Tonsilitis

Do you find that there are questions that come up repeatedly in your life? I do. The one that comes up most for me is; "Is this the way this is supposed to be? Really?"
Whether it was my Mother's cooking, my hand-me-down clothes, the level of parental oversight (or lack thereof) or my Dad's unsympathetic approach to everything, I have always and still find myself asking, "Was this supposed to turn out this way?" Most times, I'm convinced it wasn't.

When I was five, I got Tonsillitis. Most kids do at some point. My case was pretty bad. I remember staying home sick which in and of itself was remarkable. But I also remember the doctor being fairly alarmed at the state of my condition when I was finally taken to him. He wanted me in the hospital right then - immediately. My Mother was told not even to bother taking me home. She told him 'No.' Instead, she chose the 'prescription and return home' option. Since part of the prescription - along with the antibiotics - was that I begin chewing gum, I guess I was okay with it too. I was never given gum and I remember how much it hurt when I tried to chew it. (Was it always like this?) My whole jaw ached with each 'chew.' It was only then that I knew I must have been pretty sick. I couldn't eat. I had alarmed the pediatrician. My Mom was indifferent. (Was her reaction normal?)

It was almost Halloween. Because was sick, I couldn't go out Trick-or-Treating. So not fair and definitely not how I thought it should be. But neither was the impending trip to the hospital that I knew lay nearer and nearer on the horizon. I was so scared. (Was I supposed to be scared?) But I had heard stories that there would be ice cream - all I wanted - and that I wouldn't remember a thing. Even at five years old, I understood the implicit value of being able to block things from my mind.

My parents took me to the hospital in the evening. I would be having a Tonsillectomy the next morning. They walked me to my room, helped me change and put me in bed. They said goodbye and they left. That night was one of the most unsympathetic exchanges and the loneliest nights of my life. I remember the sound of my Mom's shoes fading down the hallway. Nobody came. Nobody told me what to expect. Nobody told me what to do if I needed a bathroom. Nobody told me if I was supposed to sleep with the lights on. Nobody did anything. (Was this how it was meant to be?) The only thing anyone told me is that there would be ice cream and so far I hadn't been offered any.
Finally, I had to go to the bathroom so bad I got up and walked out of my room to the hallway to find a bathroom. As I came out a nurse scolded me for getting up and hurriedly put me back to bed and turned out the light. I thought nurses were supposed to be caring. (Was this how it was supposed to be?)

I woke up the next day with a pain in my throat worse than I have ever experienced. My parents still weren't there. I felt groggy and the kids in the other beds were watching cartoons with their parents. A nurse brought me breakfast - scrambled eggs and toast. My Mother showed up - she put salt on the eggs and told me to try and eat. Can you imagine how salted eggs felt on my skinned throat? Still no ice cream. (Really? Was this how it was meant to be?)

A day or two later, my Mother came to pick me up and take me home - which was fine because I had still not been given a single dish of ice cream by anyone. I was still very sick and could barely keep awake as I lay on the blue vinyl backseat of the car on the ride home. She wanted to take me to lunch on the way - because I had been brave. We stopped at one of my favorite restaurants. She ordered me hot dogs and fries - with ketchup, plenty of ketchup. Again - not the wisest choice for a kid who just had her throat torn off in two places. I still remember how good it smelled and how bad it felt. I was done after one bite, but I sat while my Mother ate her lunch. (Was this how it was supposed to be?)

No. Not at all.

Hallmark Halloween

When I was a kid, we dressed as ideas, notions of behaviors or activities like lambs, spaceman, Fairies instead of the branded, iconic individual and very specific cartoon characters that movie studios license to sell. We made costumes.
We got together with a bunch of other kids our age (under twelve), went to the barn to get buckets and raced like a wolf pack through the darkened neighborhood screaming, laughing and blissfully at ease in the independence that traipsing across lawns and tripping over Jack-O-Lanterns demands. We were free and we were on a mission. -A true team effort if ever there was one. Despite that we didn't actually like any of those kids during the daylight - they made perfect companions for one night.
Our buckets were filled with home made treats (popcorn balls were my personal favorite), apples, games, puzzles and pieces of gum or hard candy.

