Like a bird leaving the nest for the first time, Carolyn Witucky left her home in Ohio at 18 years old. She went to live with her husband, who had joined the army and had been stationed in Texas, halfway across the country. They had a child and wished to return home. Two teenagers now had to make their way across the country with an infant. Carolyn thought she could take on the world, but she was woefully unprepared. I was barely an adult when I left for Texas to go live with my husband, who I married straight out of high school. We had been best friends since we were kids. I’d already spent most of my life with him, why not spend the rest of it with him too? Our first child, Kim, had been alive for just six weeks. I was so proud of my precious…show more content… This time Butch woke up.
“What the hell was that?” he yelled out, tired but angry.
“I think they’re fighting over in the next room,” I answered him.
“We’re not staying here,” he said as he began to get dressed.
He used the payphone out front of the motel to call the police. We drove away and slept in the car for the rest of the night. My poor child. I looked at her laying in the backseat between a box of silverware and a pile of dirty clothes, wrapped in a blanket, hoping that she would turn out okay.
The next morning we were off again. We were getting close. “Take Me Home, Country Roads” came on the radio as we drove down the highway. The weather was sunny and warm with a cool breeze, and the song was perfect. It made me homesick, but happy that we’d be back home later that day. Then Kim began screaming like a banshee in the back, and interrupted the moment.
“What’s wrong with her?” Steve asked, in an irritated, but joking manner.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “It’s your kid. Make her shut up! Find out what’s…show more content… We have to get another one.” “If we keep stopping, we’re never getting home. Just calm her down.” She started screaming louder.
I wanted to scream too.
We stopped at the next convenience store.
Kim got her new pacifier and she finally stopped crying. Butch grabbed a newspaper from the store. It had a story about the motel we were at the night before. A man had been arrested for beating his wife and child nearly to death. I couldn’t believe it. I loved my baby and my husband, even though they made my life really hard. I couldn’t imagine my husband ever doing anything like that.
We got back to driving, stopped a few times to feed Kim, and to feed ourselves. It got colder as we got closer to home. It was January, but I had gotten used to the 70 degree Texas weather. We were down there for about a year.
Finally we pulled up to my mother’s house. It had been snowing, a weird change from where we came from. I sat there in the car for a minute, just thinking. We didn’t have jobs, we had no money, no house of our own, but we had a kid. I didn’t know what would happen next. I thought I would be ready to raise a child, but I had no idea what to do. I got in such a hurry to grow up, but I wasn’t as ready as I thought I
