Okay I am going to share with you perhaps my favorite memory of all from this neighborhood… but I am warning you after reading this you will absolutely for certain know that I am a strange creature and that oddity was cultivated at a very young age!
I grew up Mormon and because of the situation with my family and my parents drinking I did not have many Mormon friends that were allowed to spend the night… but I had one friend, Erica B. who would spend the night often when I lived at Woodgate Court.
When she would come over we would clear every single thing out of my closet and lay out blankets and make my closet our own little sleeping fort. It was cramped but we loved being all squeezed in there with a flashlight giggling all night. And then on Saturdays we would wake up and put on our best most grown up church dresses… and I was always deeply jealous that she had a suit because it looked much more professional than I did in my dress.
After we were convinced that we looked at least 35 we would take our clipboards and notepaper and pens and begin going door to door and randomly survey people about whatever subject popped into our mind. …. And we were alllll business. No giggling or laughing… or acting unprofessional ever. We would have lengthy conversations with people asking them about tv shows, popcorn, Banquet fried chicken, the community rec. center… whatever popped into our mind for the day.
Most of the neighbors would indulge us in our little game… I would say maybe 90% opened the door and talked to us and took us seriously… never laughing at these foolish girls trying to act all grown up. There were a couple that would get irritated and slam the door on us but they were few and far between. It was because of those surveys that when it came time to sell candy bars door to door for a fundraiser I made a killing… because everyone already knew me.
I look back now and think to myself “what strange little ducks” and try to imagine what I would do if some 8 or 9 year old girl all dressed up in church clothes came knocking on my door and asking silly questions in the most serious tone imaginable… I think unfortunately I would probably bust into the giggles and be unable to take them seriously! But then again in the world of today… kids aren’t encouraged to go knocking on random strangers doors so I guess I don’t have to worry about it too much!
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Questions for the day:
• What kind of things did you do on sleepovers when you were little?
• Do you remember any fundraisers you did?
• Did you have a friend that you always did crazy things with?
• Did you ever play dress up?
• Where you a shy kid or were you more outgoing?
• Did you do anything when you were younger that just makes you shake your head in embarrassment now that you are grown up?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard !
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Backhoe Bob
While we lived in Woodgate Court..and really for most of my childhood my father was a backhoe operator for Consolidated Plumbing. They put in the sewer lines for housing developments. He was part of a two man team… He ran the backhoe and his counter part named Sprigs always did the ground work. Sprigs was a very very. very large black man… think “The Green Mile” and you are close to capturing the essence of Sprigs. My dad loved this man they worked side by side and he would not work with anyone else. It was said that my dad and Sprigs could lay more pipe than an entire crew they were that good together. Even though he was such a big guy I really liked him because he always called my dad Mister Barker but it always came out with his deep southern drawl so it was more like “Mista Bahka”...he was a gentle giant.
On occasion when we would pick up my dad from work he would let me crawl onto his lap and “run” the backhoe which I thought was possibly the coolest thing on the planet. I loved picking him up from work…he carried a black metal lunchbox and every day left a little of his lunch for me… some nibblet or treat for me and Sherri and I swear I have never tasted beef jerky that tastes half as good as my fathers half eaten slim jims left in that box baking in the Virginia sun during the workday.
My oldest brother Donald worked with him for awhile and got real cocky saying he was a better backhoe operator than my father so my dad never being a man to back down challenged him to a test of skill. They lined the backhoe’s up and put a raw egg in front of the large bucket and the both of them had to slowly roll the egg with just the bucket down the road and the first one to break it lost. Needless to say a few inches in and my brother broke his egg… but my father rolled that egg the entire length of the road.. an asphalt road and I remember the whole work crew lined up and watching and when he was done everyone was just in disbelief and my father got out of that backhoe and just looked at my brother and didn’t say a word with his mouth but that smile of his put Donald to shame.
His skill was well rewarded with the company and one day we were sitting at the dinner table and my father came in and told us to go outside there was a surprise and there sitting in front of the house was a green Cadillac El Dorado. It was mint green and the biggest longest car I had ever seen. He piled us into the car immediately and took us for a spin and the entire time never stopped talking about how smooth it rode. He loved that car…and it really did ride smooth.
One year we drove it all the way to Florida, he put a crib mattress in the backseat and me and Sherri hung out lounging on it the entire trip and when my dad got tired we pulled over and sat in the front while he napped in the back.
My dad was really a jack of all trades but his skill with the backhoe in my mind is legendary…He was an artist with it really and to this day I always think about him and that egg whenever I see one at a construction site.
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On occasion when we would pick up my dad from work he would let me crawl onto his lap and “run” the backhoe which I thought was possibly the coolest thing on the planet. I loved picking him up from work…he carried a black metal lunchbox and every day left a little of his lunch for me… some nibblet or treat for me and Sherri and I swear I have never tasted beef jerky that tastes half as good as my fathers half eaten slim jims left in that box baking in the Virginia sun during the workday.
