To acquaintances my mother's life looked ideal. She was married to a man who wanted only to provide for her and keep her happy. She had a nice home with a custom swimming pool, a nice vehicle and money to shop, dine out and attend events. She had never worked and she had nothing but free time. Women in the community envied her.
What could be better than this wonderful home and comfortable life that she was living? Happiness. Money can't buy happiness. I never thought that my mother would walk away from the comfortable life her husband had provided her. She had financial security for life and she seemed to have everything she could ask for.
To my dismay, my mother wasn't happy. I couldn't imagine how she could be unhappy. She had remodeled the house the way she wanted. Her hobby was interior decorating and her friend's envied how beautiful her home was. They often told her it looked like a home from a magazine. The swimming pool sparkled in the back yard. Frogs chirped from the small pond she had created nearby.
How could my mother be so unhappy that she cried herself to sleep at night? I didn't understand. I didn't think I would ever understand. As the events of the following years unfolded, I was amazed. I was in shock and I felt as if I didn't know my mother at all. Her crazy behaivor over the years to follow would all come down to one thing: her love for her boyfriend.
My mother, who had been married for several years and had spoke of never wanting another man in her life, had a boyfriend. She had fallen in love with someone she claimed took her breath away. Suddenly, my middle-aged mother was acting like a love-struck teenager. Friends and family looked at her life from the outside and couldn't understand the events that were taking place.
Friends were concerned that my mother was never happy. Family witnessed the tension in my mother's home. She was angry and sad and started fights with her husband. No one understood what was going on. I didn't understand. I just watched in dismay as my mother filed for divorce, packed everything she owned and moved it all to storage.
When my mother chose to sleep in her car in another county rather than come "home", I was confused. I was aggravated. How could she choose to be homeless when she had a home? Why was it that her belongings were in storage units in another county? What was happening to my mother's life?
It all started to unravel as my mother explained that she had fallen in love with another man and could no longer be happy in her marriage. She had not set out to find another man. She didn't know she wanted to be with someone else. As she explained that this man made her happier than she had been in twenty years, I started to understand.
Because I do not have the same personality traits as my mother, I could never live in my car while having a key to a home I had lived in for years was sitting beside me in my purse. I love comfort, heat and warm food. I wouldn't sleep in a car in the middle of winter and eat snack food from a convenience store for days and nights while I had access to a home and a kitchen. I don't have that kind of dedication or willpower. Either that or one of us is mentally unstable.
Friends and family called me asking me what was wrong with my mother. I didn't have an answer. My response was normally "she has lost her mind" or "I don't know". I couldn't explain something that I didn't understand.
The day came for me to meet my mother's new boyfriend. It was a public event and they would both be there, though no one knew of their relationship at the time. My mother introduced me to the man she had fallen in love with. There was only one word that came out of my mouth when she asked me later what I had thought of him. Charming. The man was Prince Charming. Her knight in shining armor. I finally understood.
Their relationship was still a secret. I now knew and understood but I was alone in the understanding. Friends and family still watched as my mother's divorce unfolded and her home was listed for sale. No one could understand what was going on. No one understood what had happened.
My mother spent several years waiting on everything to come together for her and her boyfriend. She endured being homeless, being broke and being lonely. Having always been taken care of by her husband, she didn't know what it was like to be a single woman in a working world. She had to learn. Due to the situation her boyfriend was in, she would have to wait to be with him.
My mother's boyfriend told her he loved her and she lit up like a light bulb. It was the craziest thing I had ever seen. My mother was giddy with excitement and anticipation. She told friend's and family that she had found her soul mate and she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. Nothing would stop her.
Her divorce went through, her house sold and she moved to another county to be with her boyfriend. She was right. Nothing stopped her. She had fallen in love with the man she believed was her soul mate and nothing and no one would stop her from being happy with her boyfriend.