Terra Orndorff

I Got It From My Momma

            Oh, that Carmen. Love of my junior high life. Five years older than me. Perfectly reasonable. My uncle’s best friend, I spent a lot of time with them. He politely never minded a twelve-year-old girl hanging with them. I consciously tried not to lose my cool, forcing Uncle Alan to banish me. Being with them let me forget the house rules. At this stage, I had four more years before I was allowed to date. Yet my fantasies persisted. Silly girl.

            Let’s get this straight: I felt like I grew up with Carmen the same way I grew up with Alan. As the youngest of the brood, Alan was only five years older than me. We lived across the pond from each other – literally. More friend/brother than uncle. I idolized him. All his friends knew me since he had no problem letting me tag along. So when junior high started (seventh grade in my day), and I moved to the junior/senior high hall with all the seniors acknowledging me, I felt extremely cool.

            I carried the crush for ages. Buried in my heart. Never telling him, of course. The horror! Can you imagine? It never dawned on me Alan would tell him. Carmen ate it up, though. He fed into it like a waterfall feeds a river. Always made sure to save me a dance, sent a “secret admirer” carnation and card for Valentine’s Day. A few years later he even came to the house with Alan to see me off for my first prom.

            Carmen and I never discussed the crush. No one ever does. We’ve lost touch over the years, and I haven’t seen him since Mammaw’s funeral. He provided me something throughout those years, though. I wish I could contact him. Thank him. I was an awkward pre-teen and teen. Acceptance? Impossible to find. Carmen appreciated me for me. Never recoiled at the seventh grade girl with a not so secret crush. He always treated me like a friend, and that meant everything.

            It’s funny. Apparently young me had a type. Polite country boys. I remember another crush. This one much less secret as Mammaw Mae informed the boy every time we saw him.

            Jim worked at the grocery store, and I saw him almost every Friday during summer vacation when Mammaw drove in for groceries. Probably five, maybe six, years older. Maybe not. What I do know is I always felt he would never look at me like that. I was too young, a silly girl. He always felt beyond reach. So much older.

            Whatever notion I had of his age, Jim always treated me kindly. Talked to me as we’d go through the store, laughed as he bagged for us because Mammaw, once again, was telling him he was my moon and stars. On Saturday it all happened again, minus the teasing from Mammaw, when Mom came in to get groceries. The store was overcast when we went, and Jim wasn’t working.

            Somehow, when I was fifteen, I began talking to Jim on the phone. Only for a while. But those conversations filled my soul. Lifted me to the moon. There was no time to establish anything, though, because he joined the Navy. If it sounds like I’m preemptively making excuses, it’s because I am. I regret we didn’t have time. I regret I was too young to understand. I regret I wasn’t more emotionally mature. You’ll see.

            Jim came to the house to see me before he left. The one and only time he came. I still feel his hand on my face and his lips on mine. I still see the envelopes with the aircraft carriers floating across the bottom that held his letters.

            But that is where the dream ends. Even with his letters and mine back to him, I didn’t know what we were. Was he my boyfriend? My friend? We never discussed it, and the letters really provided no insight. Apparently, I needed it spelled out because what happened was an accidental Dear John letter. I didn’t even know that’s what I had done until my husband spelled it out for me many, many years later when I told him this story.

            You see, there was a guy. He apparently carried a long-term crush on me. (That alone blew my mind. I had crushes. People didn’t crush on me.) Finally, as I was working the Dairy Queen drive-thru, he gathered his courage and asked for my number. He called that very night, and we talked every day. In a letter to Jim it felt right to tell him. Honesty is the best policy. Maybe I wanted him to write back with, “No. I love you.” I don’t know what I expected when I told him I was going on a date with Xavier. What I got was, “That’s good. Xavier’s a nice guy.” Thinking I must have been right – we were simply in the friend zone, I wrote back.

            And never received another response.

            Apparently, I was incorrect in my deduction.

