If I was hungry for a man in the house, I can imagine mom was even more-so. It had been several long years since the divorce. She never went out, never did anything on her own. If she wasn’t at work, she was at home taking care of us. Not that she ever met any guys worth trying to date. The bus drivers she worked with were all married and cheating. And not that she wanted to go out – nightlife was never her thing.
Even if she were to find someone nice, I’m sure her conscience bothered her. Even though Grandfather strongly disapproved of her marriage to my dad, he was even more opposed to divorce. That’s probably why it took her so long to divorce him in the first place, even after all the pictures of women she’d find laying around, and obvious signs of affairs. Mom managed to feel okay about divorcing him, but remarriage was even WORSE–completely out of the question.
Still, Gramma was seriously a hopeless romantic. Half-jokingly, she read the personals in the newspaper all the time. (This was back in the day when there were only a handful listed and they weren’t the huge industry they are now.)
One day she came across one written by a “SWM” who thought women should be pampered. She showed it to my mom, and for some reason, my mom replied to it. Looking back, I’m honestly surprised that she did. She’s not one to do those types of things. She must have been lonelier than any of us suspected. She put a stamp on the letter and sent my sister out to put it in the mailbox.
Lo and behold, Fred wrote back a couple of weeks later. Out of all the dozens of letters he received, he chose my mom to write back to. They started talking on the phone for a while, and then they met for their first date. He was such a gentleman that he took all of us out – my mom, my two sisters and I — to Red Lobster. After that, they never went on a date without us. He took us to places we had never been before … Carlsbad Caverns, movies that hadn’t already gone to the dollar theater, all kinds of restaurants. VCR’s had just came out and he bought us one. He even let my mom take his Corvette home and drive it around.
It wasn’t surprising when he asked Mom to marry him a few months later. I still remember vividly, we were driving over Transmountain to go shopping and my mom wanted to know what we thought about her marrying Fred. We begged her to say yes. We were eager to be a normal family with a dad. Grandfather arranged for Fred to come over for long talks in the evenings, and I suppose he eventually approved of him.
We moved in with Fred after they returned from their honeymoon, just after I finished 5th grade in 1987. He lived only about 3 miles up the road from where I had lived all my life. Those first couple of years were a dream. We didn’t really spend much time together as a family that I remember, but it felt like a family finally.
I made friends with Sophie, the girl next door, and we became inseparable. We rode bikes, stayed out in her yard till dark playing one-on-one soccer, sat in her room and talked. I had never had such a close friend before. Then, I also became close with about 6 kids from school. Those guys were my life. For two entire years, I lived in sheer bliss with this new concept of friendship.
When I was 12 and in 7th grade, Mom started acting funny. She was tired all the time and took naps during the day. She finally told us she was pregnant. It was a shock to everyone because Fred wasn’t supposed to be able to have kids – but we were overjoyed!
However, our house was simply not big enough for that kind of addition, so we had to move again. We moved another 5 miles up the road … just yards over the state line, which was the boundary of the school I had been going to. I was completely devastated to learn that it meant I would have to change schools after I finished out my 7th grade year.
I was comforted by the birth of my brother Jesse in June. I still remember the day they brought him home. I looked in the back seat of the car, and there was this tiny little person, dressed in blue and wearing a little hat. It almost didn’t seem real. I finally had a brother! I poured my everything into that baby and that summer was beautiful.
Then school started. Our new school was much larger than the tiny one I had grown accustomed to. The people were very different and intimidating to me. I just didn’t feel like I fit in. Before that, there had never been a time in my life when I ever didn’t want to be at school. But suddenly, home became a refuge. That was foreign to me, because it had always been the other way around.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing to change.
Suddenly, Fred started acting weird. He lost his temper … a LOT. Not with mom so much, but especially with us kids and even more especially with me. I guess I had noticed subtle changes coming on, but I absolutely remember the first time it really became apparent.
**** DISCLAIMER****
Before I tell the rest of the story, I think this is a good time to insert that any details outlined here are only for the purpose of painting a picture of the story. The best parts of the story don’t come until later and there isn’t a person I know who doesn’t have some ugly things in their past. Just to note that these things aren’t told with bitterness or vengefulness or anything along those lines. I’m also choosing to leave a lot of details out this time. But some things are important to the overall picture so I have to include them. *******
Anyway, it was an evening Mom had gone to a computer class and I was watching Jesse while Fred worked outside. I loved that baby to death, and I watched over him like a hawk. But I was 13 and had no idea what diaper rash was or what caused it. When I changed him, I noticed it and asked Fred about it.
He. Blew. Up.