Things sure have changed!
This year, I watched my kids yearn for mass-produced costumes that weren't embarrassing the way that home made costumes must be. Funny, even as Aunt Jemima or Fu Man Choo, I was never embarrassed. It was a costume - not a political statement. Then again, I was eight and had sugar on the brain.
My son ran with just one other boy as opposed to a pack. Operating under the 'you can only go as fast as your slowest member' theory, he decided to cut his losses and stick with speed - which hopefully, would ensure more candy.
I guess the 'sorting' ritual is still intact. Especially for my youngest son. He likes to take inventory. He has always been preoccupied with organization. (Why this doesn't carry over to his dresser drawers is beyond me. But it doesn't.) When I was invited to survey the takings, I was really surprised to find only one piece of Double Bubble, no candy cigarette sticks, no Chicklets, not an apple in sight, nor a popcorn ball, a Rice Crispy Treat or even a box of raisins. Even more alarming - no Candy Corn and only two Caramels. Nothing that couldn't be hermetically or figuratively sealed from the outside influence of the world - like the germs left behind by the innocent touch of another as they offer it.

Even the Jack-O-Lanterns are different. Most I saw were made of painted Styrofoam and illuminated with electric lights. Clean, homogeneous, sanitary. They don't smell like pumpkin pie as they 'cook' in the flame of an actual candle. No actual slugs crawling in and out - feeding on their own private and tiny holiday feast.
I thought Halloween was supposed to have an implicit layer or gore, vileness and rawness to it. These are the characteristics that pushed it just beyond the realm of entirely safe and that also made it so feverishly attractive to kids.
Out at night, candy from strangers, the absence of parental supervision, be someone else. It was a beautiful thing. It was a tangibly different day with rough edges that required real bravery not canned pseudo-bravery.

The new version of Halloween is for syndicated, licensed and branded weenies. And don't even get me started on Devil's Night. Those were the days!

Figure It Out

My horse's name was Ginger. She was red.
My grandfather bought her for me - probably for all of us. But he took me to see her.
I remember the day. We drove his Lincoln up the winding dirt road that lead past all the trailer homes and cabins that bordered the lake out into the shallow meadow where the turtle pond sat and up the hill to the right. At the top of the hill, the road joined the tractor road that ran east along the McLaughlin's pasture and the more formal Neguanee Lake Road that led west - out to the highway. Tall Maples had grown up along and through the barbed wire that fenced the pasture so that the south side of the washboard road was tunneled in green dusty leaves.

My horse was waiting there in the pasture right where the road turned toward the highway. There was another car there and a gentleman who probably "had a business meeting" with my grandfather. I knew better than to interrupt their conversation, but it was clear that this was my horse.
She was so tall and I was so - not. I've always been small, but at seven, I probably could have passed for five. I climbed the rusty barbed wire fence to get nearer to her - to touch her nose. Everything about her was deliberate. Her puffing breaths, her stomping hoofs, her flashing tail and her shivering skin. She was the coolest creature ever and I was going to be able to ride her someday - but I had to learn how first.

It was at this point that a pattern began in my life that I woudn't recognize until I was much older. I don't remember ever having been able to ride her. There was little talk of her after that day. I never saw her again. The next spring when I demanded answers as to where my horse was, how come I never got to see her and why it was taking so long to find time to ride her my Mother told me that she had been sold. The reason I was given was told, "You were too afraid of her."

Well, if I hadn't been, I was then. How could the absence of some beast that you only met once crush you like that? But more important, when had I said I was afraid? What had I done that my parents took her from me? They hadn't told me. I knew I was supposed to 'figure it out.' God - how I hated those words with a passion. I was seven, how sophisticated a consequence dialog could I possible attain?!

Eventually, I did figure it out - with no help from my parents. Ginger was too expensive. It wasn't that I was afraid; my parents and grandparents were afraid. They were afraid to tell me they had made a mistake.
I would have liked to have heard that just once.

The Marriage Contract(or)

My Mother wanted a helper. I truly believe that this is the only reason she married. She needed one who would be able to help her build her the life. -The one she had envisioned; Romantic, stylized, refined, idyllic and beautiful. She married a contractor who she believed would allow for this. My Dad was educated, attractive, smart and willing to do whatever he could on her behalf. He honestly did his best. But he was always the more down-to-earth of the two. My Mother had aspirations. My Dad had objectives. My mother wanted a rose-covered Victorian home and my Father wanted an economical place to come in out of the rain. He was always tearing pieces of our homes apart and refinishing them. My Mother tried in vain to make him understand her sophisticated vision and my Father tried to hone it with his utilitarian skills.

As usual with expressions between language and interpretation, the contractor had a completely different vision of her desires, but toiled tirelessly to meet vague requirements in a static environment. They worked like this for years. They still do.
She wanted a fine Bordeaux. He made her wine from Welch's Grape Juice Concentrate and Pioneer sugar. She wanted a Mazda Rx-7. He bought her a Toyota Tercel hatchback. She wanted a vacation home. He bought her a 150 year-old dilapidated farm house with no heat. When she wanted someone else to make dinner, he made waffles with ice cream instead of Fillet Mignon. It goes on and on.
That's how it is with contractors. There aren't many who cannot create exactly what you asked for. And when you get it, you see the fallacy of your request and howmuch of life's details are in your imagination.

