There’s someone I haven’t introduced yet who was incredibly instrumental in my life. After Mommy divorced John, she dated a few guys. She never introduced me to any of them, but I was busy with my own high school activities and social life, so I didn’t give much thought to Mommy and her dates.
My disinterest ended when she nervously told me she had invited a man named Bob over for dinner.
Wait…what?
Honestly, I was a stupid, self-centered teenager who didn’t quite grasp that this dinner might be kind of important. I was mostly annoyed that I was being forced to stay home for the evening and meet Mommy’s new guy.
I don’t recall what Mommy cooked that evening, but she was a fantastic cook, so I know it was delicious. Before we could even begin eating, however, trouble erupted.
If you’ve been following me, then you already know about Niki Nowser. Ever since she was a puppy, Niki had ALWAYS sat next to me on the bench at our dinner table. She never got on the table itself…well, except for that one infamous Thanksgiving involving the apple pie. Otherwise, she simply sat beside me. Before Willy the cat passed away, he too stretched across the back of the bench behind me while we ate.
On this particular evening, I had set the table, as that was always my job. Mommy believed it was important to properly set silverware, napkins, and glassware. She taught me well, so everything was arranged appropriately when the three of us…ummm…four of us sat down for dinner.
Bob looked at Niki, then Mommy, then me, then back at Niki and declared, “I cannot eat with a dog staring me in the eye at the table.” Mommy glanced at Bob. I glared at Bob. Then Mommy looked to me and asked me to put Niki in my bedroom. WTH?
I really wanted to tell her I’d take Niki and my dinner into my room and we’d eat together. But I knew exactly how that would end. Mommy didn’t tolerate bullshit. Besides, she’d never brought a date home before. Even a clueless teenager understood that this was an important evening. Grudgingly, I took Niki to my room while we ate dinner. Bob was engaging and easy to talk to. Aside from his dog-exiling policies, I reluctantly admitted I liked him.
As Bob spent more time with us, it became rather obvious that he was non-drinker. Mommy often enjoyed a glass (or two) of wine with dinner. One evening Bob also had a glass of wine and I noticed he was more chatty than normal; but I was my normal oblivious self when it came to adult antics. Until I wasn’t!
After dinner Mommy mentioned that she needed to pick something up at the drugstore and Bob said he’d take her. I don’t recall why I tagged along, but at some point, we all found ourselves in different aisles. That was when I heard Bob say in a loud whisper that only drunk people believe is quiet, “Hey Polly! Look it here. These say they’re made for a WOMAN’S pleasure. Want some?” I’ll tell you, I about died right then and there as I listened to Mommy trying to shush him and move him along the aisle.
Already deciding I would walk home before enduring the uncomfortable ride home with the two of them, I came around an aisle corner and lo and behold what did I see? It was Mommy and Bob ballroom dancing to the Muzak station being played over the drugstore speakers. DANCING! In a drug store aisle, like they were the only two people in the entire world. At the time, my embarrassment was beyond total. In hindsight – I know how few people on this earth ever find that kind of deep, all-encompassing love they had – even if it took a glass of wine to kindle the flames.
Besides their love of dancing, Mommy and Bob were both in the insurance business, which made for incredibly BORING dinner conversations. Mommy worked for an agency and Bob was a marketing representative for a large insurance company, so they had plenty in common.
Despite his unforgivable position on dogs at the dinner table, Bob quickly became an integral part of our lives. I once heard him tell people at a party that he had walked into an insurance agency hoping to drum up business and all he could see was a pair of legs sticking out from beneath a desk. He claimed he saw those legs and immediately fell in love.
Of course, Mommy had beautiful legs. She had always maintained her dancer’s physique. As it turned out, Bob was actually an amazing dancer, even without wine. I couldn’t help but be impressed watching the two of them dance together. It was as though they shared an invisible language that nobody else could hear. Did I roll my eyes and make a huge production out of it? Oh, hell yes. But I also watched the way Bob looked at Mommy. I saw the smiles they shared and the joy they found in each other, and I couldn’t help but love the happiness between them.
They eventually had a simple justice-of-the-peace ceremony with only the two of them present. I suspected marriage was coming, but they didn’t tell me until after it happened.
Soon afterward, they purchased a really cool mid-century home in a suburb of Dayton. In hindsight, it couldn’t have been a better setup for a teenager and two adults completely smitten with each other.
