Leta was happy. She believed World War II provided her with an opportunity to right some of the wrongs she had done. While she couldn’t go back into the past and change what transpired, she could do her best to improve the present, heal some wounds, and repair the relationship she had with her daughter.
For many years, this relationship had been a rocky one at best. While mother and daughter both loved each other and shared a mutual respect, so much had happened over the past ten years that their connection was cool. Most specifically, her daughter kept her distance. She was respectful of her mother, kind and considerate, but also held onto a kind of wariness. While Leta understood the wariness, she also wanted to attack it with the ferocity of motherly love to defeat and destroy it once and for all.
They had been through quite a bit over the decade, beginning with the formal separation, when circumstance made it impossible for Leta to keep her children with her. The dissolution of her fourth marriage (her third in a four year period) and the misuse of Vivian in it forced her to leave her beloved daughter and son with their father. While this was initially, she hoped, only temporary, she was mistaken. The murder of her beloved second husband Albert Had set off a string of events and transformed her into a woman even she didn’t much like. The Great Depression descending at the same time resulted in her never living with her children again.
During the early and tough separation years, Leta was grateful to her brother Aaron and sister-in-law Florence for their constant support, for even welcoming her into their home when she was unmarried, unemployed, uncontrollable. But what most distressed her was how she had to abandon her children, to turn them over to their father and his abusive, drunken wife, just when they needed her most. As much as she wish she had done differently, even now, 12 years later, she could not wrap her mind around any alternatives.
So she couldn’t change that past. But she could affect the present. And if Leta did anything well, that was live in the present. As the Depression wore on, she met and married her fifth husband Bob. He had good employment in the automotive industry, and even though the hard times affected them, he was still working. This gave them a good life. Things were improving.
After a few years of wandering aimlessly, her son Dale had finally settled down. Bob had gotten him a job where he worked, and he recently married a cheerful young woman, who was totally crazy about him. While Leta’s new daughter-in-law was a bit guarded toward her, they both certainly liked to laugh, and that laughter was very healing to Dale. Plus, newly married, he frequently came to his mother for advice and suggestions. He was rather awkward with women, and far more at ease spending time with his male friends. So he needed a lot of assistance.
Her daughter Vivian provided other challenges. She was a much harder nut to crack. She always was, however, even from a little girl. She had a shred understanding of other people’s motives and could recognize insincerity from a mile away. Leta never believed that her daughter resented her for anything that had happened in her young life, although quite a lot had. Vivian had also steeled her self against possible current and future hurts.
Marrying Ed was the first step, and Leta knew from her second meeting with him that he was as predictable and stoic a man as Vivian could want. However, he also didn’t like his mother-in-law, which increased the strain in the relationship. Where Leta knew Vivian had forgiven and accepted her, Ed would always remember and think that she was not a good mother, and he would hold her past against her. Yet he, too, was respectful and decent. As long as Leta behaved, she would have no problems with him.
While he had not actually enlisted in the Air Force during the War, Ed had been called to put his skills in radio transmission to work for the benefit of the U.S.A and its allies, quite ironic, Leta thought, since he was German. However, off he went, leaving Vivian alone in a small rented house with a less-than-friendly landlord, a small income and a three-year-old boy.
Yes, there was the boy, and Leta adored him—her first grandchild—all laughter, smiles, hugs and kisses with just the right amount of curiosity and orneriness to tickle her deep inside. After discussing it with Bob, who whole-heartedly agreed, Leta asked Vivian if she wanted to move into their house while Ed was away.
Vivian agreed.
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