The Fairy Tale

My mother meet Crawford Thomas Sparks when I was about 10 years old. He was a well-dressed, well spoken, older gentleman. He seemed pleasant and helpful. He was there to help my mother with the business aspect of a gay support group she was running.

He started hanging out more and wiggling his way into our life.  He would babysit us when Mom went out. We found out quickly you did as you were told, or you got a spanking when he was on watch. This was a vast change considering Mom let us get away with pretty much anything.

I’m not sure when friendship changed over to relationship. Soon there was talk about marriage and moving out of our government apartment to live with him in the Honey House.

The house got its nick name because Crawford had many honeybee hives on the property. He collected their honey and packaged it in bottles labeled Issaqueena Honey. As far as I know no business was ever had from the honey. We ate it ourselves over time. The bees were sold not to long after we moved there.

The Honey House was a little run down, but he promised to fix it up. It was going to be castle like. Each girl would have their own tower where the top floor reached the tree tops. We would live there forever bringing our spouses home instead of moving out to live with them. Our family would blend together into the ideal family and be together forever.

My mother and Crawford were married April 15th, 1992 in the forest on the Honey House property under a dogwood tree. The only others in attendance was Logan, my little brother; Wren, my little sister; Issaqueena, Crawford’s only child and 9 years my senior, and a preacher. We all dressed up with flowers in our hair. The wedding vows were changed upon Mom and Crawford’s behest to not say “Until death due us part”, but instead to say “forever”.

Author: Tanya Gadd

Tanya lives in Northeast Georgia with her well-loved, ungrateful children, one of whom won't do her homework, even under punishment of death. When not being a full-time mom, the rest of her time is spent working as a Certified Nursing Assistant, but her secret inner-life reveals her to be an avid reader who is always writing stories in her mind. Tanya hopes eventually to live in a world with few people, no phones, an awesome Internet, and more science fiction/fantasy books than she can ever hope to read.

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