November 19, 2014. This is the most influential date of my lifetime, or maybe that’s June 10, 2023. It was the day my life changed for better or for worse, or whatever they say. No, that’s not the day I got married, but it may as well have been.
November 19, 2014 is the day I fell in love at first sight with Christopher Ryan Willey (WILL-Lee). He would have wanted me to put emphasis on the pronunciation of his last name.
I’ll give a little background on me. I was born on a Friday, June 14, 1991, as Alexandria Christine Taylor. I was raised by my mom, Sheila, a true badass hippy lady who didn’t take shit and my dad, Leroy, a marijuana advocate musician that struggled with addiction and has a strong faith in Jesus.
The youngest of three with my sister, Camille, the artistic, quirky, intellectual middle child and my brother Daniel, the quiet, nerdy, intelligent oldest child. As far as families go, I believe we are all pretty close and have a rather unconventional, yet deep love for one another.
In my childhood years, the motto was ‘Never go a day without a hug’ and ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ We all vibe really well and bonding over a fat joint isn’t beyond us.
I met the best of friends any girl could dream of having as soon as I moved to Florida when I was 4. Her name was Tiffany Crystal Worman and I met her after my families very spontaneous, unplanned move from Dillwyn, VA because an undercover FBI agent was apparently investigating my dad for getting mailed hundreds of hits of acid from New York.
I met Tiffany in Van Doren Avenue in New Port Richey. Tiffany and I lived on the same street and her mom waitressed at the Denny’s my dad cooked at.
I did not want to be friends with her when I first met her. Pink bow, pink sparkly dress and matching sparkly Mary Jane’s against my disheveled long hair, oversized Pocahontas T-shirt and purple pants and I was either barefoot or my laces weren’t tied.
But, after our parents forced our friendship we immediately clicked.
She had everything I ever wanted from a family. A nice house, family portraits, lots and lots of toys! Tiffany and our families spent every holiday and birthday together. Her mom even got us season passes to Busch Gardens every year. We went through our phases of worshipping Eminem and The Used and I’d spend weeks at a time at her house like a second home, going to Youth Group and summer camps. We were inseparable.
I spent my younger years wondering about the swamps, feeding gators little frogs I’d find and coming home with a missing shoe.
Around age 6 I saw firsthand the fight that resulted in their eventual divorce. Looking back on it, I remember the pain in my mother’s eyes and her screams from all the years of being mistreated and cheated on. I saw it break her down until she couldn’t take it anymore.
I saw her lunge at my father with a boot horn and him back up and fell into the ironing board. But, I also remember my mom making me walk with her to the pay phone outside of the Big lots in the Southgate shopping center to call 911, she made me say I saw daddy hit mommy and he spent the night in jail.
I remember being so very little and having the police pull me Camille and Daniel to the side and ask us if we ever saw daddy hit mommy and us all say no and then ask if we ever saw them smoke something that smelled funny or wasn’t a cigarette and being trained at a really young age we all knew to say no.
When I was 8, as a means to fix their broken marriage, my parents decided to sell everything we owned and put the rest in storage. They bought an RV and we drove to New Jersey to spend some time with our cousin Megan, then hopped on a plane in New York City to London, England. I thought I was saying my very last goodbye to the most important person in my world, Tiffany.
We backpacked from London to Wales and took a ferry to Dublin where we spent Christmas Eve and Day. Then, we took a bus to Sligo and spent time up there with my Great Uncle Christi and got to see the town my maternal grandmother lived in. Ireland was absolutely incredible with the greenest grass a shade you weren’t even aware you could see, castles built in the sides of every mountain and sheep as large as buffalo.
We almost moved there for good but by the Grace of God something changed my parents mind, and we unpacked the shipping container and stayed in New Port Richey, Florida.
To no surprise, the efforts to save my parents marriage failed and as a result my father decided to take off, pursuing the life of a rock star and headed to Amsterdam to find his dream band. I remember the heart breaking feeling I had watching him leave on that greyhound bus. I thought I’d never see him again.
He was gone for a few months before flying into Miami and getting arrested for cocaine possession.
Driving 3 hours there and back just to have to see him through a glass window in the wall talking through a corded phone. Saying goodbye and holding our hands up to the window, pressing them up to one another through two-inch thick glass. I was a codependent daddy’s girl, and I was so hurt, seeing him in his blue jumpsuit every couple of months or so for almost a year.
My mom drank a lot back then. But, she had it rough raising 3 kids all about to go through puberty, fighting all the time, her working full time and paying all the bills herself while her party animal, drug using husband partied and traveled the world and ended up in jail. There’s no way I could have possibly done any better, but a kid remembers.
There were bad days like the time my brother sucker punched my sister and made her cry, so she grabbed him by the rat tail and slammed his face into the coffee table. Or the time I got in a bike accident and instead of taking me to the hospital my mom told me, and I will never forget “Suck it up and don’t bitch!” Meanwhile I’m staying at Tiffany’s and eating mashed potatoes and applesauce for months after. But, I still remind myself that mothering never came naturally for my mom.
Allie Willey 