            When my husband told me I had effectively sent Jim a Dear John letter, something those in the military are terrified of receiving, my heart shattered. That letter must have hurt. I felt – feel – terrible. My natural instinct, as we’ve gathered, is to want to reach out. To apologize. Explain I didn’t know. He’s married now, though. Honestly probably forgot all about my existence. So that worked out.

            Yeah. When I crush, I crush hard. As my daughter would say, I got it from my momma.

            I don’t know when Alf set his sights on my tall, red-headed vision of a mom. From the stories, it sounds like high school, but to be fair, maybe early to mid-twenties? I know he was older than her.

            And married.

            With children (I think)

            Mom and Alf began a relationship. An affair on his end. In all honesty, it never ended. Just experienced lulls.

            Alf demonstrated no subtlety, no discretion. His wife knew. I think the whole town knew. Between Mom getting back from Montana when she was twenty-six and marrying Dad, I don’t know what happened. Did they pick up then drop back off? What I know is Mom married Dad, moved out of town, and lived her life as a wife and mother, working a full-time job forty-five minutes away in the opposite direction of home, over an hour from Alf. She never really let go, though. She told me once Alf was like a box on a high shelf. Every now and then, in her mind, she’d get that box back down and open it up, reliving moments.

            At some point, Alf divorced. Mom and Dad divorced. Mom remarried. I liked Roger a lot. Not at first, of course. I was a teenager after all. But he tolerated my mouthy rebellious teenagery and was (and still is) the only constant male figure I had.

            Alf left Mom concert tickets on her car. Didn’t say who they were from. But Mom knew.

            Mom loved Roger. But she had to know she was right so she sent me in her stead. Mind you, I’d never met Alf. I knew who he was, of course, but we never spoke. Mom needed to know, though, and her going was not an option. So I went. I think it was Alan Jackson. Leann Rimes opened? You’d think I’d remember the concert I went to with a stranger.

            Disappointment flashed in his eyes for a brief moment, but he politely covered it and made small talk. I love a concert, but I hated every second of this one. Left shortly after the opener. If memory serves, and it doesn’t always serve, I feel I went through this again with another concert. Tim McGraw maybe. I’m not sure that memory is real. My memories could simply be tangling with each other. I wish I could ask Mom to clear it up. I know I saw Tim McGraw, but I’m not sure of the situation.

            Mom and Roger eventually divorced. Then remarried. Then divorced again. Shit happens. They remained friends, always loving each other. He remained the dad I needed and the best one I ever had.

            But events transpired with Alf, and things went to hell in a handbasket.

            Mom and Alf were friends. With benefits? I can neither confirm nor deny that. He was always around, though. At the local coffee joint, another of their friends, Agatha, would join them in conversation. She worked there and was another constant. Mom and Agatha were friends. Mom and Alf were friends. Agatha and Alf were friends. I will swear on a stack of Liliths Mom talked Alf into asking Agatha out if, for no other reason, to stop him from coming over. She had grown over the years, you see. She didn’t need to take that box off the shelf anymore. Alf? He stayed the same.

            Alf and Agatha got married. Guess he took the hint. This is where I can only say what needs to be said bluntly. The trio ended. Kaput. Agatha released the bitch she contained, jealous of the history between Mom and Alf. Too insecure to let the friendship continue despite her marriage only coming about because Mom encouraged it. And Alf? Just a set of balls too shriveled from getting kicked. He allowed the friendship to end.

            When Mom passed, I took the road less traveled by either of them, the high road. For about ten seconds.

            It felt right to reach out. To let them know. They had, at one time, been thick as thieves. Luckily, Agatha made it easy. Nothing like a shared Facebook page. Trust issues much? No problem. Two birds, one message. With the message sent, explaining what happened and details for the celebration of life, I took a drink of wine and moved on.

            Until the reply came.

            I wish I still had it so I could put it here. The long and short went like this, “I don’t know why you felt like telling us this.”

            That high road? Yeah, I jumped right off and into the gutter.

            “I thought you’d want to know since at one time you had all been friends. I didn’t realize you’d be an ass about it. My apologies.”

            I hope I waited long enough for her to see the message before I blocked her.

            My mom and I. When we felt things, we felt them deeply.