If ever I was a child

I always wanted to make them happy or did I want them to love me so I tried my best? Doesn't really matter, does it. They showed each other affection on occasion but it always looked liked Dad loved Mom more than she loved him. I don't know why I felt that way. Maybe it was twinkle he got in his eyes every once in a blue moon. I don't remember her steel blue eyes ever having a twinkle. She had a temper; that's probably where mine comes from, I guess.

There was the morning after Thanksgiving when they had a fight. The ping pong table was set up in the living room as it was every year. Mom got so angry she smashed a record on the table. The memory has faded and I can no loner tell you the singer but it was one of her favorites. Dad walked out, got in the 5p Impala (damn I wish I had that car) and drove away. Those steel blue eyes looked into mine and she said "He'll be back. He has no where to go."  

Was it that argument or another that led to them not speaking to each other for days and using me as a messenger. "Ask your Dad what he wants for dinner?" "Tell her I don't care." Walking on eggshells. Violence. No, never. Now they would call it mental abuse. In 1960, 1965, it was life in the suburbs.

I was a smart kid. School was easy for me. School life was not. I was chubby, had asthma and an over-protective mother. As for Dad, I don't know what he thought of me really. I do remember him trying to teach me to ride a bike one day but a tire on the bike went flat, and I never got on a bike again. It was Mom who always wrote the notes, the endless notes. "Please excuse Sondra from PE/camp/anything fun or possibly dangerous because she has asthma." I never got to do anything! I was in Girl Scouts but never got to go to sleep away camp. Oh, and I do remember when I got older that I could have friends sleep over at my house but I was not allowed to stay at friend's houses---and that was Dad's rule.