My Own Ever After
Heather Huffman
Copyright © 2018 Heather Huffman
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The events in this book are my memories based on my own perspective.
Front cover image by Lisa Runnels, courtesy of Pixabay.
Book front cover design by Tara Dove.
www.heatherhuffman.net
CONTENTS
Foreword
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
More by Heather Huffman
More Great Reads
Foreword
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway
Heather Huffman and I became friends when we were introduced by our then publisher. As is often typical in the arts, Heather was presented to me as competition. We wrote similar books with similar messages, but she had more books published. She devoted part of her proceeds to the fight against human trafficking while I was just trying to make ends meet as a single mother. The message was subtle, but I heard it loud and clear. We want to trigger your insecurities, fear and ugly jealousy so you will write more books because we want to make more money. Be like Heather.
I hate that people in power pit women against each other instead of encouraging us to support, encourage, learn, share and connect with someone who truly ‘gets us’. That said, Heather is truly remarkable. With her clever intellect, serious talent, and compassionate heart, she is someone to look up to and emulate. She is a great friend, daughter, mother, sister and child of God. She is a woman who bleeds every time she sits down at her keyboard and shares her heart with the world.
She is not my competition. She is my soul sister. When she wins, I win. I can love and admire her without hating myself.
Once women know this, like really know this, and push aside the noise of the world who wants to suck us dry, we can save one another and ourselves.
And there’s this truth—Heather is more complicated than her resume and her family photos. We are all more than our public personas, more than the package we present to the outside world. None of us, not even exquisite Heather, get through this life unscathed.
Last year, I received an email from Heather that shook me to my core. She and her husband were divorcing. I stared at my computer screen for a full five minutes as dread and sadness and disbelief caused my heart to pound hard in my chest. As someone who had gone through it myself, I understood how excruciating the decision to divorce must have been, especially because of the children. I was afraid for her and the hard journey ahead. On the horizon were custody questions, money issues, prayers that the kids would come through intact, the utter bewilderment that, oh God, I have to start dating again in my forties. I knew because I’d been there.
I didn’t want divorce for my friend. I wouldn’t wish the pain of divorce on a mortal enemy, let alone someone I loved. She had it all—a loving husband, three beautiful boys, a close relationship with God. I was comforted by this story. Heather’s life proved that sometimes the good guys win. When I realized that her marriage wasn’t as it appeared from the outside, it reminded me that we cannot ever know the truth of what goes on in someone else’s life. What appears to be true might not be.
Many women, myself included, spend too much time pretending all is well. Our smiles are bright as we cook dinner and wash dishes while absorbing the brunt of our teenagers’ angsts. We suck in our stomachs when we go to the beach, wishing the stretch marks and extra layers of fat weren’t there. We’re exhausted but hide our dark circles with makeup. We take on too much, unable to say no or to let anyone down even though we’re dying inside. Later, we sob in silence on the bathroom floor. Yes, in silence, so no one will know how afraid and sad and alone we feel.
As I approach fifty years on this earth, I have more questions than answers. I acknowledge that lines of gray are more likely than black and white. There is no absolute truth other than love is the only answer, ever. It is only through our connection with others that we know we are not alone. Through authentic conversation we unravel our personas to reveal our authentic experiences. In that unravelling, the essence of true connection is our reward. Love instead of fear.
A window into another person’s inner journey is the essence of art and most certainly memoir. Yet, in this harsh world of social media, why bare one’s soul through art, and more specifically, words?
I believe true artists commit to telling the truth. We recognize that our talent is for more than our own enjoyment. After all, what is the point of bleeding into our keyboards if not to break down barriers? Our suffering is given meaning when expressed. This fundamental belief that our words can serve as a salve to another person’s wounds makes us stronger and braver than we thought possible. As writers, we must not shy away from vulnerability, from exposing our soft underbellies. Our purpose is to shed light into the human experience.
It is the artist’s job to gently nudge us with their authenticity, to remind us we are not alone. I, too, bleed. I, too, weep silently into my hands on the bathroom floor.
Heather Huffman is an artist. She no longer weeps in silence.
~Tess Thompson
Prologue
There is vagabond in my blood. I only have to look to my grandparents’ generation to find migrant farm workers on my daddy’s side. Even before that, they moved around the country quite a bit after arriving from Europe. Tracking down my family tree before the days of Ancestry.com meant lots of road trips north. I had an uncle who died train hopping out west; he was a vagabond. My own daddy has the itchiest feet on the planet. Even after retiring from the military, he can never sit still for long. If work isn’t giving him an excuse to travel, he finds one. He once accused me of moving more than anyone he’s ever met. I respectfully ask if he’s met my sister, or if he’s looked in the mirror to see who we inherited our gypsy feet from.
