17
Once kicked out of the house toward the end of my second grade year,
my sister had little choice but to temporarily move in with her
boyfriend. That soon turned into a permanent situation by the end of
the Summer of Nineteen Seventy-Two. During the summer break my
sister had made the occasional furtive visit to the family home to
see me and take me for some fun when she knew dad would be working at
the ski area. By fall she and her boyfriend moved to 'their' own
place, an upper floor of an old family home turned into a studio
style apartment. In this larger, more comfortable space, my mother
would then make visits allowing me to tag along. We just weren't
supposed to tell dad.
As my sister started her second year teaching third grade, the
administration soon found out about her living arrangements and
informed her that she wouldn't be able to continue teaching for moral
reasons, common place in that day and age, unless the
situation was soon rectified. So a marriage was hastily set
up, and the next time my father saw sis was at the reception in the
basement of the local bar. It was my first time being in a bar and
we pretty much had the basement to ourselves with the moving colored
lights and music for dancing. Not a big turn-out. And this was the
first time I perched myself in a corner and watched. For the rest of
my life, with groups of people, I've more enjoyed finding a corner
and observing people interact, more than participating myself. But
that's a different story.
Secret visits to my sister continued with my mother and things had
calmed down enough that my sister and her husband joined us for
either Thanksgiving or Christmas of Nineteen Seventy-Two. I don't
think it was both. The funny thing was her husband worked on the ski
patrol at the park so when skiing season came I tended to see him
more than my sister.
By Spring, I heard they were leaving to move out west. This came as
a shock to me as the farthest anyone I had ever know had moved away
was one state. I learned many years later that it was a shock to my
sister as well. Her husband's family had moved from Wyoming to New
England some years earlier and he had finished his high school years
in our state. For whatever reason his parents had moved back while
he had stayed in New England for several years afterwards, but he now
had the itch to move back to Wyoming himself. Now married, my sister
didn't feel she had any choice in the matter but to go with him and
by the end of third grade they packed everything they had, including
their small Japanese sedan, into the back of a U-Haul truck and drove
away.
My not as older brother, mother and I were there for this last
packing flurry and to watch the truck leave. My sister remembers dad
showing up unexpectedly at the last moment to see her off as well as
if he had never disowned her. I would later find that my father
would routinely do this, disown his kids, then in later years act as
if that had never happened and expect to be friends.
While my sister was now out of my life, by the start of fourth grade,
my eldest brother was back. Apparently with a gap between jobs, he
couldn't afford a place to live and moved back to the state where
mother had him move into my original bedroom in the family home.
Once again it was a situation we were not to talk about, it
just was as it was. This was an odd situation as my not as older
brother had my eldest brother's room and furniture, and I had my not
as older brother's room, though spruced-up. It seemed to me that we
should return to our original bedrooms and I asked about this. But
once again we weren't supposed to talk about it.
My eldest brother personalized my old room by painting it flat white.
As he couldn't use my child sized bed, it was gone and he pretty
much had a mattress on the floor for his bed. Where my not as older
brother would spend a lot of time with my eldest brother in his room
during my early childhood, they now spent that time in my old
bedroom. My eldest brother spent the Fall through Winter season
using one of the painted walls of the room to draw a charcoal nude
based on a picture in a magazine. By Spring his prospects had picked
up and he moved into his own apartment leaving behind the white room
with the completed charcoal drawing. While our mother thought it was
a bit scandalous, the woman's pose really didn't show anything.
As it wasn't his idea to have my eldest brother back during that
time, my father expressed his displeasure by accusing my eldest
brother of silly stuff. The most memorable was him commenting to me
one morning, before I left to catch the school bus, that my eldest
brother had been taking dinner knives from the drawer and using them
to cut up an apple for lunch later in the day, then he would lose or
throw-out the knives rather than bring them back. Now maybe this had
happened once, but we seemed to pretty much have the
same number of knives at the beginning of the time when he moved in,
versus the time he left. Though I had never seen my father as an
authority figure, I hadn't seen him as a silly person either. But
after that comment and his other string of grumblings during that
time, I started to see him as a bit of a comic figure.
Then one weekend day during the ski season, I joined my father on his
morning ride to the park. In earlier years, this had been a family
routine where all the siblings would pile in and come with him to
work so we could ski all day. Now it was just me and my father in
the car. While there was the novelty of now having the front seat, I
could also feel the absence of my siblings as well. Once we reached
the park, my father went straight into the building while I
unstrapped my skies and poles and followed after. I used the
employee time clock/break room to change from my shoes to my ski
boots. It was right next to the back door leading to the ticket girl
windows and my father caught my attention before my boots were on.
There was someone he wanted me to
meet:
An older, though new ticket girl at the end of the row. He lead me
down the narrow room just to see her, which was vary strange as he
had never before introduced me to the other ticket girls, I would
just come to know them as the ski season progressed. This new lady
looked me up and down, then ran the fingers of her left hand through
my hair. ''Oh, you have your father's hair,'' she remarked and then
I was given my free ticket to ski with for the day.
As I skied up to the lift for my first run, I reflected on the
meaning of her comparison: So she's been running her fingers
through my father's hair...?
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