. But as he and my mom get ready for bed, he tears into her like a wolf on a morning hunt. Never physically, of course. But the verbal abuse can sometimes hurt more. Verbal scars are invisible to the outside world, but they last for a small eternity. 

So Ken isn’t working out. We’ll be moving soon, into a small apartment where we don’t have any living space. We’ll be off on a new adventure, on to a new part of our lives. On to another man that, in the end, won’t work out. 

But with Ken, I learned something about trust. And what I learned was that trusting people just gets you hurt. 

I said that Ken wouldn’t be the last one that I talk about. So far, I’ve mentioned six guys: James, Brian, Bo, JimBob, Rick, and Ken. Now I’m going to talk about someone who is permanently temporary. I’m going to tell you about Bob. 

First, some background information. Bob was a retired Army Special Forces sergeant. He met my mom online a few months after she met James, and they became very good friends. He wasn’t really her boyfriend (they tried dating and decided that they were better as friends). They became close. But when we moved to Arizona, we heard of him less and less. And then, one day, he came back. We all spent the weekend together, and then he disappeared again. The next time, he stayed for about a week and a half, and we didn’t hear from him until the end of the summer. 

After that, I saw him once more. He was flying into Phoenix, where my dad lives. Bob called my mom and had her meet him for the breakfast at the hotel where he was staying. She called my dad and told him to bring us to the hotel so that we could see him. We sat with him while he are for about ten minutes, and then drove him back to the airport. And that was it. That day, April 9, 2011, was the last time that I saw him. 

I only met him a total of 6 or 7 times, but he’s the one who’s made the biggest impact. He made memories. When he found out that I collect hotel key cards, he saved them for me. He took Jake to Pima for a week, where they rode quads and shot guns all day. He used his K-bar to remove a splinter from Shelsey’s hand. He also had a Corvette. Maroon, and boy was that a nice car. When I was twelve, I got to drive it. 

Now, when I’m at a hotel, I think of Bob. When I see a Corvette (no matter what color), I think of Bob. When I see Jake’s K-bar (that Bob gave him), I think of Bob. When I hear about greased-pig contests, I think of Bob. When I hear about or see bee hives, I think of Bob. When I think of the Army, I think of Bob. Pretty much everything reminds me, some way, of Bob. And it hurts.

Because Bob was in the Army for twenty years. In the Army, you’re trained not to show any weakness. And any connection to anyone is a weakness. And that’s why Bob can’t stick around, keep in contact. Because that’s a connection. 

And that’s what Bob has taught me. He’s taught me to fear memories, to break connections. Because memories and connections hurt. When you hurt, you become weak. 

I can’t afford to be weak. Not anymore. 

Author's Note

I don't think I ever edited this. I was afraid that if I did, I would end up taking stuff out. So I just typed it up and that was the end of it. So if you guys see any mistakes, could you send me a message or comment or something for me? Thanks! :)