Still, he tried and he still tries - every day to get it right.

How can she not be happy with that?

Five Captains

The summer of 1973 was difficult. I was too young to be 'big' and too old to be 'little.' It was hard to tell where I fit in - anywhere. As an 8 year-old, I'm sure it was hard for most to take me seriously. How could I know the things I did about how the world worked and the paths that people choose? As an intuitive observer in a fairly dysfunctional albeit completely normal family - How was it possible to escape those types of lessons?

I tried to fit - got pushed out, climbed back in only to be pushed out again. I knew the boat was overcrowded and that the destination wasn't correct. I instinctively knew there was a better way, a better route had to exist and a better vessel must be possible, but I also knew that people could be stubborn and sometimes didn't want to see - especially those too proud to learn from a little girl. Sometimes, just the energy it takes to change course or shift even the smallest degree is too much to ask let alone the flexibility to bend far enough to accommodate the ideas of a child. 

Yet somehow I knew without a doubt that the destination my family chose would be somewhere I was reluctant to go. It was too risky. The simple act of agreeing to accompany those passengers would be equivalent to letting my parents define and endanger me in a way I might not agree with. I didn't want to be made into what they expected. I wanted to be allowed to live on my own terms. I couldn't understand how they could be so completely incompetent in their parenting skills as to believe that I would turn out in a way other than fabulous with just the barest support and guidance. I didn't need any radical pruning or grafting. I had a good frame and almost ideal genetic stock. But they were doubtful and divergent in spite of their own intelligence. As a result, their total lack of confidence was projected on me causing enormous anxiety to them and a feeble attempt at resigned compliance from me. I knew better. Was I truly the only person who could see it - the blind one? Really?

There's an old saying, "When in Rome . . . do as the Romans do." Well, I didn't want to be in Rome or do as they did because it was a dangerous place for a young girl. It meant servitude, accepting violence and subsistence living.

Even at eight, I knew that it was possible to fade far enough into the background so as not to draw attention to yourself, and silently hold your own and go your own way - build your own boat in your spare time and eventually be your own captain and then travel wherever you'd like. At the same time, I hated to leave everyone I knew behind to struggle and possibly drowned. So I tried to help - by sticking with them as long as I could - as long as they'd let me and even if I had to force my way into some sort of position of authority - imagined, manipulated or usurped. I also knew that eventually I would get kicked off the boat or my renegade suggestions. And I did - around the age of 17. 

The boat had become crowded, leaky over burdened and some of the passengers had already jumped ship. Everyone on board thought he or she was the captain and they all tried to sail the ship according to their maps and views of the stars never sharing information, experience or ocean charts. We had five Captains, no Master, no Lieutenant, no Boatswain and no Gunner. Never mind Carpenters, Quartermasters or Mates.

My Dad tried tirelessly to keep the vessel seaworthy, I tried to keep the crew healthy, my brother tried to point out icebergs, my sister went in search of better, less faulty equipment and my Mother sabotaged as much of our work as she could in an effort to hold the tides still - to keep us in our places - believing that if you didn't move, it was hard to get lost. She had no faith.

What my parents didn't count on was that because they were so determined to block our every attempt to grow into ourselves as we were bound to do, instead of raising three compliant, respectful and obliging children who could would do as the Romans were doing, fit in and survive. They raised three of the most intuitive, creative, resourceful and accomplished children there ever were. Sure, we have battle scars and fish stories. But we have very distinct identities and make very few apologies for our interests and or skills which out of necessity are now vast and varied. We know we're not perfect and we understand that not everyone is cut out to be a Captain. But we certainly are and we each understand the need not to try to Captian someone else's boat.

Middle Class Normal

We appeared so normal. We were all dressed well, the sun was shining and everyone seems cordial. The true family story is much different. Or maybe it's exactly correct. Each member of our family tells it differently depending on his or her generation, position and perspective.
I wonder if the same has always been true for every family. If so, how did the peoples that were so dependant upon historical record-keeping through oral means make it? Did they learn lessons by telling it the way it was or by telling the lessons learned? -the ones that skewed slightly to one side of the truth or another.

I'm convinced that history in and of itself is largely inaccurate, one-sided and or one dimensional and that the pursuit of accuracy in history is what makes it such a compelling study. Sometimes, I wonder if there is such a thing as qualitative truth in history of if quantitative truth is the best we can expect to grasp.