My oldest brother Donald worked with him for awhile and got real cocky saying he was a better backhoe operator than my father so my dad never being a man to back down challenged him to a test of skill. They lined the backhoe’s up and put a raw egg in front of the large bucket and the both of them had to slowly roll the egg with just the bucket down the road and the first one to break it lost. Needless to say a few inches in and my brother broke his egg… but my father rolled that egg the entire length of the road.. an asphalt road and I remember the whole work crew lined up and watching and when he was done everyone was just in disbelief and my father got out of that backhoe and just looked at my brother and didn’t say a word with his mouth but that smile of his put Donald to shame.
His skill was well rewarded with the company and one day we were sitting at the dinner table and my father came in and told us to go outside there was a surprise and there sitting in front of the house was a green Cadillac El Dorado. It was mint green and the biggest longest car I had ever seen. He piled us into the car immediately and took us for a spin and the entire time never stopped talking about how smooth it rode. He loved that car…and it really did ride smooth.
One year we drove it all the way to Florida, he put a crib mattress in the backseat and me and Sherri hung out lounging on it the entire trip and when my dad got tired we pulled over and sat in the front while he napped in the back.
My dad was really a jack of all trades but his skill with the backhoe in my mind is legendary…He was an artist with it really and to this day I always think about him and that egg whenever I see one at a construction site.
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Questions for the day:
• Where did your dad or mom work when you were growing up?
• Was there something your parents were really good at that you remember?
• Do you remember any of the cars from your childhood?
• Did you have a special memory with your father?
• Did you ever go visit your dad or mom at work?
• Did you ever go on any road trips?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard !
• Where did your dad or mom work when you were growing up?
• Was there something your parents were really good at that you remember?
• Do you remember any of the cars from your childhood?
• Did you have a special memory with your father?
• Did you ever go visit your dad or mom at work?
• Did you ever go on any road trips?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard !
Boys…dance contests and cheek pinching!
In Woodgate Court there was a boy named Mike Harper…his father drove the Frito Lay truck…and that truck was always home base whenever we played hide and seek. I don’t remember much about Mike….but his father is the single reason I will visibly flinch if a hand gets close to my cheek. Every single day whenever he would see me he would lean over and pinch my cheeks… HARD…and he would always smile and laugh at me when I scowled. I am convinced that if the bumper on the Frito Lay truck was not the perfect size for an 8 year old butt to sit on after a long game of hide and seek, I would have told him what I really thought about his cheek pinching. But alas that truck was in the perfect spot for home base and the bumper was just the right size so I kept my yap shut!
The Deleans were two boys that lived about five townhouses away from Mike Harper… kitty corner to my house. Their parents were kind of caught in the Disco era…real flashy and sassy. I remember a few times she had us over for a dance contest and me and Danny the younger of the brothers danced our butts off and won. I am certain this is where my obsession for dancing began. Danny was a quiet sort… and was always willing to play house with me. Our favorite hiding spot was behind his bushes in front of his house and we would sit there for hours coloring and talking. It was behind those bushes I got my first kiss from him… which weirded both of us out and we both quickly decided that playing house was fine but kissing was not really in the cards for us.
In between the Harpers and the Delean’s there was a family that was reeeaaaalllly hippified. When you walked into their house there were all these purple lights and she had plants everywhere and it always smelled funny. There was a younger boy that lived there, he was maybe 5 years old and one night he set the house on fire because he was playing with matches. After the fire they brought all the neighborhood kids through the house to show us what can happen when you play with matches and it scared us enough to make us steer clear of flame for the next 10 years. I remember walking through the charred inside of the house and just wincing trying to imagine how much trouble I would have gotten in by my father if I had burned the house down and frankly I was actually a little surprised that boy was still alive after doing that.
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Questions for the day:
• Did you ever have any family members or people around you that would pinch your cheeks or do some annoying thing every time you saw them?
• Where there any people in your neighborhood that were “characters” and stood out for some reason?
• Who was your first kiss?
• Did you play house or school or pretend and if so who played with you?
• Where was your favorite hiding spot as a kid?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard !
Woodgate Court
I think out of any of the places I lived this was my favorite. Life had really simmered down quite a bit, and we all seemed to be settling into a pattern of semi normalcy (once again I use that term lightly).
I have so many good memories from this place the bulk of them involve the group of kids that lived in this neighborhood. There were about 15 of us and we all were about the same age. In the summer right in the center of our court there was a little circle parking lot that I guess was some sort of turnabout and overflow for campers and whatnot. I cannot tell you how many nights in the summer we spent in that circle playing kickball until the streetlamps came on.
There were three of us girls in the neighborhood that were pretty close and we would take our bikes (mine was a Strawberry shortcake bike with streamers on the handlebars) and we would just ride all day long in the summer. Missy had the same bike as me and after the long rides we would sit on the curb and she would bring out frozen cantaloupe balls for us to chomp on while we cooled down. Toward the end of the first summer we found out Missy was moving away. Michelle and I were devastated and the night before she moved away we spent the night in Missy’s room reminiscing about all of our adventures, eating Tid Bit cheese crackers and crying into the night.
