Mama Mia, part deux

*part 1: http://musefromabroad.blogspot.com/2009/03/mama-mia.html

This picture was taken the day that my parents met. That's my mom at 14 on the far right, my aunt Joyce is the tomboy in the middle, my uncle Bobby is second from the left in the beret, and the rest of them are neighborhood kids. When my dad passed away in 2003, I heard the story of how they met for the first time. I was visiting for his funeral, which was taking place the following day, and my aunt and uncle were driving me around the old neighborhood where my parents grew up. We had just come from visiting my Aint (aunt) Big Fat, my grandma's sister, who now lives in the retirement home that was once the old church where they went to Catholic school, when my aunt told me the story. She had been hanging out with my uncle and some of the neighborhood boys, one of them my dad, when they saw my mom walking down the street. "As soon as he saw your mama, he said who is THAT! then he told us he'd catch us later and he ran down the street to catch up with her," she told me.

That was 8th grade. They got married when they were 23/22 (they share a birthday, exactly 1 year apart), and I was born when they were 26/25. My brother was born 5 years prior to that to a different mother but it took my father 25 years to admit to it. Anyway, it didn't take my mom but 2 months after my birth to decide she'd had enough of him and the midwest and wanted a new life for us.

When we arrived in California, Chicken and Cookie, our cousin's sisters in law, picked us up from the airport in a "big, raggedy station wagon," my mom said. "I felt like the beverly hillbillies. We went to baggage claim and there were all these designer bags coming down the conveyor belt - Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Polo...and then there was my boxed up bassinette, all taped and tied up by my daddy and them." It was the beginning of the rest of her life.