My brother was born in the summer of 1968. I remember my Mother going to the hospital and my sister and I waving to her up in the window of her room from the lawn below. After they were both home again, there were new family pictures that included a new little person.
I remember my Mother keeping the house very quiet. My brother slept a lot as babies do and we couldn't wake him. We whispered in the kitchen as my Mother and I made dinner in the afternoons. The television where my Mother watched "As the World Turns" was moved to the other side of the living room. He needed sleep. All babies did. But maybe it was my Mom who needed a break.

Was it just too much for her, having another child? Factual history say, "No." She married, had children and loved us all very much. But from my perspective, according to my version of history, a third child only added to the life sentence of obligation that my Mother resented so much.
Now that I'm old enough to understand her pain, I know what it's like to want just five minutes of privacy in your own house. I know how hard it is to battle daily and sometimes hourly to retain your identity while the rest of the world seems to migrate their interpretation of you from "her" to "their Mom." All these social shifts are lost in the two dimensional history of photographs. They make life much simpler, much easier to remember and much less cumbersome to have to catalog.
There's always the possibility that we actually were what we appeared to be. Completely normal. Maybe every family has their understory that isn't really fit for public display.
Thank God for photos!

Left and Right

We didn't have a television when I was a kid. I was five or six by the time one arrived. Then, when we one did arrive (a gift from my Mother's Father), we weren't allowed to watch it. Well, we could, but not for longer than an hour a day as far as the written rule went, but according to the implied rule (there were lots of these in our house) - it was off limits. This worked out fine because it was a tiny 8-inch screen. Certainly nothing that you could watch for very long without your eyes starting to hurt. Besides, mine (eyes) didn't work anyway.

In an ever disappointing attempt to please our parents, we did other stuff. We kept ourselves occupied with bike explorations, outdoor adventures and make-believe. I remember a lot of coloring. My sister didn't have any patience for that. She was happier using the rock polishing kit that she had received for Christmas or the microscope that came in her Junior Scientist Set. Me? I was all over my Easy-Bake Oven! She made dioramas of dead beetles labeled like fortune cookies and anchored with straight pins. I was more concerned with the fact that the Easy-Bake was flawed - it didn't heat evenly. Who's idea was this and how in the world were cupcakes supposed to turn out well with this type of faulty equipment? My tea-party would be ruined! Even as a child she was definitely a left-brain kind of girl. I watched in awe from my little right-brain perspective.

We might make mud pies in the back yard and fill them with different components to see what happened - a happy mix of quantitative and qualitative data - something for each of us. The most disgusting was a rotten apple and sawdust pie with worms. I can't help believing it would be worth forgetting that particular experiment.

My sister used her brains when she played. I used my hands. Not much has changed. While she was polishing rocks, I sat beside her busily making jewelry out of them. While she gave shots, I was drawing the instruments on the charts in prettier colors. While she studied in her room, I re-decorated mine.

Our perspectives have always been entirely different and yet unopposed. I will always be thankful to her for being there to read me the information from the pages in the instruction manual that is my life while I am too preoccupied with the beauty of the paper it's written on and why the publisher chose such an awful color ink.

Don't you love fall?

Someone I recently met asked me if I liked the Fall. And despite the fact that I live in part of the world where there is no fall to speak of, but only a time of year where the weather isn't very nice and the trees without grace, brilliance or ceremony lose their leaves, I love the Fall. Every time I even imagine "Fall" I can smell hot cinnamon-cake doughnuts, slightly rancid oil, crisp, tart cider and wet leaves. Simultaneously, I ache to visit the Franklin Cider Mill. There are no cider mills near my home in Texas. The closest is in Medina - which sits in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. If you've never been to the Hill County, it can be beautiful in it's own way, but it will simply never be a northern cider mill.

I haven't visited the Franklin Cider Mill in decades. My memories of that place are like most of my childhood memories - I have no idea where my parents were, yet I'm equally as certain that I didn't arrive at this location on my own. I remember being with my sister and brother. First, we read all the historic plaques that told of the original owners - settler's really. Then we watched the big red water wheel in the mill house tirelessly spinning and read listened to workers explain where the apples came from, and how the process hadn't changed in over 200 years. We listened to apples popping under the pressure of the press and the brown liquid ooze from between the huge plates into a vat below as the history lesson continued. The conveyor belt of doughnuts was the last stop before the counter and the marker between what separated the obligatory history lesson from the impractical doughnut binge we had earned by our visit. There, we bought an afternoon's supply of cold cider and oily cakes - leaving behind the candied apples for those more fortunate or less practical parents. I would take my small brown paper bag of greasy doughnuts to one of the large rocks that bounded the stream behind the mill and sit there, my feet wet, my rear end cold from the rock, and eat my treats while I watched fallen leaves float toward a new destination. Pure bliss!
And while I cannot visit the cider mill this year or any year in the foreseeable future, I manage to go there every fall no matter where I happen to be living. Just ask, "Do you like the fall?" and I'm there.

