My mom is a single mom. She's raised my sister and me since we were eight and six years old respectively. I realize the image of a single mom raising two kids alone is somewhat less than ideal. However, my mom was different. She was amazing. She also had a lot of financial help and didn't have to work. She was able to focus on maintaining a nice, clean home and raising us.
In the ten years my mom and dad had together, they managed to buy a house and have two children. The house came first. My dad worked in an aircraft assembly plant and had a good income. Good enough that my mom didn't have to work. They bought the house before they were married and dad spent time painting and fixing small problems before they tied the knot. The house was a two-story, three-bedroom bungalow in a small neighborhood where the houses were further apart than you see today. The bedrooms were upstairs and shared a single bathroom. Downstairs was a parlor, kitchen, dining room, small powder room and the single garage.
One of the major projects my dad did was to replace the shower over tub configuration in the bathroom on the second floor with a slightly larger, step-in shower with clear glass doors.
My sister, Janet, arrived two years after they married and I, Bobby, came two years later. For the next six years my dad was a dynamo outside the house installing and maintaining landscaping and my mother just as dynamic in furnishing and maintaining the interior.
When I was six years old and two weeks before my parent's tenth anniversary, my dad leaned against a railing thirty-five feet above the assembly floor at work and fell over when it gave way. He bounced off an airplane under construction and landed on the cement floor. They rushed him to the hospital where he never regained consciousness. He died three weeks later.
The company paid the two years pay insurance policy quickly and offered my mother a financial settlement without admitting responsibility. Mom delayed accepting the offer until after the funeral. Fortunately, at the funeral, the union representative approached my mom, counseled her not to sign anything and recommended a lawyer for her to see.
On the advice of the lawyer, mom refused every attempt to settle and went to court for a wrongful death civil suit. Mom's lawyer presented a case where dad's employer had knowingly skimped on necessary maintenance to save money, including the weakened railing. Janet and I sat behind mom during the trial and I believe our presence had something to do with the result. Both the judge and jury were sympathetic. They awarded mom an amount they calculated to equal the total income my dad would have earned if he had lived, including assumed wage increases, bonuses, pension and social security. Then they tacked on treble damages for the deliberate failure to maintain a safe working environment.
The company threatened to appeal the judgment but mom's lawyer somehow negotiated a final settlement. Given the huge amount, the lawyer reduced his fee to twenty-five percent and assisted my mom in placing the money with a reputable investment firm. Mom has been living comfortably on the earnings from that settlement ever since. She could afford almost any living arrangement she wanted but she chose to stay in the house she and dad shared. She wanted to keep the memories and the place where they happened.
Both mom and dad's parents were children of the sixties and seventies. It would be an understatement to categorize my grandparents as free spirited. My grandmother was at Woodstock in 1969 where she met my grandfather. It is a family legend that my father was conceived at the festival. My mother's parents were no less impetuous. The result was that both my parents were raised in casual environments; not quite free sex but not puritanical either. They were comfortable with incidental nudity, including skinny-dipping, but not flagrant exhibitionism.
My mother raised us in a similar manner. Between the three of us, an occasional glimpse of a tit, ass or penis was not a concern, especially with a single, shared bathroom. Over the next twelve years we shared the close quarters without guilt or embarrassment. The freedom we shared as children didn't moderate as we grew older. It was rare, but not unusual, for me or my sister to use the bathroom while the other was showering. Only my mother was more prudent. Only once do I remember her having to pee so badly that she used the toilet while I was in the shower. She was apologetic, stating she didn't think she could make it downstairs to the powder room. The steamed up glass shower door saved her any embarrassment and I thought nothing of it afterward. I think she was less concerned about sharing the bathroom with my sister.
By the time I was eighteen and a senior in high school, my sister had graduated and found a job at a car dealership. She continued to live at home to save money, she said, but I think it was easier for her to manage her social life if she couldn't entertain.
My high school senior trip was a bus trip to the city for a weekend of touring and theater on Saturday night. We left Friday after school and planned a two-night stay in a hotel, returning late Sunday afternoon. The trip consisted of fourteen guys, fourteen gals and two chaperons; Mr. Grant, the auto mechanic teacher and Ms. Pancoast, the typing teacher. The plan was to bunk two guys to a room and two gals to a room with Mr. Grant and Ms. Pancoast having their own private rooms.
During the four-hour drive, it became obvious to most of us that one or the other of the private rooms would be extraneous. Our chaperons seemed more interested in each other than with us. That encouraged the students to make alternate arrangements of their own. Soon each of the guys was repaired with a happy to oblige gal and they planned to exchange room keys after check-in. I took little interest in the rearrangement and I was ultimately paired with Cecilia. Cecilia changed her seat on the bus and sat next to me. I hardly knew her. I had seen her around school and thought she was kind of cute but I never fantasized about her. My sister filled that space.
"Are you okay with this?" she asked as she sat next to me.
"Absolutely," I responded hoping I exhibited more enthusiasm than I felt.
Later, John Clark, a linebacker on the football team, came down the aisle with a large box of condoms. He offered them to anyone who wanted them. I hesitated and Cecilia took three. I think Mr. Clark took six. Ms. Pancoast added two more. We didn't talk much but Cecilia held my hand for the rest of the drive.
At the hotel, everyone was handed a key to their room. Everyone exchanged information about what rooms they were assigned and went to their rooms. Ten minutes later, seven gals and seven guys were relocating. I stayed behind and waited. A few minutes later someone knocked on the door. When I opened it, Cecilia rolled her suitcase into the room and looked around.
"Nice room," she said. "Bigger than the room I was assigned. You have two queen-sized beds. Ours were just doubles." She looked in the bathroom. "Nicer," she exclaimed. "No tub. Big shower. Cool."
It was getting late. The plan was for everyone to get a good night's sleep and meet at eight in the morning for breakfast. I was pretty sure most everyone else were unwrapping condoms and testing the bedsprings.
I didn't know what to say. "I think we should get ready for bed," came out. "That sounded stupid," I thought.
"Do you want to go first?" asked Cecilia.
"No. Why don't you go first," I answered.
Cecilia placed her suitcase on the end of a bed and removed a small kit that I assumed contained her toothbrush and other necessary items. Next to it she placed a white nightgown. I didn't appear too short but it wasn't too long either. It wasn't transparent nor was it opaque. I could see the muted pattern of the bedspread through parts of it. She closed and put her suitcase on the floor, kicked off her shoes, picked up the items on the bed and went into the bathroom. She closed the door but I didn't hear her lock it. A few moments later I heard the shower start.
