My parents were like your parents, and your parents, and your parents. Well, minus the drugs I guess. But they were normal, hard-working people and they loved me and they loved each other. They just didn’t show it much, or at least not to each other that I can remember.
They both worked and sometimes opposite shifts so there were times when I didn’t see them together very often. Throughout the years, I saw them together more but they were never the ‘one spouse at the door waiting for the other spouse with a hug and a kiss’ type of couple. I think the closest I saw them was when they were bowling together.
I won’t say it was a loveless marriage, because that’s not my place. I will say that what I saw probably affected the way I look at relationships today. They were cordial, that’s the word, but loving, I don’t think so.
My mom left my dad for a while when I was about 20 or so. From what I understand, she was just tired of him calling her fat. She stayed away a while. He helped her move her stuff out and move it back again when she returned. She stayed until the end then. Right up until the day he succumbed to the cancer that ended his life.
