All My Exes Live In Texas

As I have mentioned before, I tried this blogging thing a few years ago. I kept one at the old Yahoo site, and a few over at the mostly defunct Myspace. They weren't bad, they just lacked direction. The same could probably be said for me at the time, but adjusting to not being able to work was a long and difficult process. Anyway, for those of you who didn't read those, no biggie, not much to explain to put you on my page.

Sirens on the Catclaw is a bad pun of sorts. Lorelei was the Siren of the Rheine. The beautiful mermaid, who sat on a rock, in some pretty treacherous waters, sang and brushed her long hair, luring sailors onto the rocks, and to their deaths. There is a Lorelei rock in Germany, and it comes from this very old legend. In Abilene, Texas, where I was born, there are no running rivers. There are a series of creeks, sometimes flowing, sometimes not, and a few small lakes, nothing to write home about. The one closest to my house is Cat Claw Creek, which one also may pass on the way to nursing home row. Old Anson Road has several nursing homes along its length, and the sound of sirens is a daily occurrence.

I had my share of “starting over” opportunities in Abilene. My brother Steve joined the Army and went to Vietnam as a medic. He was killed in action in 1968. My family of origin began to unravel. The threads were already loose and that was the beginning of the end. My parents got an opportunity to trade our small home for a larger home, only a few blocks away. By the spring of 1970 my parents had dropped all pretenses, and were getting divorced. I dealt with the loss of my brother, my sister moving in and out, parents changing houses, and dating other people. My world was blown apart. I was 10 years old. Both parents remarried, Dad for 5 turbulent years, and Mom stayed with my Stepdad for nearly 20. My Mom and Edd moved to Plains, Texas for a couple of years. That’s a whole blog or 12 on its own, but the lesson that ties with this blog was that I fell in love for the first time. If you think puppy love isn’t the real thing, doesn’t rip your heart out and make you want to die, you have never been a broken hearted 14 year old girl. That same broken, extremely vulnerable woman child returned home to Abilene, and moved into Dad’s house, old bedroom, and tried to fit in. Dad’s marriage was in the process of major meltdown. I had built some majorly serious walls around me, but my self-esteem had taken some near mortal blows, and I ended up in a situation where I was raped by a “date” the autumn after my 15^th birthday. I found comfort in my many male friends, but did not date much after that. My walls were like entire castle fortresses by then. I had a male friend that I became very close to. His parents moved to their retirement home the summer before our senior year. Their attempts to get us to give it time, to explore other options, only made us more determined, and at the end of that year, two weeks after high school graduation, we got married. I was 17. We moved to Waco, Texas, and began to play house, future exes in the making.

Waco Texas 1978