Warming Up

Well, that high school sweet heart of mine came to visit this weekend. There were a rough couple of days prior to her arrival because she asked me point blank if I was actually divorced and I answere 'no.' I explained that I couldn't because Chepa would have gotten the kids--all of them when the boys were younger, but even now she would get Madeleina and then fly off to her boyfriend with them and I just wouldn't have my family anymore. I already have experience from New York when I filed the custody papers on Madeleina in court there--after Chepa flew off with her to be with a boyfriend, who is long gone--that the papers don't mean much. Nobody seems to want to go after a woman who refuses to honor custody. And when I refiled those papers here in Texas after our move, well, just after they took the money and then took more for the actual delivery of them I was told they wouldn't be delivered. I said: "What? I just filed them and paid for their delivery..."
"Well, we don't deliver papers on a mother here in Texas. That's just not something we do. Kids belong with their mothers and unless you can show proof of physical abuse, we'll never deliver nor enforce those papers. That's how it is here."
Anyway, that's why I never pulled the trigger on the divorce.
And I let everyone know I'm divorced. And I feel divorced. But I'm not actually divorced. And it's never come up before. No one has ever asked me. Here I write "my wife/ex-wife" and feel that's good enough.
But I should have been clear with that prom queen. I just wasn't and she got very upset at being led on. And though she understood/stands the circumstances, she was very angry and up until she actually got on the plane to come visit I thought she'd throw me over.
And when I met her at the airport she was not real real receptive. I mean she was cold.
And that didn't get a lot better when I brought her to my house and she was forced to meet my kids and then I offered her a glass of wine from a bottle called Sweet Bitch. That didn't really go over as the ice-breaker I thought it might be.
But then I think she saw that I really don't have a wife lurking in the closet. That I obviously don't have any females helping out around the house (though Italo's Sarah helps sometimes) which is clear by the house condition and unmatched plates and silverware and probably 100 other things.
But what really began to warm her up was meeting the kids. They are just so nice, so warm and slightly crazy that she just melted for them--and they for her--and so we had a great weekend. Went to restaurants, did the Human Maze in the Ft. Worth Stockyards, made dinner one night. Just perfect.
She even got to get even with me when she and Madeleina picked out two bottles of wine for me: Old Geezer and Fat Bastard. Okay, I probably deserved that.
And then sometime early on Sunday evening, Madeleina, out of the blue, says: "Hey dad, should I go get the garbage bag and the machetes?"
And I ask "For what?"
And without batting an eye, Madeleina answered: "You know, for chopping her up and getting rid of the body."
Well, you can imagine the slightly stunned silence that followed. I knew it was a joke but my high school sweetheart, probably still thinking I need to get even with her for breaking my heart 40-years ago, went white. Not for long. But long enough.
And I didn't know what to say to that. I mean, I'm sure I stammered out something like "Madeleina, what the heck are you talking about? You don't put those kinds of thoughts into people's heads." And I'm sure Madeleina laughed and then my sweetheart laughed, but every now and then for the next day or so, when we were driving on a country road, she'd say: "Is this the part where you chop me to pieces?"
What a thing to put out there, eh? Yikes! I'm going to have to teach Madeleina to edit herself a bit I suspect. She's already got some of
the teachers at her school reading this blog, and I'm nervous enough about that, and then she brags to everyone that I used to be the editor at High Times and I'm definitely slightly nervous about that because of where I live and the stories I've written about local corruption and such...and now it's plastic bags and machetes....My, oh, my...
So that's what happened here the last couple of days. Fantastic, disturbing, wonderful and frightening.
Hope your days are as packed with excitement. And hope you're ahead of me in the prep for Christmas.
And hope you all get the chance to visit with someone you loved but haven't seen in a long time. It's a bit nervewracking but then that disappears and it's all good.