Five

My family wasn’t one to dither about things.  Determined to turn Dad’s sudden departure into a positive experience, the following week, we bought white paint for his old room.  Mom painted the walls while I did the trim and doors.  We bought white permanent press curtains at the five and dime in Woodlawn, and a few pieces of furniture from flea markets. We brought the sofa up from the basement and recovered it with a fresh brown corduroy fabric and added a few pillows for a television room.  

For the first time since I could remember, it felt like the tension in the pressure cooker lifted.

That summer, my mother got a National Science Foundation grant to study geology at the Ohio State University Field station in Ephraim, Utah. We drove her mint green Rambler station wagon with a white top across the country. 

It was the best summer ever.  We stopped in a bunch of caverns, old mining towns in the west, and arrived in Utah after a week on the road. 

We stayed in the Greenwood Hall in Snow College, where the graduate students with families were housed.  I had my own room. 

The summer was an adventure.  I started a business ironing clothes of the graduate students attending the geology field station.  Business was booming and I could hardly keep up with the workload.  It was great to have spending money also met a few of the locals in town and spent a lot of time with them.

When I was living in Utah that summer, I received a letter from my father. 

“Honey, I married a woman named Caral.  She is a college graduate and thirty nine years old. “

That was all he said about his marriage.  He wished me a good summer and enclosed a fresh five dollar bill for spending money for me.

It was hard to leave the west.  I thought I would always return and eventually settle in Utah.  But I had two more years of high school and then college ahead of me.  I sure was not ready for college.  I would give it a try.

 I corresponded to a few throughout high school.  Most went off to college and I loss touch with them. 

I rarely saw my father after that year.