My life - 1

It's hard to put my earliest memories in order. The one that feels the oldest is the day the man and my mom took me to the cemetery. I'm not sure where we were, who we were visiting or even who the man was. I think it may have been my father taking me to see the gravestone of my grandparents. If I am remembering this correctly then I would have been two years old and we would have been just outside of El-Paso where most of the Moore family is buried. This seems like a young age for a memory but it's pretty faded and I guess entirely possible.

My mother was happy that day. It was hot and the man had his shirt off. I wandered into a patch of stickers and he picked me up and carried me over them, warning me about the additional threat of rattlesnakes. Whoever he was, I did feel comfortable and safe with him. This is where the memory ends. If it was my father, then it's the only memory I have of him being around while my mother was smiling.

In later years, I asked my Mom why she left. She never gave up a lot of information, but enough to make me ashamed. My father was a physically abusive alcoholic and it got to the point where she felt he might kill us. She had to scoop me up in the middle of the night and run away to my grandmother's house in Vernon, Texas. It was here that he showed up two years later, with only a few hours notice.

I was excited that he was coming. Throughout my life I only received a few letters and gifts from him. He made his living making metal sculptures and selling them off the highway in San Antonio. He gave me a large metal windmill for the yard from at one time. We had it for a long time, but when we moved to Amarillo it kept blowing over and eventually broke. He also gave me a metal sculpture of a water mill complete with trees and a small landscape. The blades of the mill wind up and play a tune. It's a well-crafted piece of art. I have resisted smashing it to pieces on several occasions, and I still have it to this day.

When he showed up, my grandmother talked to him for a while. Mom came home and went straight to our room, hardly saying a word. I went in to ask her what was wrong and she encouraged me to go spend time with him. I loved going down to the convenience store on the corner all the time and looking at the cheap toys on the turn around display. I had seen a kid I knew in there one time, and we were talking about the toys. He asked his dad for the magnets, and the ninety-nine cents was gladly spent to make him happy. This was the first time I remember actively using my imagination. I dreamed of me and my dad laughing, playing and walking down to the store. We would go in, he would buy me those little plastic magnets and we would play with them for the rest of the afternoon. This surreal imagination of mine would get me in a lot of trouble later.

I had another first that day; reality is a bitch. After a lot of begging, I convinced him to walk with me to the store. He held my hand while we laughed, talked and joked around. He did all the things I thought a dad was supposed to do. I asked him if he would buy me the magnets while we walked. I don't remember if I asked him more than once or to buy me more than that. I do remember that he stopped, grabbed me by the arm and was extremely angry about something. I was absolutely terrified of him after that. We didn't say anything else to each other while we finished our walk. He bought me the magnets, we walked back, I went to my room. He left soon after that, and it was the last time I ever saw him. I received a letter when I was thirteen that he died of a heart-attack in San Antonio.

My mother has never said anything negative about my father. She has only told the truth when asked. I received every one of his letters and gifts, even when someone that might judge themselves a stronger person wouldn't have allowed it. In this aspect, she has always been remarkable.