Karen’s Place

Not long after high school one of my friends and one of my brother’s friends began dating. This was fun for us because it began a merger of sorts of our friends. For a good year or so we all hung out every weekend. Pretty soon the two friends got married and had their first child. I was involved with this child from the get go, I was even in the delivery room when he was born. I loved him so much. I was fortunate enough that his parent’s had complete trust in me and from the time he was an infant I would watch him or take him places with me, sometimes to give the new parents a break, sometimes just because I wanted to. He and I were buddies even as an infant and toddler.

When he was about five years old his parents began having severe problems in their marriage and began arguing constantly. These two didn’t care who they were around or where they were. Honestly, it was mostly the wife. She was a red head personified; she had a temper no one wanted to mess with. The poor husband couldn’t win most times. I began taking the child more and more we would go to the park, the zoo, and the circus-heck just to the mall. Anywhere so that he didn’t have to be in the house to hear the arguing. I know that was not my place, but it broke my heart to see this little boy have to live in such an environment. Not long after, the parents split up and (luckily) the child and his new little brother lived primarily with their Dad. Sadly I lost touch with them and until last night I never saw the children again.

Last night my brother’s friend got remarried. I’m very proud of him. He began dating this nice lady maybe around 10 years ago (that would be probably about 2 years after his divorce), she herself had a daughter from a terrible divorce. My brother was talking to his friend’s Dad and asked why they had waited so long to get married. The Dad said about a year ago the boy’s Dad had come to him and said “well, the boys are pretty much grown now (15 and 17), I think I’ll go ahead and get married”. Wow, I have to respect that. I really do. In the process of his conversation with my brother, he asked the friend’s dad if he’d seen the crazy ex-wife lately and the chatted about that for awhile. Then (from what my brother tells me) the dad recognized me. He came over to me and took my arm…

The friend’s family is full Mexican and dad does not speak English well.

He looked me square in the eye and said, “you used to take care of the boy?” I told him yes I did. He just simply said “you do good thing”. I couldn’t believe it. I knew what he meant, but I’d felt so guilty all these years for how crazy the ex-wife had turned out so I felt like I had to make sure he knew that I had NOTHING to do with her anymore. So I told him. He just took my arm again and said it again “you do good thing, I used to tell my wife every time you came to pick him up. You were doing good.” Then he hugged me.

You never know the impact or footprint you are leaving on people when you are doing it. This was such a small thing; in fact my brother even teased me for getting choked up over it. But for him to make a point to tell me, it meant so much.