I’ve been emailing with my girl cousin Deborraha Burnett whom I hadn’t spoken with since 1996. We’re about the same age, and it’s fun to catch up. We both had very controlling fathers, but our family at least had fun together. Mom and Dad were also good role models for relationship because even though it was just as dysfunctional as any, mom and dad had an obviously genuine playful chemistry together and we could have fun even though we were technically all in trouble and on restriction. When Daddy was happy, everyone was happy.   We did lots of vacations, even just weekends to Fish Eating Creek. We went in this old Fageol twin coach buss my dad had converted into a camper, we spent every single weekend at some campground with him working on the engine. Fun, fun, fun.  

Deb’s dad was real religiously strict. There was zero religion in our house until Helen Garcia moved in across the street and we became friends and I decided I’d be a nun and put a sanctuary in my tree house, complete with holy water, and I’d dress my teddy bears in nun habits I’d sew for them and would do rituals and processions with them and take photos.

We went to church half a dozen times as punishment, a new church (I don’t think it even mattered which one) where they ask any newcomers to stand up, and we were made to stand up by ourselves (whoever was in trouble, we both had to stand up) and say our name in front of everyone. That “humiliation” was part of our punishment, Daddy would tell us that he had called the church ahead of time and told them what we had done, and that by the time we stood up Sunday morning, the whole church would know what we’d done. hehehe Nice move! He also told me I was mentally unbalanced and if I didn’t start behaving, he would have no choice but to send me away to a crazy house where they would make me behave and I would never see my mother again. I think now only of the painful childhood he must have suffered to think that was a way to teach his children.