Might as well keep going while it is fresh in my mind. So my mom is back living in Whittier working at Jack's burgers and raising Kim. She never heard from Rick and wondered what happened to him. She decides very randomly to marry a neighbor down the street, he is moving to Germany with the Army. She doesn't even really know him that well but decides she needs Kim to have a family. So they packed up and moved to Germany with this man. I wish I knew his name but I still don't know much about this period.
I know they lived in Germany for about a year and it was a good time for the most part. Except for the marriage, my mom came home to find him in bed with somebody else one day. So she packed up and moved back to the States. During this time she went to business school to learn bookeeping/accounting. She got a job in LA and worked full time, my Gramie stayed home with Kim and cared for her. During this time she started dating my dad, he had been pursuing her for sometime.
My dad always loved my mom and wanted to date her. He was still a Senior in high school when they started dating. He would ditch school to go see mom at work or so the story goes. He graduated high school, started working and dating my mom. He became a father to my sister Kim and loves her like his own. The married in the fall of 1975 and I was born the following year, Kim was 8 years old.
As far as I know family life was normal for the most part. There was a huge battle over who was in charge of Kim. Since my Gramie had raised her, she often overpowered my parent's authority over Kim. Kim didn't like having to share her attention with her new sibling and made it well known. Over the next few years, she got worse and worse behaviour wise, rebelling horribly.
In 1979 they added a sibling to the mix, another daughter Carrie. Kim was rapidly becoming a huge problem and needed a lot of attention. During this time my grandfather died very suddenly from a massive heart attack. This is when I feel life really began to change, mostly it is when I feel mom began to struggle. She lost her father and I know now there was so much more there with everything that passed before. I am sure you are wondering, did we know about Kim?
We always knew that Kim had a different father, she would play this card often when mad at Dad. Once I could read, I remember finding a notebook of my mom's with Rick's name written all over it. There also was a wedding album with pictures of my mom, her family and Kim but no groom in it. I knew they lived in Germany but not why? there were tons of weird unanswered questions lingering about. It was hard for Kim and she always wondered about her life, I know many of her problems stemmed from these things. We always thought she was a accidental pregnancy and my mom was just another teen mom.
One day our questions would be answered but not for many years. To be continued............