Thank you Mr. Page

I will always think of the Farm as it looks in this picture. As a functionally elegant yet decrepit building that smelled of mice, mildewed paper, termites, creosote and dusty bricks. This is how I remember it. Even today and despite the fact that my Father has over the course of decades of summers rebuilt by his own hand almost every wall, window, roof and riser. This will always be my version of the Farm.  The first time I saw it, I was five and I loved it. I didn't want it to ever change. I loved it the way it was. I have always been hugely sentimental and it was sincere and unpretentious. As well, there were places to discover. Nooks where secrets lived, tiny apothecary bottles left behind tucked between studs, scattered papers with barely legible handwriting practically used to cover walls, then yellowed and faded.

My parents, however, had a very different idea about how their farm should live on. Together they planned and worked (my Mother did the planning and my Father did the working) to transform this place into a wonderful home on a beautiful property. There were acres of woods, streams and gulches, fallow hayfield hills covered in tall grass, meadows of wild strawberry, quiet ponds with toads, snakes and catfish, ancient orchards of apple and pear, ash groves, wild elderberry thickets and fragrant onions  . . . I could go on and on. I would love nothing better than to live here for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, the "here" in this picture doesn't exist any longer. A new version does.

Today, the farm is still beautiful. The house is livable, the grounds are kept and the outbuildings have been rebuilt. A huge barn now sits to the south near where the original once stood. The neighbor borrowed it when the original owner, Mr. Page, died. Despite it's beauty and appeal, when I look at these pictures I ache for the Farm in my picture book memory. The simple, quiet house with the plain wagon-rut drive, the corn crib and fields crossed occasionally by only the rustiest barbed wire. There is something so entirely captivating and glorious about the vibrant style of this simple building.

I'm always sad when I think about how the old Roscoe Page farmstead has been transformed into the Freudenburg Farm. At the same time, I grateful for the foresight of my parents in purchasing this wonderful little oasis.

Thank you Mr. Page for giving my parents the framework to build our family upon. You could not have had the vaguest notion how much they needed it. I would have loved to have met you and listened to your stories about the place I only know as "The Farm."

The Farm

When my family first began going to the farm - a forty acre piece of property with a two-room house as old as Noah - I was five years old. My brother was almost three.

According to my parents, the only reason they bought it was because our original weekend trip to Taquamenon Falls had been ruined by my brother's constant and unexplained crying for 24 hours straight that left my parents so completely exhausted, frustrated and disappointed that they packed up the tent and left for the safety of my grandparents house. I always believed they simply wanted to give my brother to the first available person they could find because he was making them crazy.

I don't know what could be 'unexplained' about a kid crying his eyes out when you stick him in an unheated, mosquito-infested tent out in the middle of nowhere with all sorts of weird sounds, unfamiliar surroundings and tell him to go to sleep after he slept the entire day away during the car trip there. Hmmmm . . .

My Tree

The Farm. I can hardly believe that I haven't really touched on this place yet, but - there you have it.
Like many places, the farm has created or is the canvas for the bulk of my significant memories. Some good and some kind of horrible and scarry.
As is the case with most of my memories, I remember this day and everything about it. I was bored. My Dad was busy working on the house as he always was regardless of which property my family was inhabiting. My Mother was again attempting to return to her favorite past life as an 18th century Gentleman's wife, content to amuse herself with gardening, needlework and the most cursory oversight of her splendid children while someone else was responsible for running the household. Unfortunately, and much to her constant chagrin, there were no servants in her actual middle-class existence.

I wore my favorite sweatshirt, a faded orange with darker orange ribbing around the sleves, hem and neckline, emblazoned with a transparent Mickey Mouse face in the center. The sleeves were too tight and they pinched under my arms, but I loved it because it was otherwise soft.

This tree in particular was 'my tree.' My tree smelled like musky bark, ants, apple cider and clothespins.


It stood and still stands at the edge of the orchard, was easy to climb into and had a natural little seat in the craw of it. When I was six, it was 106 and beginning a reluctant decline. Today it lives in the dusk of it's life, barely hanging on to it's stately silouette and producing the most meager crop of tart, crisp apples. When I was six, one of it's 106 year-old branches was beginning to fail. Inattention was killing it. Bugs, age and ice were slowly doing their collective damage to remove it. But while they tried, a wonderful secret hide away was created - a rotted pocket in the huge branch that could only be seen if you climbed up into the tree and looked from above. I could fit all kinds of  things in there for safe keeping and nobody ever found them - especially my brother. He was too little to climb.

