Done Playing

Done Playing

(based on a true story, names were changed for their protection).



Their eyes burned into each other the minute he entered the room. Her heart skipped a beat, mistaking him for a former lover. She told her girl friend that she thought so and so just walked in and how could that be? 

“Figure out a way to get him over here!” she whispered to Paula. 

About that time, Danny’s eyes sought Paula out and both guys started moving in their direction. 

Kendra was hoping against hope that the one she was staring at would ask her to dance. After the introductions-he was Devin, by the way- he did just that.

It was strange, as they stood kind of swaying on the dance floor, they were both here in this place under protest. She had been tired and told Paula she didn’t even want to go out and anyway she’d never heard of the place. Later she learned that people even considered it a meat market!

As she and Devin pretended to dance, she learned that he was an avid foosball player (what was that, she didn’t know) and he hadn’t wanted to come because they didn’t have foosball here. He promised to take her where they did sometime. He worked driving parts for the Ford house in Grapevine.

Then, for some forgotten reason, they left the club to walk out to the parking lot for a minute. He to fetch a business card out of his truck so she’d have his number. While they were there she showed him her car. Black with red pinstripes. Her baby she’d gotten after her precious Arrow was destroyed in a wreck.

 He turned to her then and asked, “Are you done playing games?”

It took her a second to comprehend what he was asking. Then she felt a warmth and a knowing looking deep into his eyes and replied, “Yes. I am.” He lifted her up and kissed her. In that moment she knew she was going to be safe, protected, and cherished forever.

The rest of the night was a blur as somehow they made their apologies to their respective friends, left together, and never looked back.

She remembers meeting his brother, Robbie first, and then his parents. They weren’t unkind, but had plenty to say anyway. Devin had a talk with them and they must have realized how serious they were because no words were ever said afterward.

She remembers going to his favorite place to drink and play foosball, meeting all of his friends who were expert in the game, and he meeting her friends. Over the next three months they worked at their jobs, and spent all off time together, learning about each other and falling in deeper with the idea of living together. It all happened so fast!!

Before she knew it, they were planning a wedding, she was pregnant, and then they became parents, all in the first year! Her mother was snarky, but she ignored that. She never trusted that Kendra knew what she was doing, although she had her reasons. Kendra didn’t have the best track record with men. 

Since they were both vets, they told each other hours of history and stories from their prospective periods in the service. It was remarkable that they had grown up living so close to each other and yet, they’d never met. He’d been in the Marines and she’d been in the Army.

She had a little boy from a previous “relationship “ and he had an ex-wife. 

Nobody’s perfect, right? 

After Caden was born, they moved into their own apartment together. Life was great for a while. They soon outgrew that place and moved into a rent house. It was old and nasty with musty, casino-style carpet, but the rent was cheap. The rats had ruined the oven, so they just didn’t use it. They made all their food in pots, pans, and the microwave or toaster oven. They got by. They tried to trap the rats, since the landlord never did anything to help, and they kept baby Caden away from anything potentially harmful.the rats basically laughed as they ran away with the traps still attached.

Next thing she knew she was pregnant once again. She guessed it was a good thing her mother spitefully took over raising Steven if she was going to keep popping babies out like this.As it turned out, Aaron was the caboose of the baby train. But it was strained. It was all strained at the time. Śhe and her parent’s relationship, work, finances. Yet they got by.

Before Aaron was born, they moved into their very first starter home. What a step up from the nightmare rent house they had been in. They remodeled it and made it their own. There was a nursery with clouds and Caden’s handprints on the wall because he wanted to be in on the new brother’s room décor. That was before they brought him home from the hospital.

The sibling rivalry started almost immediately. She remembers a time when Devin brought Caden into see Aaron, tiny in his crib, and he threw his full bottle of milk at him. Oh yes, he was jealous. Aaron aged a bit and ended up showing Caden who was boss. It seemed their goal all during their childhood to best each other and as they got older, kill each other. They fought viciously when angered, which was often, yet they had good moments too. 

Kendra would take them to her mom’s all the time for visits with Steven, still upset at the fact she took over, biting her tongue as she let him do whatever he wanted. He was four years older and an only child in that situation. Her dad didn’t get in the way, although Kendra thought he should. He just let her mom go on spoiling Steven to the point that when the disaster happened, they weren’t exactly surprised.

Shocked, yes. How he could abuse his own brothers was beyond comprehension, yet Kendra believed Caden when he spilled the beans one night at dinner. She was wary, but it was confirmed in time when Aaron also confessed that Steven had done “something to them.” They didn’t know what to do or how to proceed, but together they formed a plan. By getting social services involved, it was easier to convince her parents that he had done such a heinous thing. Months of therapy, court appearances, and more didn’t do anything accept make Steven and my parents accountable and try to start the healing process.

