My Stepdad

There is a memoir I put together. The process had a lot of unexpected turns and it took me a long time to finish. I’m not quite sure I can even say it’s done. The same week my memoir was returned from being edited is the same week something tragic happened to me and my family. After that I shut down and could not bring myself to go over the many pages I had written. One out of the two important characters had passed on.

My man and I watched and episode of Super Soul Sunday a couple of weeks ago. Shirley MacLaine was on. Oprah asked what her biggest lessons in life were. Shirley replied that it was the people that hurt her the most.

My Stepdad passed and he was one of the people that hurt me.

I wrote in depth about our relationship and it wasn’t until I went through my-self-discovery that I saw him as a human being.

I’m going to share a little-tiny bit from my memoir of when he entered my life at the age of seven:

He had thick arms and legs from spending his weekends cycling from his bachelor apartment in Century City down to the beach. He LOVED Barry White, karate and it seemed to me that he bathed in Paul Sebastian cologne. His hair was very thin on the top of his head and he had big white teeth that appeared through his crow bar mustache when he threw his head back every time he laughed. He had a good laugh. It came from the bottom of his stomach and it was happy and loud.

Sometimes he would lift me onto his strong shoulders to help me have a better view or carry me in his arms. There were times I would pretend to fall asleep on the couch so he could carry me to my bed at night. I felt very happy to receive so much attention, acceptance and affection from him. He was the closest thing to a father that I had and I fed off of it like a hungry child.

I used to climb onto the stool that was underneath the telephone on the wallpapered kitchen wall to call him.

“Yello”, he said in a sleepy voice.

He was a bartender and worked nights at the French Creole restaurant, Laffites on La Cienega Blvd.

“Hi!” I said with a lot of excitement while I twirled around on the stool and wrapped myself in the long yellow cord, ignoring that he was half asleep. “What are you doing?” Not waiting for him to answer, I continued, “Next time we come over can I get two slices of pizza instead of one?” I smiled into the phone receiver.

My Mom married him December 4, 1981. We moved into a cute triplex with a backdoor and all.

My Mom worked in Malibu as a housekeeper so it was up to him to get me and my older brother fed and off to school. Every morning when my Mom left he climbed into my bed to keep me and my brother company, only thing is that I could never go back to sleep because he grinded his teeth so much!

He jumped out of bed when it was time to get up and ran to the corner liquor store for donuts and milk for our breakfast. I sat between his legs when he brushed my hair into pig tails that ALWAYS came out lopsided, but I never complained.

We celebrated our first Christmas as a family there. All the family came over with gifts and placed them under the tree. It was then I realized I did not have a gift for him and panic flooded my tiny body. I needed to give him something. He meant so much to me and he had been so caring towards me. I did not want to disappoint him. I ran into their bedroom and scanned the room. My eyes fell upon the most valuable item in the room, the alarm clock.

I quickly ran into the kitchen with the alarm clock in my hand. Desperately I searched the cabinets, flinging doors and pulling drawers open. Then I noticed the red tin container that had been filled with sugar cookies on the counter and dumped the white paper cups out and jammed the bulky square clock into it. The top and bottom lid would not meet to make the hollow click sound no matter how much of my weight I placed on it, so I grabbed scotch tape and wrapped the container shut.

I re-entered the living room and placed the gift under the tree just in time. I watched in excitement as he opened my gift and when he did, he smiled and I smiled.

Three months later my Mom became pregnant. My Mom still bathed and washed my hair. Only now my Stepdad had told her he longer wanted her doing that because she could hurt herself from bending over the bath tub. I began taking my baths and washing my hair in the bathroom with the door closed.

The rejection I felt was abrupt. No more watching him grind his teeth in the early morning, no more lopsided pig tails, no more milk and donuts.

His blood was about to be born. ~

It’s been a year and a half. I think we are still in shock. This type of thing is what you hear on the news, never thinking death will actually touch your family. It touched ours and we are still dealing with it, each in our own way.

He was a good man. He really was. He was extremely sensitive and deeply hurt. But, no matter what he had your back. He was loyal. It sounds crazy because of the many, many years of torment I went through but I know that man had mad love for me in his way and his way was to always be there when it counted. The times I was in the hospital for days and in and out of a deep sleep. He was always there dressed in his work uniform with his scooter helmet in hand watching me sleep. There were times I didn’t wake up but knew he had been there because the room smelled of him. The times he tried so hard to get me to learn my multiplication tables (it was absolute torture for me) and only he knew how cook tortillas con huevo to perfection.

It was his time to move on, I get it.

He left behind a lot of homework for us.

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