After she moved away Michelle and I became a lot closer. Her brother was an odd duck… really tall… like the tallest guy I had ever seen and he was always eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with a spoon…but it was her mother that used to scare the pajamas off of me. She was tough and ballsy. She worked as the office manager with a construction company. I remember on Saturday’s going with Michelle and keeping her company while her mom was working, we would wander around the work yard and pick up little balls of tar and throw them at each other… and then when her mom was finished she would take us to Victoria Station for lunch. It was the absolute coolest place because the restaurant was in an actual boxcar. I tasted Chocolate Mousse for the first time at Victoria Station and I remember I thought I had died and gone to heaven… it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.
I wish I could remember Missy or Michelle’s last name…it’s weird that I can remember cantaloupe balls and what kind of bike I had but not a name…I guess it is because when you’re a kid names don’t really matter as much as what kind of bike you ride…. And sometimes I wish adults still operated that way!
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Questions for the day:
• Who were your bosom friends in the neighborhood growing up?
• Did you ever have a friend that moved away or did you move away?
• What did your bike look like when you were a kid?
• What was your favorite snack to cool you down on hot summer days?
• Did any of your friend's parents impact your life in any way?
• What was your favorite game to play when you were young?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard !
I have so many good memories from this place the bulk of them involve the group of kids that lived in this neighborhood. There were about 15 of us and we all were about the same age. In the summer right in the center of our court there was a little circle parking lot that I guess was some sort of turnabout and overflow for campers and whatnot. I cannot tell you how many nights in the summer we spent in that circle playing kickball until the streetlamps came on.
There were three of us girls in the neighborhood that were pretty close and we would take our bikes (mine was a Strawberry shortcake bike with streamers on the handlebars) and we would just ride all day long in the summer. Missy had the same bike as me and after the long rides we would sit on the curb and she would bring out frozen cantaloupe balls for us to chomp on while we cooled down. Toward the end of the first summer we found out Missy was moving away. Michelle and I were devastated and the night before she moved away we spent the night in Missy’s room reminiscing about all of our adventures, eating Tid Bit cheese crackers and crying into the night.
After she moved away Michelle and I became a lot closer. Her brother was an odd duck… really tall… like the tallest guy I had ever seen and he was always eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with a spoon…but it was her mother that used to scare the pajamas off of me. She was tough and ballsy. She worked as the office manager with a construction company. I remember on Saturday’s going with Michelle and keeping her company while her mom was working, we would wander around the work yard and pick up little balls of tar and throw them at each other… and then when her mom was finished she would take us to Victoria Station for lunch. It was the absolute coolest place because the restaurant was in an actual boxcar. I tasted Chocolate Mousse for the first time at Victoria Station and I remember I thought I had died and gone to heaven… it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted.
I wish I could remember Missy or Michelle’s last name…it’s weird that I can remember cantaloupe balls and what kind of bike I had but not a name…I guess it is because when you’re a kid names don’t really matter as much as what kind of bike you ride…. And sometimes I wish adults still operated that way!
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Questions for the day:
• Who were your bosom friends in the neighborhood growing up?
• Did you ever have a friend that moved away or did you move away?
• What did your bike look like when you were a kid?
• What was your favorite snack to cool you down on hot summer days?
• Did any of your friend's parents impact your life in any way?
• What was your favorite game to play when you were young?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard !
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Boys will be boys....
I feel like before we get any further along I need to get down on paper some stories… that I have heard but cannot remember with my own two eyes. They are the kind of stories that make me laugh and remember that even in dysfunction… kids will be kids.
When we lived on Nettle Tree my brothers kind of ran the block and they decided that it was in the best interest of the neighborhood if they formed their own police squad. Please keep in mind that this police squad was run by boys still on bicycles but nonetheless they patrolled with a vengeance. They would issue tickets to neighborhood kids that were “riding on the wrong side of the sidewalk” and on occasion were known to cart the real troublesome ones off to “jail”. Jail consisted of a room in our basement where kids would spend entire days hoping and waiting for someone to come bust them loose. From what I understand on more than one occasion parents in the neighborhood placed a very angry phone call to my mother asking her to release their child from “jail” so they could make it home for dinner.
In elementary school one of my brothers went for one year with me to that school and that was the best year of my entire scholastic existence because he was the leader of a “gang” (more like a Fonzie type of gang than the Bloods or Krips type) and because he was the leader no one bothered me ever. I thought it was just about the coolest thing I had ever seen when he would snap his fingers at the lunch table and they would pull out his chair for him.
Barry went through an Evil Kenevil spell and dislocated his collar bone when he attempted to jump a string of garbage cans….Donald was the mastermind of most of the plans…and David always seemed to march to the beat of his own drummer.
I have not been very close to these guys most of my life… but these stories kind of define how I always picture them…Barry is daring and bold and courageous… Donald has a mind full of ideas… and David is an individual that has an uncanny ability to influence the people around him. And though after Nettle Tree I didn’t spend much time with all three of the brothers…these stories make me smile and takes a little bit of the sting from that house.
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Questions for the Day:
• Did you have any neighborhood kids that ran the block when you were little?
• Who did you hang out with in your neighborhood?
• What funny memories do you have with your brothers and sisters?
• What was elementary school like for you?
