Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

This is a story of my dad. He was born in Cuba to the owners of a tobacco farm. By todays standards they would be rich actually. Of course fate threw a curve ball at them and Castro laid claim to the farm.

His family now jobless and homeless took what they had left and fled to America. Needless to say there was a flood of Cubans entering the US at the time and none of them could speak the language so they ended up in one of the worst areas of Miami. Crime was high and the condition of the area was low, but they made due with what they had.

Years went by and they adapted to their new home. The kids (my father and his sister) quickly learned english. This was critical because to this day my grandmother has a hard time with it. Eventually they became US citizens as the kids made there way through the school system.

In high school my father managed to fall in with the wrong crowd. After taking a good look at where he was he chose to drop out and join the navy. To this day he believes this choice saved his life. It may have. He came to found out that while deployed all of his friends were either killed or in jail by the time he returned.

While in the navy he met his first wife. They had 2 kids together and were relatively happy. Being married to a navy man took its toll though and eventually they came to a divorce. Naturally a single man being deployed for months at a time couldn't take care of kids so his wife was given custody. Over the years his ex-wife did normal single parent things like saying they did everything good before the divorce. This strained the already rough relationship they kids had with my father. Eventually his ex-wife remarried and the kids grew to love their new father.

Now back in the navy and deployed he met his second wife. She was a nurse and my mother. Frankly she came from a very redneck background. She had a pain killer addiction which my father helped her get over. Eventually they got married and ended up having 3 kids including myself.

Things went pretty good for awhile. My father managed to get a college diploma due to being in the Navy long enough to get a free ride. The kids were all intelligent and doing well in school, and my mother had a job at the local commissary.

All good things must come to an end though. Eventually the kids started having trouble in school. It began with the oldest who was rebelling into the thug life. She became very violent and short tempered. The second oldest managed to make it to high school before she crumbled. She began disappearing for days with guys. The youngest only made it to 5th grade before he lost faith in humanity and gave up.

If that wasn't enough my mother began to put on weight after she had the youngest and she blamed him for that. Of course when some one starts packing on the pounds they look for something to blame and that child was it. Eventually her lack of personal upkeep put off my father who would always ask if she wanted to go to the gym with him. She would turn him down and instead sleep on the couch.

Eventually she relapsed into pain killers. She would make up stories and illnesses to both get her hands pain killers and to get attention. We came to realize it was Munchhausens after it was too late. Her health was irreversibly damaged due to the medication abuse. Her addiction also made her severly damage her relationship with her kids. No kid want's their mother to ask them to go buy them drugs from a drug dealer.

Eventually the kids got enough evidence to get our father to believe us when we told him she was on drugs. We found her stash hidden in a box of vitamin supplements my father bought her since her health was on the decline. When confronted with the evidence she blew it off and went to her sisters for a week. During which we all moved out. The oldest went to live with her loser boyfriend. The second child went to live somewhere I have no clue about her at this time. I went with my father. This spelled the end of his second marriage.

After this my father swore off relationships and has been taking care of his damaged kids. He has even managed to patch things up with his kids from his first marriage. One I know became a cop the other I believe went to college in Texas. His second set of kids didn't turn out so well. Both the daughters married men they didn't really love and had kids they weren't ready for emotionally or financially and then divorced them. The son has been living with his father since and avoids as much human contact as possible. It became so hard to even prove he existed to get even an ID it took a year and a loophole to get the state to issue one.

My father is a good man. Many people seem to notice this as well. When we go out for some odd reason women seem to just gravitate towards him. His wounds from his first two marriages though have caused him to close himself off from any type of romance. Instead he invests him self in his work and sports board games. He still supports his kids in anyway he can even when he shouldn't.

So it has been 12 years since his last divorce, this year his wall appears to have cracked. For the first time since he is actively pursuing a relationship. Oddly enough it started on .... Facebook. He joined to keep in touch with his kids and from there he found a group dedicated to the board games he plays. This is where he met his possible romance. It began earlier this year with talks about his games and such with the community he found on facebook and grew from there. Talks about one thing led to another and eventually they were even talking on the phone every night. My father didn't want to believe it but they were flirting with each other pretty hard. It surprised even him when he realized it.

Turns out she is interested in a lot of the same things as him. Her sense of humor is great and everything about her seems to click with him and vise-verse. It came to a head when they decided to meet for the first time. After a long flight over 1/2 the US they met up. The connection was immediate I'm told. They spent the weekend together and had an amazing time. After he returned he seemed a revitalized man.

Currently they are discussing where to go from here but the future which once looked bleak and lonely for my father now shows a light of hope. He is still in disbelief and still doubts anything will happen. I am remaining here to support him and try to help in any way I can and keep him positive. It's my wish that things work out completely and he gets the real break he deserves.

Now if you'll excuse me... /passes out