Warring with that migrant nature is the deep desire for roots, for a place to belong. On my mama’s side, we had the family farm in the Missouri Ozarks that grounded my family for generations. Even for those who didn’t live there, it was the place everyone returned to. It’s been more than twenty years since the farm was sold, and I still feel its absence in my soul as I watch the world spin from the outside looking in and wonder what it would be like to have a place you’re from.
When we moved to this area in 2012, all I knew of it was that Buffalo, Missouri was the only place I could get cell phone coverage in between Lebanon and Stockton Lake. I’d never even heard of the town that’s registered as our official address. When my mother found out I was moving here, she told me my great-grandmother was actually from Buffalo. The romantic in me wondered if I was returning to roots I didn’t even know existed.
It’s been a hard-fought five years finding our place in this tiny town. Sometimes it seems as if the land itself has tried to buck us loose. We’ve fought record-breaking droughts, floods, and everything in between. The people here are so used to everyone operating under a set of common knowledge; sometimes it’s hard to keep up when you don’t have that piece of the puzzle.
I have considered m
oving. It’s what I do when life gets to be too much, I think. Perhaps it stems from a promise I made myself as a teen—if things ever seemed too hopeless, I’d go somewhere new and start fresh rather than cause myself harm. More than once in the past five years, I’ve looked longingly at the map and considered my options. I should go somewhere warmer, closer to the ocean, closer to my friends. This place doesn’t want me; I don’t fit here.
But here’s the thing: I’m an odd little duck. I don’t fit anywhere, not really, and not for long. That’s part of being a writer, an observer—someone who throws herself headfirst into a thousand different things just long enough to master them and move on. I think it’s all tied up in the one thing I never stray from: writing stories. I’m always learning so I can document. I’m always observing so I can capture details. The same sensory disorder that makes me a freak in so many ways makes it possible for me to describe a touch in such detail.
It’s taken me nearly forty years (I still have six months until that mile marker), but I’ve come to terms with being weird. I make it my goal as a mother to three weird children to help them embrace and harness their quirks early on, to save themselves some pain.
And sometime in the past year, I have realized something else about myself: If I’m going to not fit in anywhere, I’d like to not fit in here, in this place. I want to connect to the roots of my past in this small town and flourish as the oddest little flower this place has ever seen.
This might not be the deep, wild and woolly Ozark Mountains of my childhood, the ones I’ve dreamed of and written about so often. The hills are more rolling here. The people are different somehow. But it has become just as much a part of me and my story.
When he was seven, my middle son was in a horseback riding accident that left him in a coma for five days. For some time now, I’ve felt compelled to tell not just the story of Blake’s accident, but of the journey that it set us on. One night, one moment, changed each of us, and it changed our family. I realize now that story is part of this one, my journey home. My figuring out what happily-ever-after looks like to me.
The process of writing this book is one that happened in fits and starts for me. I felt compelled to write it for months before making any progress, and then I let months pass before making any more. I don’t know why, but I can’t seem to force myself to sit and write. When I do sit down, the words flow. But they also leave me tired. The years between that accident and now have been long and hard. Perhaps I’m afraid of what I’ll find if I look at them too closely. Already the process has begun to change me—for the better, but it’s been an uncomfortable journey nonetheless.
To keep myself on track, I originally released this as a series of blog posts, one a week over the course of three months. That forced me to get the heart of the story out on paper. Now it’s time to polish it and turn it into something cohesive that I can share with a greater audience. I have lots of books published and lots more bouncing around my brain; this project is less about adding to that list and more about sharing my story in hopes that it will inspire someone else to rewrite their destiny if need be. Because if you are still breathing, it’s not too late to change your story.
Chapter One
Iwas reading my middle son’s Facebook page the other day, chuckling over his answers to some goofy Q&A he’d posted when it struck me yet again just how different this kid is. For the question “Worst day of your life?” he’d responded “idk. Lol”
“Blake, you goof. You really don’t know the worst day of your life?” I called out to him from the living room.
“Nah. They’re all good.”
“What about the day you died?”
“I slept through that. And when I woke up, you let me watch movies and eat whatever I wanted.” He gave a humble half-shrug. No big thing. Dying. Coma. Months of therapy. Learning to walk, talk, tie a shoe again. Re-learning to read, write, do arithmetic. No worries. He got to eat all the chicken and fries he wanted.
That’s Blake. Utterly, perfectly Blake. His personality has always been larger than life. He’s charming and gregarious, though as a child gregarious looked a bit more like spastic.
When I was fifteen, my oldest nephew was born. I still remember holding him in my arms and looking down into his blue, blue eyes and wishing with all my heart to someday have a little blue-eyed boy of my own someday. God heard that prayer and gave me three of them.
