Everyone's Lot In Life Is Right Around The Corner To Their Dreams

My mother met my father when she was nineteen. She was an office clerk and he was a college student, about to graduate. What they had in common was living in the same apartment building. They met in the laundry room in the basement and he asked her to help him. A year earlier my mother's high school boyfriend was lost in VN. My father was forward and pushed the relationship, she was pregnant by the time he graduated, they eloped and he took her back with him to his home town.

My mother was one of seven children of a disabled rail road man, his job was as a pencil pusher in the railyard making half if what he made before he was disabled. They lived in an old house, no heating or cooling. No running water, no inside toilet. She moved to my father's parent's house, a mansion in the best part of town, servants to do the wash, to clean the toilets, to prepare and serve the meals. Her mother in law's first question was 'what is your family in?' My father's family was in oil.

My mother did her best to adapt. Along the way she met a friend, a wife from a middle class home in Tennessee. A kindred spirit. They became a lot more than that. My father's family looked the other way, it really didn't matter.

When I turned sixteen there was a large party for me, to present me as eligible for marriage. When I was eighteen I was promised to a man I had never met. When I was taken away for my wedding night my mother told me to bite my lip and never let him see me cry. It was my lot in life. I went from girl to woman overnight. The difference is what you can dream of, and accepting your lot in life.