it was like he just expected me to start doing it all. Being the person that I was, I saw this assumption on his part as a shot at my independence. Also, when he cleaned, it was never really clean and I would have to do it all over again.
So my excuse for the house being a wreck every day was that I had to work to pay my own way in this world. I had to be an independent woman and there was no time at the end of a busy day to be cleaning some house. Besides, Jordan and Cason were the reason the house was messy in the first place. Maybe they should be the ones to clean it up. And hey, I was the pretty young thing that made the world go around for this man and his son. He should just be grateful that I lived in this busted old house.
(Maybe I wasn’t that mean, but when I look back on things, maybe I was.)
At the time, Jordan worked on farming irrigation wells. This job was a great way for him to express himself and to get to work in an industry that suited him. He was outside all day and he loved to interact with the farmers he served. However, there was no real schedule that he had to follow. So my view was, if he was a little late to work one day, it didn’t really matter because he didn’t have some boss breathing down his neck about tardiness. So morning duty was all his. He could get Cason ready for school and get some breakfast made while I got my last little bit of sleep before work.
Also, I hated to cook, so I told Jordan I couldn’t cook. That way he would cook dinner every night after he got off work. It was funny to watch him make us steak and potatoes for us, but warm up some mini corn dogs for Cason. Of course, being the decision maker that I was, I stepped in and told Jordan that Cason was old enough to learn to eat something other than corn dogs and mac-n-cheese.
After a couple of weeks of noticing the clothes Jordan picked out for Cason to wear to school, I knew I needed to save the day. I just couldn’t take it. So I started to buy Cason’s clothes and dress him in the mornings. The funny thing is, I really enjoyed taking care of Cason. He was so cute after I got done with him. Sleeves rolled half way up, his hair was cut and fixed, and I took him out of those hideous light-up shoes with cartoon characters on them!
At night, I started to give Cason his baths and realized he didn’t know how to do anything but play in the tub. By the time he was four, Cason could completely wash himself. It made me proud to watch him grow and be independent.
To be honest, I think that the root of all this domination was that I didn’t want to rely on anyone but myself. If I trusted someone else, or if I allowed someone else to make a decision for me, I might be hurt by that decision. Or worse, I might be under someone. I might be less than someone else, and that was something I was simply not willing to do. Even if it cost me the man I loved, I wasn’t going to be walked on. Not by anyone.
I’m sure you are wondering what was wrong with Jordan. Why would he stay with a crazy control-freak like me?
In reality, he was the strongest one of all, because he was so patient with me during all this. Like me, he didn’t know what a real relationship should be, partly because of the relationships he had in the past and partly because we were both so young and still trying to figure out who we were and even who we wanted to be.
I also think he was really thankful to have a woman in his life. Someone who cared enough to pay attention to his child and someone he loved to be around. We really did love each other; we were just really bad at showing it.
Even though we had no idea how to be a functioning couple, we did know how to laugh and play. We could enjoy ourselves when we got away much better than when we were at home. For this reason, we looked for any opportunity to get out of the house, especially on weekends and holidays.
Jordan was a little redneck, country boy who liked to shoot guns off his front porch, drive circles around the house on ATV’s or jump in his bronco to chase rabbits. He liked mudding and anything else that you can only do when nobody is around for miles.
Jordan had a knack for bringing home anything he thought was interesting. At one point in our tiny little backyard, we had a cow, three dogs, a cat, four chickens, and a goat. As odd as that may sound to you, it really became normal for us. I grew accustomed to discovering a new thing every week. I was really glad when the “treasure” he brought home wasn’t alive, but the live ones tended to be the more interesting things we owned. He even liked hoeing weeds in the yard.
Weird, right?
I remember how he did this every summer night after supper. He would just grab the hoe and start stabbing at weeds in the yard while we talked, sometimes for hours. I really enjoyed those conversations. It was the only time I allowed Jordan to say what he was thinking and I really listened.
Jordan taught me how to shoot guns and I had grown to love it. He taught me to hunt and it was great fun to spend that time together. Jordan loved to do anything that seemed remotely redneck, so I quickly learned to enjoy them too.
When the weekend came, we would load up and visit family, go hunting, or anything else that made us feel free, but to be honest, church was never a part of that picture. We wanted to do the kinds of things that allowed us to let go of all the things that bogged us down, and quite frankly, the thought of sitting in a stuffy church and getting told how much of a sinner I was just didn’t fit the mold.
We worked hard to be a family and worked hard to become the kind of people we thought we wanted to be, but we never felt like that old rent house was going to be home. It served as a shelter, it provided a place for us to return to at the end of the day, but it was never home and that’s what we wanted. We wanted the kind of home that you never wanted to leave, the kind of home that made the stress of the day just melt away, and the kind of home where our kids, even though we only had one at the time, could grow. We wanted the home of our dreams.
But the home of our dreams was a little different from what most people think. We didn’t want a house in the suburbs. We didn’t want a mansion on a hill somewhere. We didn’t want that big city life. We wanted the kind of home that fit our personalities. We were a little different from most people and what we were looking for in a house would be a little different too.
Finding a home that was as unique as we were, as well as a place where we could be the people we wanted to be and live the lives we wanted to live seemed like a tall order. We really didn’t know where to start, because there are so few places available in the area where we were living. The fact that so many of the existing homes are family-owned farm houses made it seem to be an insurmountable task.
So, in an effort to find the perfect home, we sat down and made a list of all the things we wanted in a house, so eventually, it could become our home. The list was almost like a penny dropped into a fountain. It was a wish upon a wish. It was almost like our own little “Happily Ever After” scenario. We thought if we could just get these things, we might stop fighting.
The List looked a little like this:
•Small community
•Outside the city limits
•Big enough we could grow into the house
•A little land where we could play
•A country feel without being too far removed from the convenience of the city
•And it’s gotta have trees!
“Not a bad goal!” I thought.
The “trees” part was going to be hard to get done. We were in West Texas where trees only grow when you plant them, but I was undeterred! We set out to look for the wonderful home we had pictured in our dreams so many times before. We started in all the usual places. We looked in newspapers, periodicals, the internet, and contacted every family connection we had to try to find that perfect house, but after months of looking, we couldn’t quite find what we were looking for.
We did find a house that met most of our goals and we even put in an offer. We waited and waited to hear back from the seller, but when we did, the news wasn’t good. We were discouraged, to say the least, but we kept looking. We saw several other houses over the next few weeks, but nothing suited us. Nothing felt like home.
Then