I kept all sorts of tiny possessions in that hidden nook. Buried inside and old jewelry box that was covered in white leatherette and had a noisy spring-loaded hinge and gold trim. Among the items I kept there was a gold keychain I got from the tiny antique shop at Emerald Lake - a four leafed clover, thick and heavy in my hand for such a small thing with a worn out clasp which made it impossible to use because any key you put on it would likely fall off. But most I had no keys and because my Dad hoarded keys and never let anyone else have them, including my Mother.

I had a few favorite spots at the Farm. One was another tall Maple tree that stood in the front yard close to the road. From my perch in that tree I could watch the road and listen to the near constant buzz of my Father's circular saw or the wrap of his hammer as he worked tirelessly to improve every part of the old house. The other was a huge granite rock that marked the southwest corner of the wooded area of the Farm. That rock lay under the awning of another huge Maple. My brother and I would stand atop it and sing, "Jeramiah was a Bullfrog! . . . ." at the top of our lungs so that we could hear our voices echo across the hayfield that formed a natural ampitheater. We were rockstars! The apple trees that flanked the hayfield were our most faithful audience - unless the Maney's cows got out again.

Being Robin

I was always Robin. My sister got to be Batman. I didn't mind so much. Robin was cool too. Occasionally, he was even brilliant in his own naieve, farm-boy way.
Maybe this is why I liked him. He wasn't complicated, didn't expect too much and was willing to pitch in and work to protect the values and people he trusted. Issues were pretty much black and white. People were good or bad and duplicity just didn't make the slightest bit of sense. Robin understands that he can't possibly defend the entire world and be effective everywhere, but he's content to do what he can. He's a small fish and he knows it.

Robin . . . I get. Batman. . . . not so much.

Batman is well-intentioned and knows he's in an unwinnable fight. He gets discouraged, but continues to choose to live in his own world where he can be everywhere, effect everything and franchise his morality based on the fact that he's good-looking and has money.

When I got older and my sister was no longer interested in playing "Batman and Robin" I played with my younger brother. I was still Robin. He was Batman. The whole game changed, but my part didn't. Once, we intentionally drove our plastic Batmobile toy off the barn roof and then dropped cinder blocks on it to see if it was really 'indestructable'. It wasn't. The game had gone from make believe to real life.

Similarly, Batman has also gone the way of real-world, international crime. Batman is a tech-savvy, globally connected, internationally aware, crime fighter who has underworld connections and deep-pocketed society benefactors. Robin is nowhere to be found. It's true, he made a brief comeback as Nightwing but he eventaully ran toward an introspective life after getting lost as he tried to accomplish good according to the small-town guides of his youth. He didn't play the corporate game and he didn't have outside funding. Just the lessons of his odd 'Flying Grayson' circus-geek parents and a resume that lists one very bright albeit borrowed spot of notariety as the awkward accomplice of a superhero.

I'm still Robin and my sister is still Batman.

Fort Wars

It all starts way before it should. Turf Wars.
Karl was just a plain old garden variety, low class, bully. Not smart enough to be truly dangerous. He was also the arch enemy of Steve who lived on the other side of the ditch. Brian could sway with either depending on who was offering the best advantage that day or until his father found out. Most days, during the Fort Wars, the group who had the larger supply of M-80s was the odds-on champion.

Karl's fort was in the right rear corner of his Mother's snarly backyard. Karl's accomplices were Susan's older brother - a sleepy-eyed cloud of a teen whom was rarely seen in daylight and Dennis, the neighborhood's youngest candidate for the juvenile detention facility. Dennis was much younger, so he had to work harder to be convincing as an equal threat. The Fort was at one time a detached garage, but neglect, hoarding, unfinished moves and the anticipation of immanent eviction had turned the garage into a receptacle of 'might-be' complete with broken windows, ineptly covering torn and sagging, dingy curtains that had at one time been new, dark, spider-infested shelves and Karl's projects. At 16, he was the man of the house. The garage revealed his discontented, irresponsible self hurled into the task of family protector without a strategy, tool or brain cell to his name.

Steve was smaller, red-haired and smart enough to realize that Karl's true advantage wasn't in the currency of explosives, but in his ignorant ability to continue to cope with faulty equipment, poor support and weakly constructed plans. If he was going to beat Karl, he'd simply have to outlast him. Outsmarting him was too easy. It would all be over and then what would there be to do?

