“Oh, are your parents Catholic?”
That is usually the question I am asked by people newly acquainted with the idea that I am the youngest in a family of six children. And like any question that I am asked repeatedly, I have a stock answer.
“Nah, my parents just really like each other.” Sometimes I think the other person thinks I’m just being sarcastic, which honestly is a fair assumption on their part. But no, I’m being serious. My parents like each other. Also, they’re careless. But who’s complaining? Not Number Six.
My parents do like each other. It’s not just that they are still married. Most of my childhood friends came from two-parent homes. But most of my friends grew up with the knowledge that they were the reason their parents were still married. One of my friends told me once how she thought it was great that Mama always looked so happy to see Daddy when he came home; her parents were barely on speaking terms. Mama and Daddy were not staying together for the kids’ sake. They were staying together because they still liked each other, and well, the kids came out of that. So it’s not just that they are still husband and wife.
It’s that given the choice, Daddy would still use that line about being in the FBI on that brunette back in August of 1960. It’s that Mama would still opt to quit school and move across the country to marry a man she’d known only a few months.
And really, couldn’t Mama have done a lot worse with that kind of decision? She could have easily ended up with an abuser or an alcoholic or a used car salesman. But Mama got lucky (and Daddy did, too, but this is his book). She didn’t get an abusive, alcoholic, used car-selling husband. Sandra Jo could have done a lot worse and not much better than Sidney Louis. And they still like each other, still together, still in love, still crazy after all these years.
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