I was afforded what was essentially a mother-in-law suite on the opposite side of the house. I had my own bathroom and direct access to the kitchen. On the other end was their bedroom, TV room, and bath. The basement had also been remodeled, making it a great place to hang out with friends and stay away from the dumb adults.
The arrangement worked out well for everyone involved. Mommy got to focus on being a newlywed while I enjoyed a little independence. Unfortunately, when given enough independence, I was usually more than capable of finding trouble all by myself.
Kelly being grounded was pretty much a normal state of existence. When I turned sixteen and started working at Wendy’s, Mommy was thrilled that I was excited about having a real job. Truthfully, I loved the freedom it gave me. Even when I was grounded, I could still go to work.
What Mommy and Bob didn’t realize, at least not right away, was that I had fallen in with a crowd that was older than me and significantly more adventurous than they probably should have been. For example, there was a popular club directly across the street from the Wendy’s where I worked in downtown Dayton. One of the girls I worked with gave me her college ID, which made it surprisingly easy to get into the club with the rest of the crew after our shifts ended.
It was there that I discovered reggae music and immediately fell in love with it. Poor Mommy. One day I was listening to Neil Diamond and John Denver with her, and the next she was trying to understand how Bob Marley had become the soundtrack of my life.
It was also at that club that I was introduced to pitchers of Long Island iced teas. That turned out to be a life lesson. The last thing I remember from that evening was my manager driving me home and physically carrying me to the front door. He rang the doorbell and ran like hell. Mommy opened the door and, as I fell through it, I promptly puked all over her. She got me cleaned up while simultaneously crying, screaming, and trying to figure out where she had gone wrong in life. Then she put me to bed.
But the evening was far from over.
As I was trying to convince the room to stop spinning long enough for me to focus on getting some rest, Bob burst into my room and flipped on the overhead light. It quickly became obvious that he wasn’t angry because I had gotten drunk. He was furious because I had worried Mommy sick. She had spent the entire night awake, unable to sleep, terrified that something had happened to me.
Damn. That one hurt.
I could deal with Mommy’s screaming. I could even deal with the occasional backhanded slap. God knows I earned every one of them.
But Bob’s lecture hit differently.
He wasn’t angry because I had broken the rules. He was angry because I had hurt someone he loved. That was probably when I first realized something important about Bob. He understood me better than Mommy ever could.
And more importantly, in hindsight, I felt the weight of making Mommy happy taken off my shoulders. Bob was making her happy. I couldn’t see it then – but I do see it now.
I was so conflicted my entire life. I wanted to make Mommy happy; but what made her happy didn’t usually make ME happy.
Bob saw things in me that Mommy couldn’t because she was simply too close and too protective. One of his favorite sayings to her was, “Let her go. She’ll hang herself.” And I did. Repeatedly.
I wish I could say that experience put me back on the straight and narrow. It didn’t. I was selfish, impulsive, and convinced that I had all the answers.
Every time I stayed out too late or failed to come home when I was supposed to, I could hear Bob’s voice reminding me how much it frightened Mommy. And yet, I continued to do whatever I wanted throughout high school. I had my (true) close friends from school, the ones who genuinely cared about me and were, for the most part, “Mommy approved” that I got into ordinary teenage mischief with.
Then there was the Wendy’s crew. They were terrible for me. Somehow, I managed to juggle both worlds, and the only explanation I have for my survival is Grammy being a staunch guardian angel. She must have been absolutely exhausted during those years.
In the middle of my senior year, my life was about to drastically change. Mommy was laid off.
Not long afterward, she was contacted by a gentleman in Wisconsin who had followed her career and knew her reputation in the insurance industry. He was looking to retire and wanted someone to take over his insurance agency. And just like that, in the middle of my senior year, my life got turned upside down. I went from Catholic school I had attended since fifth grade to a public high school outside Milwaukee.
WTF?
If Mommy and Bob thought I had been a difficult teenager in Dayton, they hadn’t seen nothing yet.
Back in Dayton, I had access to a massive public bus system. I could pretty much get anywhere I wanted to go. In Wisconsin, there was no bus service where we lived. It was Bob who drove me to interviews. Bob who rearranged his work schedule around mine. Bob who took me to work. Bob who picked me up afterward. I never appreciated any of that at the time. I hate that when I look back on it now.