He screamed at me that I was careless and that I cared more about New Kids on the Block than I did my brother. I was indeed a huge NKOTB fan. Earlier in the evening, I had been watching them on Entertainment Tonight. I guess Fred saw that and figured I had been so immersed that I neglected everything else. He went on a rampage, yelling and throwing things. He went into my room and ripped every single one of my NKOTB posters off the wall and off the door. (And there were TONS. I truly was obsessed with them.) He wadded them into balls of shredded paper and stormed out.
I just stood there, stunned. I had never witnessed such anger. I had experienced unfairness – but more along the passive-aggressive lines, without all the screaming & yelling & destruction of property. When Mom came home, I ran outside crying. She was as shocked as I was. Little did I know, yet a new chapter of life had just begun.
Problems with Fred started to become a recurring thing. After that first incident, I was kind of nervous to go around him — until after a while, we just kind of acted like it didn’t happen. But the atmosphere started to change. Similar to the way it had been with Grandfather, gradually, he wasn’t as nice as he used to be. By the time my brother Bobby was born in June 1991, most traces of the old Fred that we had known when we first met him were gone.
I didn’t understand. I didn’t talk back to my parents. Well, maybe once in a while, but not like I’d seen my friends do, or like teens on TV. I generally did what I was told and stayed out of trouble. I was messy and unorganized, but I couldn’t see how that would be enough for him to dislike me so much.
Other things were happening around this time as well. First, Grandfather finally decided to move to Mexico for very long periods at a time again. He would only come back to visit in two or three week intervals every year or so. During one of those visits, I went down to spend the night with them. Of course, we weren’t allowed to wear shorts or pants there, but I didn’t really have dresses anymore. I hated the way I looked in them. Gramma had bought me a skirt that could be unzipped into shorts, so I wore that.
After dinner, my grandparents and I were outside sitting on the porch swing. Suddenly, Grandfather became interested in the zipper on my skirt. He asked, “What is the purpose of that zipper?” Gramma knew what was coming, so she tried damage control: “She has that skirt for things like P.E. at school, so she can do things without people seeing up her dress.” He got very upset. He said I was fooling the world into thinking I was wearing a skirt, when I was really wearing shorts — As if I was reveling in my sneaky trickery or something. It was ridiculous, but I was still not able to understand how ridiculous it was, since I still considered his opinion supreme. All I knew was how unacceptable I was ….again.
After that visit, I never really talked to him again. We’d visit when he came down, but I always dreaded it and I never tried to initiate any conversations. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I just didn’t know how to approach him.
Also around this time, my dad called Gramma asking if he could see us. Gramma told him no, because she didn’t think it was right since he didn’t pay child support. Thankfully, Mom saw it differently. When Gramma told her about it, Mom called down to where he was staying, and they agreed that we could meet up at a gas station in town.
I remember getting dressed for that encounter – flipping through all of my clothes, trying to find something presentable. I was so worried he wasn’t going to like me. I went into the bathroom to do something with my hair and just broke down sobbing because I was sure he was going to be embarrassed and disappointed in the daughter he created. Mom had always taught us that he cared about us in his own way and never tried to create bitter feelings in us towards him – so at least I didn’t have those to wrestle with. But I had no idea what I was going to say to him.
When we got there, we talked for about half an hour. He introduced me to my 5 year old brother Benji. And then it was over. I just couldn’t believe that the man standing there was my flesh and blood. My real dad. My biological dad. After that, it would really sting to think about him. As time when on, he tried to communicate more. I discovered I had a first cousin at our new school. Daddy started writing letters to me and sending them to me through him. He apologized profusely for abandoning us. Some days I would read his letters and then ditch class so I could cry in the bathroom.
Unfortunately, this was a dangerous time for all of these things to be happening. I had never developed good eating habits, so I was overweight. Not obese necessarily, but always about 20-30 pounds heavier than I would have liked to be. I was just starting to realize what guys looked for in a girl … and it wasn’t anything that I looked like. I became extremely self-conscious. There was a running joke in my family because anytime someone heard my shower running, they would ask “Where’s Leslie going to go?” The answer was usually, “To check the mail box”. It was hilarious, because the mailbox was just down the driveway, on our property. But the street was a main road to the school and I had no idea who would be driving by. I couldn’t go down there without showering & doing my hair and makeup to become at least slightly presentable. I stilllll felt disgusting, but at least slightly less disgusting.
My self-esteem hit rock-bottom, my guy obsession hit sky-high and I was approaching high school. NOT a good combination.
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At this point, I’m thinking AI is pretty handy … since a picture can describe my vision far better than words can.
Out of the Box 
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