1967 Ethel Magee: Part 3

“Just because your mother’s crazy doesn’t mean she’s not right.”

~ My therapist, 2011

At some point in 1968, my father came home a little early one evening. I know he was early because it was still full daylight outside. That was while he was running his own used car lot out on IH-45; I remember that he rarely came home before darkness fell in those days. I suspect it was summer because I was wearing my green stretch polyester shorts that contributed to the sweating on the back of my hefty little thighs causing them to stick to surfaces, especially to vinyl car seats. Those were accompanied by my tight blue short-sleeved t-shirt that could barely contain my round fat upper torso. I believe that day was one shortly after Mother had started working the dinner shift at Chow’s Chinese restaurant, a forty-five minute drive past all the upwardly mobile sub-divisions and the country club golf course on FM-1960. Daddy had convinced Mother that the household was in dire financial straits and that she must get a job to keep us all from going asunder. Whether that was true or not I have no way of knowing. His propensity for lying about money to control and to terrify my mother was a theme from the beginning to the end of their marriage. It was also the trigger of one of most catastrophic land mines he laid in my psyche and I am still dealing with the fallout.