• Did you ever do something crazy because of a dare?
• What kind of bicycle did you have?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard !
When we lived on Nettle Tree my brothers kind of ran the block and they decided that it was in the best interest of the neighborhood if they formed their own police squad. Please keep in mind that this police squad was run by boys still on bicycles but nonetheless they patrolled with a vengeance. They would issue tickets to neighborhood kids that were “riding on the wrong side of the sidewalk” and on occasion were known to cart the real troublesome ones off to “jail”. Jail consisted of a room in our basement where kids would spend entire days hoping and waiting for someone to come bust them loose. From what I understand on more than one occasion parents in the neighborhood placed a very angry phone call to my mother asking her to release their child from “jail” so they could make it home for dinner.
In elementary school one of my brothers went for one year with me to that school and that was the best year of my entire scholastic existence because he was the leader of a “gang” (more like a Fonzie type of gang than the Bloods or Krips type) and because he was the leader no one bothered me ever. I thought it was just about the coolest thing I had ever seen when he would snap his fingers at the lunch table and they would pull out his chair for him.
Barry went through an Evil Kenevil spell and dislocated his collar bone when he attempted to jump a string of garbage cans….Donald was the mastermind of most of the plans…and David always seemed to march to the beat of his own drummer.
I have not been very close to these guys most of my life… but these stories kind of define how I always picture them…Barry is daring and bold and courageous… Donald has a mind full of ideas… and David is an individual that has an uncanny ability to influence the people around him. And though after Nettle Tree I didn’t spend much time with all three of the brothers…these stories make me smile and takes a little bit of the sting from that house.
………………………………………….............
Questions for the Day:
• Did you have any neighborhood kids that ran the block when you were little?
• Who did you hang out with in your neighborhood?
• What funny memories do you have with your brothers and sisters?
• What was elementary school like for you?
• Did you ever do something crazy because of a dare?
• What kind of bicycle did you have?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard !
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Sugarland Run Drive
This is the home where I became a big sister. As chaotic and crazy as the house on Nettle Tree Road was…this one was fairly quiet. Dad and Jackie were busy trying to settle into a new life… create a family…appear to have a normal life and for the most part that happened. Except when my mother would come over…and poke the hornets nest. She was not going to go down quietly and in many ways I admire that about her. Dad and Jackie were eager to just move on and my mother's presence was a continual reminder of what had happened and the choices that were made…
She didn’t come over a lot but when she did it was an epic battle. Fists, pushing, shoving shouting and on one occasion I swear there were clothes flung out onto the yard but I don’t know if this is just something I imagined or if it really took place.
In the in between of that chaos…life really did settle into some normalcy…and I use that term loosely. I was really excited to be a big sister and I adored Sherri from the get go. I remember going to our neighbors house when she was just a baby. This neighbor was going to babysit us while Dad and Jackie went out…and while we were there Sherri was crying up a storm…and I was DISTRESSED. I could not understand why this neighbor lady was so incompetent that she could not get my little sister to stop crying.
So after a long stretch of wailing I finally worked up the nerve to march over to her and tell her “If you give the baby to me I can make her stop crying” and the neighbor lady shooed me off and kept bouncing Sherri up and down which only made the crying worsen. She never gave Sherri to me but I remember just sitting on the couch the entire time so frustrated because I was certain that all she needed was her sister.
At this stage of my life, I was deeply infatuated with baton twirling and wanted desperately to belong to the twirling club that marched in the parades in town. They had streamers on the ends of their batons and they wore white cowboy boots with tassels on them and I thought that was just about the greatest thing I had ever seen and I coveted them for years.
I remember this house had a carport that my dad never really pulled into and I would spend my days riding my bike in circles in the carport or putting on my roller skates and going round and round and round. I loved the way skates felt on smooth concrete and would zone out to the sound they made while I sped around in those circles.
Jackie was really into plants and she had a terrarium a really big terrarium that was round and on a stand and it had all these plants in it and at one time we had some little frogs in there too and I remember she would put it out on the carport and I would have to be careful not to bump it when I skated and I was always afraid the frogs were going to jump out of the hole on top.
All of the boys from my moms first marriage moved in with us to this house on Sugarland…which I suppose had to be really weird for them because suddenly their sister was the mother of the home…but nonetheless they were there…David the youngest was always super creative and he and the neighbor kid would make movies in our garage off the carport. I remember one time they wanted me to play the secretary and as I typed I would scoot along with the bar on the typewriter and when it reached the end of the page they wanted me to fall onto the floor… they thought it would be the funniest thing ever but after about fifteen takes of me hitting the floor I failed to see the humor in it.
I can tell you the name of neighbors…I can remember the monkey bars the girls next door had…I can remember on hot summer days how the humidity would cause that terrarium to steam up but I cannot for the life of me remember how long we lived in this house…but I think it was quite a while.
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Questions for the Day:
• Do you remember when you became a big sister or brother?
• Do you have any stories from babysitters that you remember?
• What did you like to spend your days doing, where you a bike rider, or a skateboarder or a dancer?
• Were there pieces of furniture or items from your childhood home that you remember for some reason?
