A big disappointment for you occurred when you decided it was time to get back into flying. You went to the airport to rent a plane, but you found the planes for rent at this airport weren’t the same type you were used to flying. You did rent one of another type which was available, but I think something must have happened that frightened you. Maybe it was the fact that the controls or the handling of the plane was different, or maybe it was as you said, the airport traffic was just too heavy in New Orleans. At any rate, you only went up once.  I know you still hoped to fly, but you decided to postpone that dream until you returned to Mississippi.

****

At the end of February, Carol celebrated her eleventh birthday in the apartments. Dad, Mom and my Aunt Chris and her adopted son, Keith, who was a little older than Carol, came up for the day. They brought presents for Carol, and she opened them and presents we had gotten for her after our little party. One item I’d bought for her birthday was her first training bra. When she opened it in front of Keith, she turned crimson from embarrassment. My kids were sensitive that way. The idea of growing up didn’t seem to appeal to any of them. 

Dad drove back to Mississippi with Aunt Chris and Keith, but Mom had brought her luggage and planned to stay for a week. We had an odd telephone system in the apartments. You could dial your own number and hang up, and the phone would ring. The kids decided to play a prank on Mother. They dialed and hung up. When the phone rang, one of the girls told Mother the phone was for her. When she picked it up, Christi got on the other line and somehow managed to disguise her voice enough to convince Mom she was calling from the FBI. She told her that there was a warrant out for her arrest. She actually had Mom believing her. Mom was seriously upset. I can remember pulling silly pranks like that when I was young, so I guess they might have gotten that trait from me.  

My mom had other things on her mind, which I wasn't aware of when she told me she was coming for a visit. I learned from her that Dad had been making her life miserable. I think he was frustrated because he’d worked all his life, and after the owner retired and sold the store where he’d worked, the new owner wanted to use one of his own family to do the job Dad had been doing. Now Dad was sixty-three and without a job for the first time in his life. He didn’t know what to do with himself, and had been taking his anger out on Mom. 

She’d left him once years before, but had gone back when he begged and agreed to change his ways. He was still working then, and things had worked well for a while. I hadn’t realized when Mom wanted to come for a visit that she wasn’t planning to go back home. I got very upset when she told me. “Mom, you’re using us. You can’t do that to Dad. You know how pathetic he was when you left before. You need to talk to him, and try to work it out.”

“You know I can’t talk to your Dad. He just gets mad and curses at me. I’ve had all I can take. It’s time I did something for me. I’ve already talked to my friend, Sarah and she has room for me to stay with her till I can get a job.”

“Well you’re not leaving from here. Dad expects us to bring you home this weekend. You’re not leaving us to deal with him. He’s liable to shoot himself. He won’t know how to live without you.”

There were some tears and I felt sorry for her, but she finally agreed to go back. Maybe I was wrong, but I wasn't sure my Dad could handle being left alone. If he’d been mentally abusing me, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to stay around either. Still, I felt her leaving from our apartment would put us in the middle of their troubles. Mom was very upset to have her plans changed, but she did allow us to take her home at the end of the week. 

*** 

You did something regarding your job, which could have ended with us returning to Mississippi. You wrote a letter to the department head over your supervisor, and aired your grievances against him, which you'd been nursing for years.  You told him the reasons you found the relationship you'd had with your supervisor to be something you couldn't continue to tolerate. You asked if it would be possible to transfer to another drafting department. Otherwise you could no longer work there.

You showed me the letter before you sent it. I was extremely anxious about what the repercussions might be. I wondered if you were doing this just because you wanted to go back to Mississippi, but I didn't try to talk you out of sending it. I decided it wasn't fair for you to have to dread going to work every day, and I'd have to live with whatever happened. 

When your supervisor learned you'd asked for a transfer from his department, he was furious because you'd gone over his head. Nevertheless, the transfer was granted, and you found working conditions in the other department to be much more relaxed. I was very relieved, because I wasn't ready to leave the area.  

*** 

Something had happened at the apartment that made us uneasy about continuing to live there. We had to chain the children's bikes beneath our apartment, and a couple had been stolen. We found those abandoned in a vacant lot, by whoever had taken them, but at Christmas, one of Christi's main gifts had been a brand new banana-seat bike. It was stolen by someone only a week after she got it, and we'd never found it.

If we planned to move again, we would have to do it during the first year, in order for Chevron to move us again at no cost. I thought it was time we started thinking about buying a house. Things seemed to be going better for you, since you had transferred to another department, so you agreed to start looking.