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    Leaving Smalltown
    Leaving Smalltown
    Leaving Smalltown
    Ebook86 pages1 hour

    Leaving Smalltown

    By Sue Guy

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Patricia Jones has been leaving Smalltown, Alabama, since she was thirteen years old. Sometimes in her mind. Sometimes in her preparation. Sometimes physically. Never, however, did she anticipate leaving under the circumstances in which she eventually did.

    As the youngest of four siblings, Patricia realized she was the last child to leave home. Her parents had a tumultuous marriage that she witnessed all her life. At the age of thirteen, she overheard her mother tell a friend she was trapped in the marriage until she got Patricia out and on her own.

    Patricia began, at that moment, to plan her departure, and depart she did, learning a lot about herself in the process.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris US
    Release dateMay 4, 2016
    ISBN9781514475386
    Leaving Smalltown
    Author

    Sue Guy

    Sue Guy, a retired human resources professional, has lived a life of moving from small town to small to small town with her minister husband, Melton, and children, Kacy and Matt. Coming to rest in eastern North Carolina. She is publishing her first novel. A graduate of Troy University, Alabama, she has had poems, short stories, and numerous articles published throughout the years. She has, however, always been “Leaving Smalltown.”

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      Book preview

      Leaving Smalltown - Sue Guy

      Chapter One

      It must be nice to be able to lie in bed all morning.

      Yes, I am still lying in bed. It is Saturday morning and I had worked the late shift at the diner. I am tired. As a full time student at the local state college and a part time waitress, sleeping in on Saturdays is my only luxury. And it is hardly all morning. It is about ten.

      I have neither the energy nor the inclination to hop out of bed and dash into the kitchen to comment on my mother’s complaint. There is no need. I know where I fit into that as-long-as-you-live-in-my-house scenario. As the youngest of four children and the only one who opted to live at home after high school, I know I have out stayed my welcome.

      Don’t get me wrong. My parents love me and would probably never ask me to leave home, but my Dad is wrapped up in work. When he comes home, he simply wants the house orderly, quiet, and supper on the table. My mother has raised four kids as a stay-at-home mom and is ready for the kids to be gone. At twenty, I need to leave.

      What my parents do not realize is that I have been leaving for years. I just simply have not physically removed myself from the house. I knew as a young teenager that my parents were wrapped up in each other and my siblings and I were moving around on the fringes of their lives.

      As I got older I found more lucrative part time jobs giving me more and more independence and a growing savings account. I wanted to be prepared when the time came to actually leave.

      My Dad works hard all week as a building contractor and moves quickly into a drunken stupor on Friday nights, only to emerge on Sunday nights in order to bury himself in work again the next week. He is gone most mornings by the time we got up and when he returns after work, he wants to eat and move to the living room to watch television until bedtime. That summarizes my memories of my father.

      My mother, on the other hand, is very much a part of the details of my life and the lives of my two brothers and one sister. She played with all of us, made sure we graduated from high school, and made sure we went to church while we were growing up. She was interested in the details of our lives, served as room mother at school, made sure that we were well dressed, well fed, and prepared to face life on our own. . . until age eighteen. At that point, she felt she was done and we should move on.

      My sister Jen married within months of graduating from high school and moved directly from my parents’ home to her husband’s home and began a family. My two brothers also married and struck out on their own. I alone decided to go to college and, in order to be able to afford it, I found a job waitressing and live at home.

      Having witnessed my mother’s relief at getting another child out on their own as each sibling left, I know my Mother will be ecstatic at my departure. She will be officially free to do whatever mothers do when the last child is gone and the husband is still working during the day.

      The first of my siblings left when I was thirteen and that’s when I began leaving too. I began by devising a plan. I needed an education in order to support myself and I needed money to fund the education and to fund my departure. My plan included doing well in school. I needed excellent grades and connections that would help me network into a self-supporting situation and I needed money. I baby sat whenever possible and negotiated a deal with a neighbor who worked and was willing to pay me to come over every afternoon to help her three children do their homework so that it would be done by the time she got home. I saved my money.

      At sixteen, I began a part time job in the local library and worked there until I graduated high school. I saved my money.

      I graduated at seventeen and immediately enrolled in the local community college. Having had good grades in high school, I was given permission to take a heavier than normal course load in college and completed junior college in one year, took a CLEP test, and moved right into the state college as a senior at the age of nineteen. In order to accommodate my class hours, I took a job as a waitress, working Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. I saved my money.

      It is now late August and I have finished my finals. I graduated with my B.S. in Business Administration. My plan, devised six years ago, is still a guide for every decision I make.

      Don’t get me wrong. In spite of the hard work and frugal ways, I manage to have a few close friends and a wide range of acquaintances. I date occasionally, but am very selective in how and with whom I spend my time so there are no serious relationships to distract me from my plan. My girlfriends are concerned that I will be an old maid and sometimes try to persuade to take time off from work or breaks from coursework. My sense of humor and ability to enjoy the moment kept my teenage years filled with fun, while still moving me toward my ultimate goal, and still serves me well.

      So, you see, this Saturday morning is not upsetting to me. It is just the kind of thing my Mother says because she is ready for me to move to the next phase of my life, so she can move on with hers, and so I do.

      Chapter Two

      I roll out of

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