• Did your brothers or sisters ever make you go along with some of their plans and schemes and big ideas?
• Did you have a special neighbor that was important growing up?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard!
She didn’t come over a lot but when she did it was an epic battle. Fists, pushing, shoving shouting and on one occasion I swear there were clothes flung out onto the yard but I don’t know if this is just something I imagined or if it really took place.
In the in between of that chaos…life really did settle into some normalcy…and I use that term loosely. I was really excited to be a big sister and I adored Sherri from the get go. I remember going to our neighbors house when she was just a baby. This neighbor was going to babysit us while Dad and Jackie went out…and while we were there Sherri was crying up a storm…and I was DISTRESSED. I could not understand why this neighbor lady was so incompetent that she could not get my little sister to stop crying.
So after a long stretch of wailing I finally worked up the nerve to march over to her and tell her “If you give the baby to me I can make her stop crying” and the neighbor lady shooed me off and kept bouncing Sherri up and down which only made the crying worsen. She never gave Sherri to me but I remember just sitting on the couch the entire time so frustrated because I was certain that all she needed was her sister.
At this stage of my life, I was deeply infatuated with baton twirling and wanted desperately to belong to the twirling club that marched in the parades in town. They had streamers on the ends of their batons and they wore white cowboy boots with tassels on them and I thought that was just about the greatest thing I had ever seen and I coveted them for years.
I remember this house had a carport that my dad never really pulled into and I would spend my days riding my bike in circles in the carport or putting on my roller skates and going round and round and round. I loved the way skates felt on smooth concrete and would zone out to the sound they made while I sped around in those circles.
Jackie was really into plants and she had a terrarium a really big terrarium that was round and on a stand and it had all these plants in it and at one time we had some little frogs in there too and I remember she would put it out on the carport and I would have to be careful not to bump it when I skated and I was always afraid the frogs were going to jump out of the hole on top.
All of the boys from my moms first marriage moved in with us to this house on Sugarland…which I suppose had to be really weird for them because suddenly their sister was the mother of the home…but nonetheless they were there…David the youngest was always super creative and he and the neighbor kid would make movies in our garage off the carport. I remember one time they wanted me to play the secretary and as I typed I would scoot along with the bar on the typewriter and when it reached the end of the page they wanted me to fall onto the floor… they thought it would be the funniest thing ever but after about fifteen takes of me hitting the floor I failed to see the humor in it.
I can tell you the name of neighbors…I can remember the monkey bars the girls next door had…I can remember on hot summer days how the humidity would cause that terrarium to steam up but I cannot for the life of me remember how long we lived in this house…but I think it was quite a while.
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Questions for the Day:
• Do you remember when you became a big sister or brother?
• Do you have any stories from babysitters that you remember?
• What did you like to spend your days doing, where you a bike rider, or a skateboarder or a dancer?
• Were there pieces of furniture or items from your childhood home that you remember for some reason?
• Did your brothers or sisters ever make you go along with some of their plans and schemes and big ideas?
• Did you have a special neighbor that was important growing up?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Nettle Tree Road
Nettle: to irritate, annoy, or provoke.
2.
to sting as a nettle does.
The first home I lived in was on a street called “Nettle Tree Road” and I just had to laugh at that last night when I started thinking about that house because that name… kind of sums it up.
The Nettle Tree Road house for me was where it all began. I was young when we moved there maybe 2 years old, but it was this house where I became a princess, and an emotional pauper.
The fun memories of this house include me picking up the white gravel rocks in our driveway while my dad did yard work. I loved those rocks and would fill my purse with them because they had “sparkalies” in them which looked like diamonds to a three year old’s eyes.
One of my favorite memories from that place was one day in the backyard as I was playing a balloon floated over the fence and landed and attached was a package of graham crackers with a note from Bozo the clown who was at that time was equivalent to Edward Cullen to my three year old mind… I was just moon over Miami for that clown and to get graham crackers from him made my century! I am certain now that it had to be my father doing that as a treat… and that sweetens the deal for me but to this day it is on the top five of memories when it comes to my childhood.
I was really young when my father began the affair with my half sister Jackie… and it had gone on for some time but this house was where it all came to a head.
There were a lot of changes that took place because of that…the whole structure of my family shifted when the Jackie and Dad situation was exposed. Because of the level of betrayal and dysfunction from that affair the fighting that took place was epic. The weird thing I am remembering was that when the fights took place I never retreated into my room… I would hide under the dining room table so I could listen and hear it all. I would sit there for hours listening to it and I don’t know why I chose to listen… I can’t seem to figure that out, except that maybe I was just trying to figure it out and make sense of it all and so listening was the only way to do that because my brothers of course would not tell me anything.
I have been thinking a lot about that little girl sitting under that table the past few days… she was so little and innocent and way to be young to be thrust into all of this garbage and I guess I wish I could go back and drag her out from under that table and take her for a bike ride and get her out of that situation while the fighting went on. I think I would tell her that it wasn’t her job to figure anything out… that none of it made sense…and even though her father was making horrible choices they really did still love her…and she was valuable. I would like to go back and protect her…and then I would like to go punch my father in the kahunas and tell him he was a jerk for not having any self control.
