I went to bed one night and awoke to shouts,
Dad calling my name to wake me.
He kept asking where my mother was.


I didn't know, he took me into the kitchen.
We had breakfast and then we went to his folks.
I stayed there with
Dad until I was twelve and he remarried.


One day he asked me if I cared if he married
the housekeeper.
No, I didn't mind. It had never once occurred to me
That he meant for me to live with them.


Well, he bought a little house and five acres,
I was miserable there.
Once a year or so my mother would be in touch.


So on my sixteenth birthday I called her at work,
Asking if I could live with her.
She came that night with her older sister.


We sat at the kitchen table until Dad came home,
He said what is this?
I told him I wanted to live with my mother.


It hit him as hard as anything,
I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown,
It was in self-defense that I made the move.


Mom was good to me,
But my father never wanted to speak to me afterward.
When I was seventeen I fell in love and got married.


It was a difficult time, my growing up,
But I survived and made a life.
We had six children and now four grands.