Family Brawl (standard:drama, 3739 words)
Author: goofykat	Added: Dec 27 2004	Views/Reads: 3244/2206	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
This is a short story about a disfunctional family that can't get together to enjoy a special event without fighting.

Family Brawl 

I never had a close relationship with my family.  I have three brothers
and one sister my mother gave birth to Patrick, just before her 
seventeenth birthday.  When she was 24-years-old, she had her fifth 
child, Darren.  My parents divorced when Patrick was fourteen-years-old 
and he became the man of the house.  Being the perfect son and the 
oldest, Patrick dropped out of high school at age seventeen to join the 
Air Force to help Mom out whenever he could.  Darren was a couch potato 
and would fight with Patrick whenever he came home because he didn't 
think that Patrick had any authority to tell him what to do since he no 
longer lived at home. 

Patrick and Darren were like two wolves challenging each other to find
out who was the dominant male.  Mom would intervene and defend Darren 
because he was the baby.  Even though Patrick was the first born, he 
did what was expected of him, such as caring for his siblings when our 
parents divorced and when Mom worked.  Nothing was expected of Darren.  
Therefore, they had a lot of animosity between.  Patrick who had to 
take care of everything because he was considered the man of the house, 
and Darren who didn't have to do anything because he was the baby. 

After graduating from high school in 1989, I joined the army to better
myself and to get away from my family.  I didn't think that I could 
achieve anything in life.  In 1994 I was stationed in Korea and met my 
husband, Randy.  From the time we met until he left Korea we were 
inseparable.  Three weeks later I met up with him at Fort Bragg, North 
Carolina.  After dating for a year, we were married in 1996.  Randy 
stands well over five feet tall and muscularly fit.  He carries himself 
with a great deal of confidence that tends to rub off on you.  He is a 
caring, giving man who will come to your aid in a heartbeat.  He is the 
type of person you want as a friend and don't want as an adversary.  He 
has treated me like the most precious gem on earth since the day we 
met.  A year after arriving at Ft. Bragg we were married. 

In the spring of 1997, after paying on the house that Mom bought ten
years earlier, took out a VA guaranteed loan on the house and had it 
placed in his name.  The house was on 18 acres of land in a town called 
Clarksville, Missouri.  Clarksville is along the Mississippi River 
about 150 miles north of St. Louis, Missouri.  Clarksville is a small 
farming community with a population of about 389.  When the Mississippi 
River flooded back in the early 1990s, the main street up to some of 
the houses that sat about a quarter of a mile inland was flooded.  
There is a sky trolley that would take up to the top of a mountain, 
which is a tourist attraction.  There is one motel that my brother 
Patrick would stay in whenever he came to visit.  Next to the motel is 
a gas station/convenient store. 

Randy and I were planning a trip to Clarksville in the summer to attend
Mom's graduation from the Nursing program at Troy College and to attend 
Patrick's wedding that was five days earlier.  One of the times I 
called my Mom to talk to her about our trip, I was alerted by her 
attitude that something was going on.  Mom and I had a rocky 
relationship.  It started when I was stationed in Germany when I 
refused to send her money for the first time.  Ever since then, 
whenever she would get mad at something or someone, I would catch the 
brunt of her anger and we wouldn't talk for a couple of months.  This 
was a time that we have actually been talking and getting along.  So 
when I sensed something was amiss with her, I was on the alert and 
tried to stay out of her way and did my best to ignore the snide 
comments and her attempts of getting into an argument with me.  Nothing 
good ever comes out of us fighting.  I was feeling good about how well 
we were getting along and hoped that after not talking for six months 
she would have understood how she hurt me when she would tell me that 
she didn't want me in her life. 

After I got off the phone with her just days before our trip, I told
Randy that I didn't know if I would be able to stay in the house with 
her.  I explained why I felt that way and how I hope that it was all in 
my head and that it would work out. 

It wasn't until the middle of our trip that I learned the source behind
her fowl mood.  Patrick's wife Kim told me that Patrick told Mom how he 
wasn't going to pay some of her bills for her anymore and that she 
would have to start paying them in August.  He told her this late June 


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