The day that Steve decided to build his fort from the remains of a few barn-stained, discarded picnic tables was truly an event. However, the time he decided to paint his bedroom black (and his parents let him) rocked through the kitchen ashtrays of many of the families on our block. Judy, Sylvia and Pat all left with pinched faces waving cigarette smoke away - leaving Father's shaking their heads, Mother's wringing their hands and children silently awestruck and envious to their cores.
Steve's fort was just a simple square box. There was a door, one window and a flat roof that you could climb up the outside wall to get up to. From here, you could see over the hedge, across the ditch and into Karl's territory.
Most of the time, when both forts were occupied, hollering profanities across the ditch was as much as any kid might expect. But one day, with Dennis's inspiration and Susan's brother's brooding incentive, Karl and his tribe constructed what amounted to a crude version of a Molotov cocktail. They began hurling them from their fort towards Steve's by hand. Thankfully, Karl's unsophisticated approach left their bombs sunken and fuming in the mud of either bank of the ditch.

We laughed hysterically but for me, it was the beginning of understanding regarding boundaries, access and the map of the world I lived in that didn't look anything like the one that lay folded up, stained with coffee and worn in the glovebox of the old blue Cutlass.

The History of Recycling

That's me . . . with my blanket. I took it with me everywhere. My Mother would occasionally wash it and trim the frayed edges so it didn't look so ragged. By the time I gave it to my oldest son as a newborn, it was much smaller, more-of-a-grey-that-used-to-be-blue and nearly transparent with wear - but it was so incredibly soft. As the satin edging disintegrated and sloughed away, the protected color, a pretty light aqua-blue, could be remembered. It was a popular color in the 60s.
Those first versions of Tupperware were that color too. Like my blanket, the color faded until they were left to be consigned to the sand box with their missing lids and cracked rims. And like many items during those years, they were never thrown away, simply removed to a new and lesser caste of use until they were invisible. Eventually, those abandoned Tupperware containers made their way to the barn where they were put to use and miscellaneous cartridges for nails, washers, half-used paint sticks, bits of still usable sand paper and used razor blades that might be good for something - one day.
My parents didn't throw away anything. My younger brother wore the same clothing that both my older sister and I had. Shovels got new handles or sometimes had their handles mended with a few screws and a bandage of electrical tape. Broken windows received one new pane of glass and new glazing. Bikes provided endless opportunities to make good. They had patched tires, new seats, recycled brake pads . . . Not that my parents didn't provide us with new things. Of course they did. But once they did, that 'thing' was never ever tossed aside. As well, 'new' didn't necessarily mean 'brand-new-never-been-used' Instead, it meant, 'new-to-us.' I still have and use everyday the dresser my Dad bought me when I was eight. My son uses the same bedroom set that my grandmother bought during the war - when there were no factories left making furniture. And the bread pans in my kitchen were my Dad's mothers. Those old, thin pans work better than the new, heavy-duty, improved (and expensive) versions I bought for myself years ago by quite a bit.
Not everything was a hand me down. We weren't a proud family. Much of what we came by, we did by way of the curb, aka, the neighbor's trash pile. Today, right now, I have a solid walnut, intricately carved, rectangular, pedestal side table that sits in my front hall to receive mail, keys and other items that simply have to be put down immediately when you get home. I found it by the curb on Shiawassee Road while I was walking home from grade school one day. I couldn't have been more than ten years old. It wasn't broken or damaged in any way. It's only fault was that it was unwanted. We got a lot of our 'things' this way.
Most days, surrounded by all the items that have come to me in reverse, I don't see their histories or even think about how many people might have known and used them before I did. But they must have been.
I am just as certain that my son never knew that his blanket used to be his Mother's as I am that the same blanket was someone else's before it was mine. My parents would have never let me drag around a 'good' blanket. It wouldn't have been right.

Sand Pit

This is "The Sand Pit." I wish I knew how many pieces of old blue, faded and cracked Tupperware my sister, brother and I mistakenly abandoned in that place. We played there all the time. Sand pits like this can be found everywhere in Michigan. Every little lake community has at least one. But none of those were 'ours' so we didn't venture in. We couldn't. It's in the Sand Pit code of conduct. You stay out of ours and we won't go in yours. As far as we were concerned, this rule was respected. There was rarely anyone else there. Occasionally, a dump truck could be seen or heard rumbling in the distance. Grey-black plumbs of diesel smoke would give away their pre-dawn break-in. Most times, there was  never a sign of anyone, anything or any activity at all. The Sand Pit was an all but forgotten fixture at the cottage. A silent oasis, a steady respite and a constant, compliant vestibule of whatever game, story or land we could dream up.

This one was across the street and down a ways from my grandparents cottage on the lake. We would walk down the dirt and gravel road until we were in front of the neighbors white clapboard cottage and then turn right and go through the farm gate which was nothing more than a chain link rope drawn across a tractor path and fastened with a rusted nail bent in a arc. We walked to the right and down into the cow pasture. Getting there from here meant navigating the mine field of crusted cow pies and wading through the spaces of burning hot sand and dried, prickly field grass but it was worth it. There sat the Sand Pit - heaven! Once you dug deep enough, the sand was cool, malleable, form able and completely pure of anything sharp or thorny.

