The Things I Can Tell You About My Dad And Bonus Dad

My mother and father were married in 1953. My mother grew up poor and her father-in-law promised her a wardrobe when they married. This is a young woman that was used to a pair of shoes once a year for school and by the time school was out it was no shoes for the summer. She was naive but hopeful.

She was also pregnant. She was a June 1953 bride, and I was born in January of 1954. My parents had four more children after me and they may have had more but my father died on my tenth birthday when my youngest brother was five months old.

My mother explained the number of children by saying they were of the Catholic faith and that meant large families.

Mom had kids to care for and she was a really good cook. I could see how my parents loved each other. I never saw my dad hit my mom or my mom hit my dad.

I remember my dad taking us to the circus one year when my sister couldn't go as she had the measles. Our mom stayed home to care for her and dad took three of us at the time. We brought my sister back a cupie doll.

I remember his friend from Red Lake, who was an artist. I was thinking he could draw anything. We went to Red Lake each year on the 4th of July to see his friend and attend the powwow there. I would dance and I remember it being so much fun.

My family was a happy. I don't remember dad changing diapers or taking us anywhere alone except on that circus trip. I don't think dads did that back then. I know from time to time now in seeing fathers with their children I think about how I never saw that when I was growing up.

At the Children’s Museum, recently there were more dads with kids than families or mothers with kids.

I remember my dad with his siblings. Everyone laughed so hard that their faces turned red. I discovered my face would turn red also when laughing like that. We visited his family on certain holidays and when his brother that was on relocation out east would come home.

He loved his siblings and his family. And he loved those trips to the White Earth reservation and Naytahwaush, Minnesota, where he grew up and where many family still lived. As a child and an adult, I have enjoyed family on both sides. Both sides of my family are from there.

I have very few old people living now. Cousins and nieces and nephews but not many are older than I am.

My dad was a welder and I am married to a retired welder now. Dad had fallen from the high bridge in St. Paul and much later he died on the job. He fell to his death from a second-story building.

My mother was a single parent until she met Bob. He was divorced and had children that his ex-wife wouldn’t let him see. I met her and understood how she would be that way. As a young girl, I thought of her as a mean woman.

I watched her wrestle with Bob. She started it right in our living room and he did his best not to get hurt or hurt her. I haven’t seen anything like that before or since then. I thought that only happened when people were drinking and they weren't drinking.

She was the sister of my second cousin’s wife. Many years after his divorce my mother and Bob began a friendship that lasted for the rest of my mother’s life. They had a romantic relationship long enough to have a son.

I was 19 when Tim was born. Bob was like a hen with one chick. He doted on that boy as did the rest of the family.

As a friend of the family and later as a bonus dad, he helped me with all my first vehicles. I had many cars that were a problem. He was a pretty good mechanic. My mom used to say Bob was a jack of all trades, a master of none.

He worked in the woods and drove a truck. He was always there to support my mother with anything she needed help with. He lived in her house. She told me once that they didn't marry as she would have lost benefits from my dad.

I loved watching Bob and my youngest brother Tim together. Bob taught Tim a lot and bought him a lot of toys. Dirt bikes at a very young age. Always bigger and bigger toys, snowmobiles, 4-wheelers. I always thought of them both as wheeler-dealers. Trading up from a smaller to a larger toy.

They were both pretty mild-mannered and well-liked. Both truck drivers. Both could talk about trucks and toys all day. Both are now deceased.

I was happy with the dad and bonus dad I had as was my mother! There were struggles but for today, I wish to think only of the good things!