Kendra was so proud of Devin in his handling of everything. He stood up for their boys yet didn’t demonize Steven, he just made her dad understood that what he’d done to them was in no way boys being boys, much less “normal”. In time, they all came to become brothers again, but that was many years and much discord with all of them.

Had Kendra just stood up to her mother in the beginning, none of this would have ever happened. She and Devin would not have raised him to be the spoiled brat he’d become. Who knows what her mother did to his mind, poisoning him against Kendra to the point that he thought she was his real mother. What a mess.

These trials that family goes through while staying strong in their values and convictions as a couple are what make a relationship strong. They weren’t shy about showing affection either, even in public. People often saw them walking hand in hand through their neighborhood or walking around the mall together. They had become more that just another married couple. They were best friends, often feeling like it was them against the world. They had friends though, lots of them. They spent many nights and weekends in each others company with all the kids playing together. Good times were had by all. They had made a good friend of an older neighbor too, John, who often attended game nights and even vacations with the family.

In time, when the boys were a bit older, the family moved again to a new house in Kendra’s old neighborhood, yet far enough away from her parents that they were comfortable. This house had a pool and they enjoyed many hours of outside time there. Kendra helped Devin as they once again started the remodeling process. It took about five years to get it exactly where they wanted before change knocked on their door again. 

His commute to his new job in a city thirty minutes south of their house was on Devin’s last nerve, so it was time to seek out another home.

This one was different. It was in the country. For a while, they and their boys, almost grown now, enjoyed the house with their dog Boober until Kendra decided they needed a couple of baby goats. So adorable were these little animals…for a while. Soon she realized how vicious and nasty billy goats are, and they pooped all over their fenced front acre. They had two more wooded acres behind the fence. Bonnie got pregnant and Clyde tried to kill her, so they had to separate them until after the kid was born. Eventually, they re-homed all four goats.

 By then, Aaron was shacked up with girlfriend in a nearby town and Caden was living with his girlfriend in Kendra and Devin’s home.. It was a messy time period in their lives, which lasted three years. Loving the area, but wanting another pool in the Texas heat, they moved yet again. Good thing they were used to that having done it so much in their military years. By then, they had a new granddaughter, but didn’t see her as much as they’d have liked. The girlfriend’s family was strange, which was a foreshadowing to the future. As it turned out much later, they broke up and Aaron’s girl ran off with the baby and disappeared from their lives. To this day her description nor location is even known.

After a year in the new house, Kendra and Devin were feeling the nomadic spirit calling them to seek out another, more peaceful location. How fortuitous was it for him to be offered a job to just such a place? It wasn’t their family vacation destination, but it was a  coastal town. She thought she’d died and gone to heaven. Other than leaving all their family and friends behind that is. Although they were very involved with work, play, and various causes, their families and kids weren’t having such a good time of it. After five blissful years together, near the water they both loved, it was time to go home to not only face the music, but pick up all the broken pieces. 

In the year previous to the them moving back home, Kendra had gone back to spend her mother’s last month on Earth with her. It was an extremely sad and frustrating month as she watched her mom lose all ability to speak, express her pain, and suffer two weeks of hospice care.

Following that nightmare was the loss of Devin’s father to complications from Alzheimer’s disease. Almost immediately after that, he lost his oldest brother to un yet diagnosed kidney cancer. During this emotionally stressful year, the couple acquired their fur babies -Whiskey and Brandy, their two adorable Shorkies. Bought separately and from different breeders, not that most can tell. They looked and acted just like twin sisters. 

They helped the couple with their feelings of loss and grief like people sometimes can’t. Kendra gazes at them now remembering the months after buying each. The loss of her mom was almost more than she could bear, despite their rocky relationship. Devin was infatuated immediately with them but their cat Boots took longer to bond. She first had to get to know Whiskey, bad enough before rambunctious, hyperactive Brandy showed up. Devin delighted in their antics as soon they were tumbling around the living room happily playing with each other. He was so happy when his older brother came for a visit in time to see them and meet the pups before he became ill suddenly at Christmas of the same year. He was gone the month after.

Through all these major life events, the moves, the losses, the gains, and the fellowship of family and friends, they stayed together, never wavering in their close bond. Thirty eight years and so many more events later, here they were. Living a different life than they ever dreamed, together against the world, from their home on wheels wherever the road takes them.