He did everything he could to make my life easier during a move I didn’t want, in a place I didn’t want to be, and I responded by acting like a complete pain in the ass. I was angry. I missed my friends. I hated starting over. And unfortunately, Bob got to absorb a lot of that frustration.
After somehow surviving high school and (surprisingly) graduating, I bounced from job to job.
Bob continued driving me all over while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. A couple of times, he’d drop me off at one job in the morning and pick me up from an entirely different employer later that same day because I had quit the first one and already managed to get hired somewhere else. I wish I were kidding. Bob did my taxes that first year in Wisconsin and I had ten W-2s. Ten. Apparently, stability wasn’t one of my strengths.
Eventually, I decided to move back to Ohio. I quickly discovered that Ohio wasn’t exactly waiting with a welcome-home banner. My friends had gone off to college and started building lives for themselves. The Wendy’s crowd had changed faces, but the lifestyle hadn’t changed at all. It was the same drama…the same parties…the same bad decisions.
It didn’t take long to realize that I wasn’t moving forward there either. So, I returned to Wisconsin and moved back in with Mommy and Bob. Not long after returning, I met a guy who was nearly ten years older than me. He had an ex-wife and a toddler who he wasn’t supporting. And he was living in a thousand-square-foot house with another couple and their baby.
Naturally, I thought this sounded like an excellent life plan. I began spending most of my time there. We partied. We played backgammon. We drank. We stayed up all night solving none of the world’s problems. Before long, I wasn’t getting home late anymore. I just wasn’t going home at all.
One evening, Bob called the house. In his usual calm voice, he asked if I was planning on coming home. Feeling very grown-up and rather pleased with myself, I informed him that I would be staying where I was because we had been drinking and I didn’t want to drive.
There was a long silence. Then he quietly said, “Kelly, if you’re not home by five o’clock tomorrow evening, I will bring your things to you, and you won’t be living here anymore.”
Then he hung up. Softly. No yelling. No threats. No drama. Just a statement of fact.
True to his word, the following evening he loaded my few belongings into the car, drove them over, and left them in the driveway. He never rang the doorbell. He never came inside. He simply left my things and drove away.
I suspect that was probably one of the hardest things he ever had to do. At the time, however, I was far too busy proving I knew everything to realize what it must have cost him. My new, extremely mature and responsible boyfriend and I got our own place.
I worked two jobs. He struggled to keep one. There may have been a few clues there. For months, I had little contact with Mommy or Bob. I was absolutely determined to prove I could make it on my own. But eventually, life handed me an opportunity that changed everything.
I joined the Air Force.
Hopefully, you’ve been following along on this ride and remember how that particular chapter unfolded. If not, here’s the condensed version:
Mommy became an enraged spider monkey.
Bob became my biggest cheerleader.
And somehow, he managed to keep the crazed spider monkey from wrapping herself around the landing gear of my departing aircraft.
Bob had been drafted into the Army years earlier, so military life wasn’t completely foreign to him. He understood ranks, assignments, deployments, and all the strange terminology that made absolutely no sense to civilians. More importantly, he understood me.
When I called home from overseas, Bob was usually the person I asked to speak to. One conversation still makes me laugh. I called home and asked Mommy if she could send me a couple pairs of jeans. There was a long silence.
Then she replied, “I thought they gave you uniforms.”
“ACK! Please put Bob on the phone.”
Bob was often the translator between Mommy’s world and mine. Without him, I’m honestly not sure she would have ever accepted my decision to join the Air Force. To her, I had chosen “the Army” over allowing her to pay for college. She never quite understood why I had made that choice.
For years, that dynamic remained unchanged. No matter where the Air Force sent me, Bob remained the steady voice on the other end of the phone and the bridge between Mommy’s world and mine.
Then Mommy passed.
You’d think her loss would have brought Bob and me closer together, but instead it created one of the few rough patches in our relationship.
Bob remarried and, of all the women he could have chosen, he somehow managed to find one who came with a daughter and a schnauzer.
A daughter. And a schnauzer.
The man who exiled Niki from the dinner table voluntarily signed up for another schnauzer.
Are you fucking kidding me?!?
Looking back, I wish I had handled the situation better than I did. I was hurt, I was angry, and I said things I wish I had never said.
