I wake up. It must be about 3 am. Mom is right next to me. Most kids my age wouldn’t mind sleeping in the same bed as their Mom. Only, we don’t sleep in a bed, but on a couch. Our place isn’t really big. I can see our cat Prissy asleep on the back of the couch. I really don’t want to be here. Which I know is what I shouldn’t be feeling, but I can’t help it.
I guess to know why, we have to go back and tell a little story. This story all begins when my Father met my Mother. Monte Smith was a local boy from Tremonton, a farming community in northern Utah. Barbara Wood was from the same town. I wish I could add in a poetic notion of them being High School sweethearts, but that isn’t this type of story. Monte was the first of 10 children, and he found out (like most local farm boys do) the wonders of drinking at an early age. Monte’s parents, Albert L “Smitty” and Vida Smith, were hard working farm folk. Smitty had a construction company and worked long, and hard hours. They had a farm, raised horses, it was the perfect country up bringing. However, Monte like many kids, didn’t get along exactly too well with his father.
Barbara Wood was a quiet and shy girl. Her parents had owned an unsuccessful farm, and eventually had to sell it. Her parents Verle and Doris Wood, were some quiet people who kept to themselves most of the time. Barbara was a quiet child. It goes without saying when Verle and Doris’ marriage was on the rocks most of the time. Verle kept a local girlfriend that he would hang out with at the local bar. Doris found this rather bothersome and kept to herself most of the time, completely leaving Barbara in her own world, to sort everything out herself.
I also wish I could say that my parents met at a romantic spot, and that there was a story about it that was sweet and beautiful. However, my parents never told me about how they met or why. In fact, any questions about such a subject were usually diverted and avoided. This conjured images in my teenage mind later, about drunken parties or meeting in a bar, or even more illicit behavior. When all was said and done, Monte Smith and Barbara Wood were married in the 70’s. Later, I came along and life would never be the same for the two of them again.
I often used to imagine if time travel was invented, I’d try to go back and tell them.
“Barbara and Monte, you’re going to be making the worst mistake of your lives. Do something else with your lives. Be something different, do something different.”
My first memory was of a birthday party. Mom was married to a man named Bob. Bob was Mom’s second husband, although I never heard her refer to him as such. I can remember getting a walking AT-AT from the movie The Empire Strikes Back. I remember playing with it in Mom and I’s room, a two bed guest room in Bob’s house. There were a lot of kids that I didn’t know, neighbors, local kids, a huge amount of people. There were a lot of awkward glances, contorted faces, and other displays of human social paranoia. Eventually, I got sick of it, and just ended up in my room.
Bob’s house was a quasi-farm in the middle of Farmington. Early in the morning, the rooster would crow, and we’d wake up to fresh eggs that would have to be collected from the small chicken coop in the back yard. I spent many a morning gathering eggs. I had never seen chickens before. I didn’t like them too much, they’d peck and annoy my young hands. Bob lived downstairs while Mom and I lived upstairs. Mom used to tell me…
“Terence, never go downstairs without me. We only stay upstairs”
“Alright Mom” I would answer, “I won’t go downstairs”
However, little boys rarely mean what they say. I can remember downstairs was always dark. It was mysterious, like it was some other dimension. I was always terrified of the downstairs rooms. I always had a dark feeling in the hallows of my soul. I would feel icy fingers feel like they were wrapping around my whole body. Later in life, we would find out that Bob would be accused of sexual abuse from some of the children from his first marriage. Mother always wondered and worried if anything went on in those short lived days of being married to Bob.
This is just a little bit of the things that have gone on in my childhood. I hope to complete this book sometime, and maybe give a voice to a lot of those kids growing up in LDS communities and showing how Life, The Church, and how children growing up in single parent homes worked in our own little Utah.
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