All in the Family
The one wearing the draped turban and the skirt – he so wanted that kiss. Lips soft, eyes closed, hoping, one might imagine, that the dark-haired, blue-eyed handsome young man’s lips would touch his. The fellow with the dark hair, his head tilted, his body poised, ready to make the kiss happen – that’s my daddy. Yep, it is.
The beauty of moments frozen in time is that they allow our imaginations to come up with all sorts of prognostications. We’ll never know if there ever was a kiss, or if it led to more – which, of course, is what I want to believe happened. Or maybe it was a posed snapshot? But who was the person taking the picture? Was this just a bit of bon vivant from those war-torn days?
What is known about these photos is they were taken when my daddy – his name was Curtis – was in San Diego, stationed at the U.S. Navy base there at the tail end of the 1940s. At the time, there was some saber-rattling going on between North and South Korea The U.S. had pledged troops if the two Koreas went to war, which they did on June 25, 1950.
Like many young men, my father wanted to dodge the fighting, and the easiest way out was exemption by marriage. He first met my mother, Mozelle, at a party in her hometown of Brownsville. It was the summer after her sophomore year at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. At the time, Curtis’ father was the editor-in-chief of the Brownsville Herald. His son would date Mozelle off and on until he was sent to San Diego after enlisting in the Navy.
The pair then conceived a plan to keep my father safe from war – marriage vows pronto, as soon as Mozelle graduated college in May of 1950. Then, as luck would have it, three months after their late August wedding, I was conceived. My story about their marriage.
Let’s circle back to Curtis, a bit of a dandy – handsome, well-mannered, steeped in social graces. He grew up in Mexico City – an only child, spoiled by a doting mother with a respectable British lineage. Back then, his father was a well regarded international journalist. As a teenager, Curtis lost his mother after she suffered head injuries from a fall in their Mexico City home.
A few months after my grandmother Clarice passed, my grandfather departed Mexico and enrolled Curtis in a military school in South Texas. As my father explained to my mother, the school was not a good fit – the rigor of it being the antithesis of his young life in Mexico as an only child living a privileged life with an adoring mother.
Mozelle considered all of these particulars confirmation of Curtis’ bonafides, which gave her sufficient peace of mind that Curtis would be a good husband and provider, and she would not be stuck in Brownsville – where most of her extended family lived and her father owned the only full-fledge grocery store in the county
Even though Curtis grew up in Mexico City and spoke Spanish like a native, the closeness of her hometown to Mexico was unsettling to Mozelle, even as she felt a sense of noblesse oblige – responsibility towards poor Mexican people, a sense of charity, part of a value system instilled by her mother, my grandmother, during the 1930s and ‘40s as Mozelle was growing up. But she did not cotton to the idea of living her adult life in the tip of Texas, on the border of Mexico. It was not a culture Mozelle wanted to immerse herself in, because for most Anglos, living on the borderlands required a certain amount of assimilation, such as speaking the language. She spoke some Spanish, to the housekeeper for example, but I never heard it from her in social situations or when she was in a grocery store. As a youngster growing up in Brownsville I wanted to learn Spanish. My mother said no, but never explained why. I think it was about privilege, that she thought being speaking Spanish out in public would be tarnishing.
Mozelle graduated SMU with a bachelor’s degree in business administration – a rare career choice for women back then who were mostly relegated to teaching and secretarial jobs. Also uncommon for women at the time – a job offer prior to graduation – to which my mother said yes. She would be working with one of the top retailers in Dallas, second only to Neiman Marcus, her top pick. Her dream was lying in wait – life in a big city, working in high fashion, hopefully selecting the fabulous and striking outfits du jour that women would want in their wardrobe; and eventually traveling the world, practicing her French. It was a fabulous fairy tale. Until it wasn’t.
Those first five or six months of married life were good. Mozelle sometimes rode the bus downtown to work and when it was convenient, Curtis drove her downtown in their two-door black Ford sedan before heading to nearby Southern Methodist University, where he was taking freshman year, first semester classes – the tuition a gift from my mother’s father. When second semester came around, the young couple’s world began teetering on a brink.
Mozelle and Curtis learned they were pregnant with me, and their world flipped into the retrograde motion of fast-retreating planets. Mozelle would leave her job because pregnant women weren’t allowed to bring baby bumps into the workplace. Curtis would leave SMU midway through his studies because the tuition payments stopped.
The two decided to seek refuge in Brownsville, where my grandmother was available to help watch over me. Then, in a finger snap, Mozelle and Curtis toted me to the car one day and took turns driving their black Ford two-door to a tiny Indiana border town, one thousand plus miles away. But why? What could warrant such a dramatic action so quickly? Turns out it was a meet-up with Dick and Marie, a married couple. Dick had a job for Curtis. And Marie had a sense of humor that kept my mother in stitches. The couple remained in my life for decades and decades, so they will sometimes pop up in stories to come.
Now, back to Indiana, where the promised job did not come through for Curtis, and another complicating factor bubbled up once Mozelle became pregnant with my sister. When word of the new grandchild reached Brownsville, my grandmother, Zenobia, notified my mother that she was coming to Indiana to pick me up. With both my parents out of work, and a new baby on the way, Nana, our grandmother, figured this was one of the only ways they could survive. The northbound train from South Texas was leaving the next morning, she told my mother.
It wouldn’t be long before my parents and new little sister came home to Brownsville, where Mozelle put her foot down. She expected her husband to be a respectable role model and hold down a job. However, he could not. No matter how many times he tried – from shoe salesman to Coca-Cola delivery truck driver. While he was a flop at the job thing, he was quite a fab daddy. He played with us, took us to the beach and the park, where he pushed us on the swings.
My mother clearly saw him as trouble – someone who would drain her pocketbook, lose himself in too many cocktails too many times, and never become an acceptable role model for her two daughters. I personally think he would have made a great house-husband. But sadly, that was a time when men and women had mandated cultural roles to play, and a stay-at-home dad was a flashing sign of unlawful femininity and social failure. My story of Mozelle and Curtis' marriage
These days, I suspect my father had a bit of gay in him, and it’s those snapshots at the beginning of this story that led me to this conclusion. When I saw them, I felt the vibe, I think. Or maybe I just want to snap my fingers and make it so. I didn’t see the photos until after my father’s passing, when I found them in a box in his closet.
In decades past, the idea that Curtis was gay never occurred to me. Not when he and I reconnected in the late 70s, early 1980s – a reunion that never would have happened if he had not gotten sober. And there I was, coming out to him! What I did notice when Curtis and I spent time together was his kindness – in his beguiling blue eyes, in the cadence of his voice. He was a gentle man with a sweet smile. Maybe that’s what the fellow in the snapshot was drawn to as well. That’s why he leans so close.
P.S. While my father could easily have had some gay running through him, it also seems my grandmother on Mozelle’s side had a bit of lesbian in her. My story about that.
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