In the big picture good came from it… I got brothers and sisters and a whole new set of adventures from that…but for that three year old girl… I still do cringe at the ripple effect this house and the choices and secrets held there had on her life…and I wish for her sake it could have all been different.
I wonder if my life would have been different if I had lived on a street called Peaches and Cream Avenue?
………………………………………………………………………………………..
Questions for the day:
• What did your first house look like?
• Is there anything you wish you could go back and say to your three year old self?
• How do you see her world through your grown up eyes?
• What is one of your favorite memories from your childhood home?
• Who was your favorite “icon” when you were young?
• When you were little what was your favorite snack?
• Did you have a secret childhood hiding place?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard!
2.
to sting as a nettle does.
The first home I lived in was on a street called “Nettle Tree Road” and I just had to laugh at that last night when I started thinking about that house because that name… kind of sums it up.
The Nettle Tree Road house for me was where it all began. I was young when we moved there maybe 2 years old, but it was this house where I became a princess, and an emotional pauper.
The fun memories of this house include me picking up the white gravel rocks in our driveway while my dad did yard work. I loved those rocks and would fill my purse with them because they had “sparkalies” in them which looked like diamonds to a three year old’s eyes.
One of my favorite memories from that place was one day in the backyard as I was playing a balloon floated over the fence and landed and attached was a package of graham crackers with a note from Bozo the clown who was at that time was equivalent to Edward Cullen to my three year old mind… I was just moon over Miami for that clown and to get graham crackers from him made my century! I am certain now that it had to be my father doing that as a treat… and that sweetens the deal for me but to this day it is on the top five of memories when it comes to my childhood.
I was really young when my father began the affair with my half sister Jackie… and it had gone on for some time but this house was where it all came to a head.
There were a lot of changes that took place because of that…the whole structure of my family shifted when the Jackie and Dad situation was exposed. Because of the level of betrayal and dysfunction from that affair the fighting that took place was epic. The weird thing I am remembering was that when the fights took place I never retreated into my room… I would hide under the dining room table so I could listen and hear it all. I would sit there for hours listening to it and I don’t know why I chose to listen… I can’t seem to figure that out, except that maybe I was just trying to figure it out and make sense of it all and so listening was the only way to do that because my brothers of course would not tell me anything.
I have been thinking a lot about that little girl sitting under that table the past few days… she was so little and innocent and way to be young to be thrust into all of this garbage and I guess I wish I could go back and drag her out from under that table and take her for a bike ride and get her out of that situation while the fighting went on. I think I would tell her that it wasn’t her job to figure anything out… that none of it made sense…and even though her father was making horrible choices they really did still love her…and she was valuable. I would like to go back and protect her…and then I would like to go punch my father in the kahunas and tell him he was a jerk for not having any self control.
In the big picture good came from it… I got brothers and sisters and a whole new set of adventures from that…but for that three year old girl… I still do cringe at the ripple effect this house and the choices and secrets held there had on her life…and I wish for her sake it could have all been different.
I wonder if my life would have been different if I had lived on a street called Peaches and Cream Avenue?
………………………………………………………………………………………..
Questions for the day:
• What did your first house look like?
• Is there anything you wish you could go back and say to your three year old self?
• How do you see her world through your grown up eyes?
• What is one of your favorite memories from your childhood home?
• Who was your favorite “icon” when you were young?
• When you were little what was your favorite snack?
• Did you have a secret childhood hiding place?
Of course you don’t have to answer all of them or any of them for that matter… but if any of them made you think… I’d love for you to capture those thoughts so you have them to share… because they are worth being heard!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Your story...
I decided to start a separate blog for the Time Line project because I would really like to make it a little more interactive and separate it from my usual writing.
As I am processing through all of this .. I am realizing that all of it is valuable to me. The good the bad and the ugly and I really want my son to be able to tell his children stories about their grandmother…. I want them to know that my life was an adventure.
I was thinking about that… about how all of our lives are an adventure really… and as fun and grueling, and good and bad as this process is for me I wondered how many people out there have taken any time to really record their lives. Not just the dates of weddings, and baptisms, and births and deaths… but all the in between… the muckity muck…. Because that is where the adventure lies hidden… and really once it is on paper it becomes our legacy…a chance to share our experience and pass on what we learned, what we wished we had learned… and hopefully help someone else along the way.
Soooo at the end of each post I am going to ask a few “probing questions” to hopefully get you to think about your own life. And I just hope that some of you will join me in the journey. You don’t have to write every day… and you don’t even have to write a whole page full… you don't even have to write it in a blog just get a notebook and start with a sentence. Do what you can do and it will probably be more than you have ever done before.
I hope you won’t let this be one of your “one day wishes” and that you seize the day and begin your story too because I guarantee there are people who want to hear it.
After all you have been through… isn’t it worth sharing?
..................................................................................
If you are interested in joining the journey you can subscribe to this blog through an email at the top of the page. That way it is conveniently emailed right to your inbox...
As I am processing through all of this .. I am realizing that all of it is valuable to me. The good the bad and the ugly and I really want my son to be able to tell his children stories about their grandmother…. I want them to know that my life was an adventure.