Not surprisingly, it created a rift between us for a while. The marriage didn’t last long, and Bob eventually returned to his senses and started a new insurance marketing job , which occasionally brought him through the Dallas area.
Little by little, we found our way back to each other. For several months, we talked regularly on the phone. Then one evening I was sitting in the living room watching the local news when I heard Marty coming down the hallway talking to someone. It was Bob. He had driven up after a meeting in Dallas just to surprise me.
When I saw him, I threw myself into his arms. For just a moment, it felt like home. Like I had gotten a little piece of Mommy back. I didn’t realize how much I had missed him until that moment. After that, he visited several more times. I loved having him around. My friends, however, may have been less entertaining from his perspective.
Back then, a lot of us gathered in the garage. We’d sit around the kegerator, throw darts, smoke cigarettes, tell lies, and solve all the world’s problems.
Bob could never figure out why people insisted on hanging out in a garage with no heat or air conditioning when there was a perfectly good house twenty feet away. He’d sit in the living room and complain to anyone who would listen. To hear him tell it, we were all apparently suffering from some sort of condition that prevented us from recognizing furniture.
I’d give just about anything to hear him complain about that one more time. In 2008, I received word that Bob had passed away. I was still reeling from the loss of Marty. And I was trying to learn how to navigate life in a wheelchair after the ATV accident. Quite honestly, it was the last thing I was emotionally equipped to handle.
So I didn’t. Not really. Instead, I buried the grief somewhere deep inside and pretended it wasn’t there. It was easier to imagine that Bob wasn’t gone. Easier to believe that one day he’d simply pull into the driveway again, grinning that goofy grin of his. It took years before I was able to truly process losing him.
Eventually, I began looking at the small inheritance he left me. Mommy and Bob absolutely loved to travel. As a result, I decided that every minimum distribution I was required to take from the funds he left me would be used for travel. Every single penny. And I’ve done exactly that ever since.
The first trip was a cruise in 2010 with family and dear friends. It also gave me the opportunity to fulfill something that had been weighing on my heart for a long time. I was finally going to spread Mommy and Bob’s ashes.
Getting through airport security turned out to be far more interesting than I expected. We had an early-morning flight. The funeral home had placed the ashes in plastic containers and assured me they were TSA approved.
Apparently, TSA had some questions. When my carry-on went through the scanner, it lit up like a Christmas tree. Within seconds, both my bag and I had been escorted aside.
An agent politely asked if they could search my luggage. “Of course,” I replied. “But I should probably warn you that Mommy and Bob are in there.” The look on that poor agent’s face was priceless. The moment the words left my mouth, I realized exactly how they sounded. Fortunately, after a bit of explanation, we all survived the encounter.
Prior to the cruise, I had contacted the cruise line to ask whether releasing ashes at sea would be allowed. I was told it would be no problem and that someone would contact me once we boarded. The following day, a steward approached me and asked whether the afternoon would be a good time for the ceremony.
Ceremony? I honestly had no idea what to expect. The next afternoon, the ship’s Captain, the Lead Steward, and the ship Chaplain arrived at my cabin in full white dress uniforms. My friend and I were escorted to the stern of the ship. There, near the massive anchors, the chaplain offered a prayer.
Then he helped me open the containers. As I watched, Mommy and Bob were carried away into the brilliant blue waters of the Caribbean Ocean. Red rose petals followed. Then our own prayers, and the only sound was the ship moving through the water. It was one of the most beautiful acts of kindness I’ve ever experienced.
And somehow, it gave me a sense of peace. So now, whenever I find myself standing near any ocean, I think of them. I think about their love for each other. I think about their love for me. And I thank them both for everything they did to get me to this point in my life.
I miss them both. Mommy was a force of nature. Bob was a dad who never had to be one. The amazing thing is that he understood me in ways Mommy never could. Maybe it was because he came into my life later. Maybe it was because he wasn’t responsible for raising me from birth.
Whatever the reason, he somehow saw through all the chaos, poor decisions, stubbornness, and drama and loved me anyway. I miss him. I wish I could still call him. I wish he’d unexpectedly pull into the driveway like he used to.
He’d love this house.
And he’d grin that boyish smile at me and tell me that Mommy would be proud. And for just a moment, I’d get a little piece of home back again.
I miss you so much, Bob. Kiss Mommy and dance a beautiful dance for me, okay?
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