Page 49 - Layout 1
P. 49
Our Forefathers and Foremothers 37
Left
My father and me, age twelve, at Murrieta Hot Springs in the 1930s, another annual vacation spot where my parents played poker and I fought off mosquitoes. Dad is smoking a cigar. 1930s.
Below
Daddy with me at two, outside grandma’s house.
MY DADDY!
My father! My daddy! That’s what I always called him. He was so special, and the knowledge that he really loved me kept me going when things in my childhood were all mixed up. My parents were always fighting, and they were divorced after only fifteen years of marriage. My dad helped me learn to block out the “bad” by closing a curtain in my mind so I would only remember the “good.”
My father was always “flirting” with my girlfriends, and he would say to them, “Do you want to run away with me?” and every one of them said, “Yes!”