I was thinking about that… about how all of our lives are an adventure really… and as fun and grueling, and good and bad as this process is for me I wondered how many people out there have taken any time to really record their lives. Not just the dates of weddings, and baptisms, and births and deaths… but all the in between… the muckity muck…. Because that is where the adventure lies hidden… and really once it is on paper it becomes our legacy…a chance to share our experience and pass on what we learned, what we wished we had learned… and hopefully help someone else along the way.
Soooo at the end of each post I am going to ask a few “probing questions” to hopefully get you to think about your own life. And I just hope that some of you will join me in the journey. You don’t have to write every day… and you don’t even have to write a whole page full… you don't even have to write it in a blog just get a notebook and start with a sentence. Do what you can do and it will probably be more than you have ever done before.
I hope you won’t let this be one of your “one day wishes” and that you seize the day and begin your story too because I guarantee there are people who want to hear it.
After all you have been through… isn’t it worth sharing?
..................................................................................
If you are interested in joining the journey you can subscribe to this blog through an email at the top of the page. That way it is conveniently emailed right to your inbox...
Time Travel Pt. 1
If any of you have ever asked me about my life you know that I am foggy on dates, it all blends together and I can tell you general ideas about certain blocks of time but I have never really made any concerted effort to get the details. Three times in my life various people have encouraged me to create a time line, to map it out, review, examine, and finally figure out the what, where, and when of it all. But if you know anything about me you also know that avoidance has been my superpower for most of my life. I wasn’t really interested in revisiting my past in any way shape or form because I escaped it… got out alive… and do not wish to go back and take a whiff of any of that dead rotting meat.
But as I have written lately you know that God is all about exposing right now… he is in the business of uncovering and disabling my hide, flee, escape, parachute button. So far we have targeted relationships, food, even how I dress in order to “not be noticed”. But yesterday when He asked me if He really was my Savior…I started to wonder why … If I truly believe He rescued me and saved me from danger or peril… why am I so mortified to actually go back and look at it all… the good the bad and the ugly. What am I avoiding? What am I running from? If he is my Savior then what am I afraid of?
What I am realizing is I am missing out on a whole arena to understand how much He has carried me through. By avoiding the pain, I also am avoiding the glorious, wonderful, truth that He carried me, and protected me, and provided for me through it all. He rescued me from the miry depths but unless I am willing to really examine how deep that mire was I cannot really understand how mighty He is to save. And my life is a wonderful opportunity to see His handiwork in action. And so I have begun the process….and this blog might bore you to tears over the next little while because as you know this is the place I come to sort out all my thoughts and process things… so I will probably be sharing a lot of the journey but I will give you a warning if the post is about this timeline exercise, and if you don’t care to take the journey with me you can skip the post… I understand that my life is not the most fascinating thing on the planet!
The process so far is a bit overwhelming… I have large gaps in my brain, lots of information and memories but it’s all a hodge podge. Last night I began a brainstorming notebook that I just kept jotting down events, friends, births, deaths, moves, boyfriends, anything I could remember and decided not to worry about the order of things and just start somewhere.
I am using my blank wall as the time line, decided that post it’s might be the easiest thing to use since I will probably have to move them a lot due to my lapse of memory in regards to dates etc.
Tonight I decided to start with houses… places I lived. That is sort of how I always gauge things in my mind anyway… events are never categorized by decades but by where I was living and with who.
As I started writing addresses on post it notes and throwing them up on the wall I was surprised to see how often I have moved….42 times in 40 years
How often I went back and forth between the same places like a ping pong ball….
I have always had a lot of shame about me and Bray being homeless and him not having his own room and whatnot… and so the biggest realization is seeing that along this time line, I was just about the same age as him when I went through the same thing.
My mother had lost the apartment and I lived with my best friend Beth, Merrie Miss leaders from church, and a couple of my moms friends from work. The major difference between me and Braydens situation was that my mom did not stay with me… she was with her boyfriend and I just skipped between houses and stayed there alone, but it made me realize where a lot of my shame came from when that happened. I was judging what was going on with him by how it felt to me when that happened…. And there was a lot of embarrassment on my part…and abandonment and so I threw those emotions on him and assumed that was what he was feeling… which just fed my shame spiral.
You know that verse that says “what the enemy meant for evil God meant for good”? Well in that situation I can see two ways God really used that to redeem a part of me
1) I did not abandon my son….I was with him and every night he knew he had me and I loved on him and hugged him when he cried, and cried with him, and he watched me praying daily through that situation. We walked through it together… and I did not run to some boyfriends house and make him handle it on his own…. God showed me and provided for us and gave me the strength to do for him better than what was done for me and for that I am GRATEFUL!!!
