Afraid to Love

1

My childhood was filled with fear. And I feared everything for the future. I feared getting married. I didn’t want kids. I didn’t want to ever depend on someone like my mom did. Not only did I not want to depend on someone, I didn’t want to hop from one person to another, like my father, and fear being alone after over 20 years.

My father cheated on my mother with her own sister. Her older, fatter sister. She had lived with us because she didn’t like to work, and we had the room.

She was kicked out before I graduated high school. And three months later, after I turned 18, he decided that him and my mother were getting a divorce, that way he wouldn’t need to pay child support. I was the youngest after all.

He moved out a day after Christmas, since he had found some place a couple days before Thanksgiving.

Now my mother was nowhere near the perfect housewife. She was an alcoholic, and she had been diagnosed with stage 4 kidney failure in my 11th year of high school. But she did work on and off. She had three kids and still lived in the house her parents died in.

She grew up with three older sisters, and oldest two had been knocked up before they ever moved out, and respective baby daddies moving in. Those two aunts had been beaten in the same house I grew up in so many times my mother and her sisters stopped counting.

My dad had grown up in at least 6 different houses, all with his 5 other siblings, and he joined the Navy right out of high school. The way I see it he was brave, but not that brave. He came back after just four years, married his first wife and had three kids. Then divorced her before marrying my mom who was already knocked up with twins.

In my 11th year of high school I made a conscious decision that I would take a year off to get my ducks in a row, and work since my dad made too much money for real financial aid. So, I became a nanny right out of high school. Small neighborhood gigs, and then I got into the good paying ones when I saved enough for a car.

The first three jobs I gave me the opportunity to work with speech therapist and since I had always been with the same woman and how well I was getting the kids to talk and do their homework and all around have better manners.

I worked with them for a year, I became their family. Then they relocated, and I moved on to find another family. I lived with this one too. The mom was a nurse, the father a doctor, so they were both on odd hours depending on the day of the week.

It was fun learning how to take care of kids. And I got good practice for when my sister finally had kids. She had one and then almost two years later she had another one. It was the perfect time frame in my opinion. One was just getting out of diapers and didn’t fully understand the aspect of no longer being the only child.

Maggie was a good 7 years older than me, our brother was in between us almost directly in the middle. We were all about three years after the other. My brother, Mark, was in the Marines. He was making a career and trying to be noticed so he could become a Navy Seal. Anything to see more of the world and less of our home life.

Me and my siblings didn’t act like siblings... we acted more like the group of kids a teacher puts together because we would get things done. My brother was more like our father. He could never be alone. He loved having hordes of women. He had even proposed to a couple to keep them as his ‘girlfriend’ and that had been worrisome. So, he got some counseling, and now he just does the whole one-night stand thing. Which is apparently healthier than him trying to attach himself to one woman while also seeing four more and loving all five.

Maggie, poor little Maggie was married to a man that gets fired over the smallest things because he doesn’t know how to take orders well. Last job he had he basically got orders of wood together and drove it to a construction site, and from what I hear, he messed up about 8 out of 10 orders in a week. Not to mention he was a former offender. And my sister bought that whole ‘changed’ thing, which I didn't, and had a kid, got married, had another, and now my sister is the breadwinner of the home.

And me... I was a nanny, I went to school at night, doing half the work all year around. I got myself into medical school, I got myself scholarships. I didn’t have anyone at any of my graduations, I didn’t have a lot of friends, and the ones I did have were more like co-workers. And even those people didn’t care about me. So, I left, I left my hometown, leaving the people behind. Leaving the happy sun and dead grass for the gloomy weather that I enjoy so much, and a way better start on life. A life without a past.

Turning on Good Morning Seattle I saw the weather report and felt a slight happiness that it would be raining today. But there was also a chance of snow. I grew up in California...where there was barely any rain, and never any snow. So, this was the best change in my life. For more than one reason. It went on to talk about sports and I blew out a breath and looked around my new home.

I felt the need to bake, so I turned the TV up and trudged into my tiny kitchen, so I could look around for something that I could make sweet.

Once I got started I just couldn’t stop. I make cookies and cake and went in to make gingerbread man and I wanted to decorate. But making the icing was too much for me now so while the dough was cooling I put on my boots and walked out into the cold winter air, seeing frost but it was somewhere between snow and rain, and all the way down to the closest store.

Moving all the way up here not only was a weather shock, but a community shock too. Where I grew up people didn’t stop to talk and ask you when you moved in and bring you things like casseroles.

But I was good at what I do, which means I was highly needed in other places with higher problems.

Honestly, I could have moved just about anywhere with snow and blizzards, but I felt the most comfortable on the west coast still.

And now I live in a big house, more than I could ever afford back home, and it came stocked with a fridge and washer and dryer.

I got to the store and looked up and down until I saw the baking aisle and I walked there, grabbed at least 7 different colors of icing and walked to the self-check with my head held high.

I scanned them all and put them in the small bag that was available before taking my receipt and walking not only out of the store, and now into the hard-falling snow. I was heading up my stairs carefully when I saw mail had finally come. I grabbed the papers in a plastic bag and rushed inside and stomped my feet around until all the stuck-on snow fell off.

I took off my shoes as I went into my kitchen and put the bag down before opening my mail. I saw a few letters and then a huge packet and I opened it right away. I saw that it was a medical file. There was a note with it and when I opened that I was surprised to see my name.

Dear Dr. Tomei,

I have understood that you are the best, and most efficient in your field. My daughter, Sarah was born with a brain tumor. They operated right away and they’re going to do another surgery soon and the doctor has given me your information because he believes there might be some verbal complications.

My name is Mitch Rangler. I’m on Seattle’s hockey team. And while I don’t know you I hope you will keep my daughter’s medical needs out of any kind of media. I trust you with Sarah.

If you are available for a consult I would really like either an email or for you to call the doctor. My wife and I really would like to offer you any kind of compensation at any rate. Please just let us know what you think.

-Mitch and Lola Rangler

I knew as much about hockey as I know about football. The men were aggressive and well paid. I took my time and looked over Sarah Rangler’s medical file and knew why I was being contacted.

I was a physical therapist and a speech therapist, and this girl would need both after surgery. I got on the phone with the doctor and talked over her next appointment which was tomorrow, and I told him that I would come in as a “surprise” and do a free consultation.

But before I even started to set up plans for her, I finished up my cookies.