Our blessings weren’t without loss. More than once, I didn’t make it past the first trimester of a pregnancy. The first one hit the hardest. Perhaps because we didn’t have any children at the time. Perhaps it’s because it was the only pregnancy to be confirmed by the doctor. The only one I saw the flutter of a heartbeat before feeling the sharp pain of loss. Those were dark days for me. Losing our little one left a deep, wrenching hurt in its wake. I vividly remember that time in my life. The pope was in town. I’m not catholic, but it was still a pretty big deal. I worked in the same mom-and-pop diner I’d been working at when I met my husband. (I’d been his waitress, in fact.) I was driving home from work one day, down Highway 30 in St. Louis, just past the intersection of 270, when a feeling of peace settled over me. I felt as if God was assuring me that it was going to be okay. Everything was about to change, and Adam and I were going to have a son.
September 30 of that year, Dylan was born. To quote my mother-in-law, he was perfect. Motherhood did not let me begin with a false sense of security. When Dylan was three weeks old, he began choking in his sleep to the point of turning blue. During the ER visit after that first choking episode, the hospital told us they thought he had meningitis. We were quarantined with our new infant, who had to undergo a spinal tap that took three days to get results on. In the end, they said “Whoops, we contaminated his blood sample. Here’s the bill.” It leveled us financially and left us wondering what caused our son to stop breathing in his sleep.
Many tests, apnea monitors, and sleepless nights later, I listened to my mother-in-law’s advice and put him on a lactose-free formula, just to see what would happen. The apnea stopped, and he never had another moment’s trouble. As a young couple living in a mobile home on a shoestring budget, I wish we’d listened to her before letting our doctor convince the scared kids to run the battery of tests on our baby. It would have saved everyone a lot of pain, and it might have meant a different story for our financial future.
Our marriage fell apart for the first time somewhere in between Dylan and Blake. I still remember the reasons why, but none of them truly matter. Not now.
We also had a few positive pregnancy tests in between Dylan and Blake. I can’t take the pill without horrible side effects, no matter how light the dose. I didn’t mind, though. I wanted a houseful of kiddos. Adam wanted two. In the end, God gave us three. But there was a time that I was sitting across from my doctor hearing that I needed to come to terms with the fact that Dylan would be an only child―or I needed to schedule an appointment with a fertility specialist to find out what was happening between the positive pregnancy test and the first spots of blood that invariably followed. About the time I gave in and said, “Okay God, you win. If I’m meant to have only one child, I will thank you for him. He’s wonderful,” was about the time I got pregnant with Blake.
My marriage fell apart for the second time seven months into that pregnancy. We were separated when Blake was born. I remember being alone in the delivery room when they laid him on my chest. He blinked at me. Even as my heart melted, I had two thoughts. The first was “This one’s mine.” And the second was “I wonder if he’ll grow into those lips.”
Don’t get me wrong, Dylan and I have been two peas in a pod since the moment I laid eyes on him. We’re inseparable, and the world knows it. But with Blake, given the state of my marriage, I felt this instant, “It’s you and me against the world, and I promise right here and now, I will not let this world be cruel to you” thing going. Adam and Blake are okay now, but it took them years to overcome his absence in that first year of Bl
ake’s life.
As a single mother with no maternity leave and no other means of support, I had to go back to work when Blake was three weeks old. By that time, I was working in HR at a physical therapy company in St. Louis. I took on a second job waiting tables at a bar to help make ends meet. It was too much too soon, and I found myself on my doctor’s table saying, “I feel like my uterus is going to fall out, doc.”
“That’s because it is,” was his response.
Given the uterine prolapse and the fact that I was divorced, finding myself pregnant by Christmas with baby number three wasn’t a planned thing. I would joke that Blake was the break-up baby and Chris was the make-up baby, but the truth is that I was mortified. I knew how the world looked at me, pregnant with my ex-husband’s baby. When I had to sift through employee emails at work to investigate a threat that had been made against my boss, I got to read it, over and over, just what the rest of the office thought of me and my pregnancy. I’d always loved The Scarlet Letter as a teenager. There is something beautiful in the notion that the world seeing your worst frees you. In many ways, that pregnancy was my own scarlet letter.
The only person who was truly, completely, and utterly happy at the news had been Dylan. If you ask him now, he says he still remembers how excited he got when I told him he was going to have another brother. And I needed that–someone else to be happy about the baby. A life is always a blessing, no matter the circumstance. Dylan’s innocent joy kept me anchored to that.
And Christopher was a ray of sunshine from the moment he made his appearance. From a young age, he had an infectious smile, which he shared any chance he got.
For the boys’ youngest years, we rented a small house in Crestwood from Adam’s parents. I moved back in toward the end of Christopher’s pregnancy because I was having complications, and my doctor had told me I shouldn’t be living along with two small children. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I told Adam he didn’t have a choice. Once we were there, I knew it was too much tumult for the boys for us to separate again. We decided to try our best to hold it together for their sake. My mother-in-law once said that Adam and I would probably be perfectly happy living next door to each other, raising our children as friends. It was a pretty spot-on description.
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