2) That situation happened so quickly that it showed me how fast it can happen to anyone. We are all a paycheck away from disaster and I realize that a little more now… I am fully aware of provision and His sustaining hand which is a blessing to me much more than it would have been. And walking through it made me see my mom in a different light. I inherited my superpower from her… and she was avoiding not because she didn’t love me but because it was painful and shameful and too hard to see me every day and how she was failing me so she would visit me on weekends and laugh with me and take me shopping to try to make up for it all. And I see it through different eyes now and am not resentful anymore to her for doing that. I wish she would have handled it differently, I wish she would have realized how strong she really was and just stuck it out but…. I had an advantage.. I was aware of a God who loved me and she didn’t know Him at that time and I think that made all the difference between how she handled it and how I did.
I am overwhelmed at the amount of moves… and when I look at the post its lining two walls… it looks kind of to me like that trail the Israelites took in the wilderness… a lot of walking and very little getting anywhere….
But I am hoping that as I dig through this with God I will start to see that it was not wasted…and I hope that the next half of my life…has only a couple more moves because I really hate packing!
I'm taking pictures... I know it is weird but want to see how it all starts to grow as I walk through the layers.... so far this is just the places I have lived:
But as I have written lately you know that God is all about exposing right now… he is in the business of uncovering and disabling my hide, flee, escape, parachute button. So far we have targeted relationships, food, even how I dress in order to “not be noticed”. But yesterday when He asked me if He really was my Savior…I started to wonder why … If I truly believe He rescued me and saved me from danger or peril… why am I so mortified to actually go back and look at it all… the good the bad and the ugly. What am I avoiding? What am I running from? If he is my Savior then what am I afraid of?
What I am realizing is I am missing out on a whole arena to understand how much He has carried me through. By avoiding the pain, I also am avoiding the glorious, wonderful, truth that He carried me, and protected me, and provided for me through it all. He rescued me from the miry depths but unless I am willing to really examine how deep that mire was I cannot really understand how mighty He is to save. And my life is a wonderful opportunity to see His handiwork in action. And so I have begun the process….and this blog might bore you to tears over the next little while because as you know this is the place I come to sort out all my thoughts and process things… so I will probably be sharing a lot of the journey but I will give you a warning if the post is about this timeline exercise, and if you don’t care to take the journey with me you can skip the post… I understand that my life is not the most fascinating thing on the planet!
The process so far is a bit overwhelming… I have large gaps in my brain, lots of information and memories but it’s all a hodge podge. Last night I began a brainstorming notebook that I just kept jotting down events, friends, births, deaths, moves, boyfriends, anything I could remember and decided not to worry about the order of things and just start somewhere.
I am using my blank wall as the time line, decided that post it’s might be the easiest thing to use since I will probably have to move them a lot due to my lapse of memory in regards to dates etc.
Tonight I decided to start with houses… places I lived. That is sort of how I always gauge things in my mind anyway… events are never categorized by decades but by where I was living and with who.
As I started writing addresses on post it notes and throwing them up on the wall I was surprised to see how often I have moved….42 times in 40 years
How often I went back and forth between the same places like a ping pong ball….
I have always had a lot of shame about me and Bray being homeless and him not having his own room and whatnot… and so the biggest realization is seeing that along this time line, I was just about the same age as him when I went through the same thing.
My mother had lost the apartment and I lived with my best friend Beth, Merrie Miss leaders from church, and a couple of my moms friends from work. The major difference between me and Braydens situation was that my mom did not stay with me… she was with her boyfriend and I just skipped between houses and stayed there alone, but it made me realize where a lot of my shame came from when that happened. I was judging what was going on with him by how it felt to me when that happened…. And there was a lot of embarrassment on my part…and abandonment and so I threw those emotions on him and assumed that was what he was feeling… which just fed my shame spiral.
You know that verse that says “what the enemy meant for evil God meant for good”? Well in that situation I can see two ways God really used that to redeem a part of me
1) I did not abandon my son….I was with him and every night he knew he had me and I loved on him and hugged him when he cried, and cried with him, and he watched me praying daily through that situation. We walked through it together… and I did not run to some boyfriends house and make him handle it on his own…. God showed me and provided for us and gave me the strength to do for him better than what was done for me and for that I am GRATEFUL!!!
2) That situation happened so quickly that it showed me how fast it can happen to anyone. We are all a paycheck away from disaster and I realize that a little more now… I am fully aware of provision and His sustaining hand which is a blessing to me much more than it would have been. And walking through it made me see my mom in a different light. I inherited my superpower from her… and she was avoiding not because she didn’t love me but because it was painful and shameful and too hard to see me every day and how she was failing me so she would visit me on weekends and laugh with me and take me shopping to try to make up for it all. And I see it through different eyes now and am not resentful anymore to her for doing that. I wish she would have handled it differently, I wish she would have realized how strong she really was and just stuck it out but…. I had an advantage.. I was aware of a God who loved me and she didn’t know Him at that time and I think that made all the difference between how she handled it and how I did.
I am overwhelmed at the amount of moves… and when I look at the post its lining two walls… it looks kind of to me like that trail the Israelites took in the wilderness… a lot of walking and very little getting anywhere….
But I am hoping that as I dig through this with God I will start to see that it was not wasted…and I hope that the next half of my life…has only a couple more moves because I really hate packing!
I'm taking pictures... I know it is weird but want to see how it all starts to grow as I walk through the layers.... so far this is just the places I have lived:
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