I'm fairly sure that my parents usually came with us when we went. Well, one of them anyhow. They always told us not to dig tunnels, My dad warned us that they might cave in and we would be smothered to death. Other than that, the Sand Pit wasn't dangerous. Oh, there was also Mr. McLaughlin's cows. They were also and unpredictable and intermittent albeit regular fixture. I was terrified of them. They were black and white, huge and uncontrollable as far as I could tell but they couldn't navigate the cliff, so I played there always - because they couldn't.

The best part about the sand pit is that we could go up to the top, climb over the edge and if we backed up a bit and got a running start (which was difficult because you had to simultaneously avoid, grass burrs, cow pies and jagged field rocks) we could jump off the edge and land in a soft pile of warm sand. The worst part, undoubtedly, the cow patties everywhere. You really had to pay attention 'cause man! those things were big, gross and nasty (and we usually had bare feet). If you've never stepped in one, I can't describe the awful combination of crunchy, warm sluggishness. If you have, then I don't need to say another word. There's nothing like it.

We always raided my grandmother's kitchen before we went to the sand pit. Jello molds were a major score. Deli containers, an old set of avocado, mustard and pumpkin colored salt and pepper shakers, plastic spoons, picnic cups, and bowls were the tools of our trade that served as castle building supplies and digging instruments. We had tunnels to excavate and some days, entire bodies to bury. We were busy.

We built the grandest fortresses. Inevitably, around the same time that our creativity and absorption really took hold to produce a truly awe-inspiring landscape, one or several of my grandfather's too-large pack of inbreed, dirty, usually-wet-from-their-expedition-into-the-lake mutt, hounds would find us.

It was as if they had been on their own expedition that day. A sort of scavenger hunt that included, chasing rabbits, checking on the neighbors dog, romping through the tall grass thicket in the back of the park, cooling off in the shallow reeds of the lake and finding our where we were. Their final coup de grace - trampling our castle into an unrecognizable pile of upturned buckets, fallen turrets, collapsed caves and broken bridges. They were so happy! Dripping, tail-wagging, barking, slobbering beasts.

1970

There's something to be said for the ability to build walls. Even as a kid, I seemed to be pretty good at keeping out the feelings I didn't really like or that I thought might hurt and letting in the ideas and people that made me happy.

Birthdays were good. I got presents and cake so they were allowed in. Granted, I wasn't allowed in the house for most of the day on my actual birthday. My Mother said it was because she had to make my cake and wrap gifts. How exactly was the cake a surprise? I knew I was going to have one. The only surprise here would have been the absence of a cake. I always chose the color and the flavor. And she always taped a note on the kitchen door that said, "Keep Out." Normally, it was held up with a Band-Aid instead of cellophane tape. Hmmm . . .

Apparently, the idea that she might simply say, "Don't come in the kitchen right now" was too obvious. Or maybe taking gifts somewhere private to wrap them hadn't occurred to her either. The only time she ever prepared beforehand was when I had my birthday at my grandmother's house. Those birthdays, my grandmother made all the arrangements. She asked me what flavor cake I'd like. She called the bakery to order it -beforehand-, wrapped gifts she had chosen -weeks or even months beforehand. My Mom just doesn't work this way. Time just moved too quickly for her to keep up. It always has.

If you don't believe me, look at the look on my friends face who is seated next to me. He lived across the street and can be seen in almost all of the photos of the birthday parties of me and my siblings. He just can't wait for the picture-taking to be over with so we can get on with the party - mostly eating the cake and running around with new toys. My Mother has never moved at the same speed as everyone around her. She made us all wait while my Dad got his camera ready and took pictures 'cause you never know when a birthday is going to sneak up on you.

My brother was born when I was almost three. I don't remember my Mom being pregnant, but I remember when she went to the hospital to have him. We drove down a road with a field of mowed grass on one side and a row of tall hedges grown over a chain link fence on the other. The hospital was on the right - the side with the big grassy area but beyond it. Industrial tan brick, aluminum, cement and plate glass.

My sister and I stood on that lawn and waived at my Mom in her room. I got the distinct impression that she found peace in the isolation of her room. I think she believed there was something delicious and tentative in the place between the time when her two children were not allowed access to her and the time when there would be another that demanded her every second of the day.

The rest . . . well you'd have to have been there. It was a battle between protection, enforcement and judicious protocol in order to gain autonomy. All from a couple of pre-school girls.

Fair Trade

When I was little and for as long as I can remember, summer has been the time when taking a trip is absolutely mandatory. Trips taken to pass time over unimportant weekends and conventional and or obligatory holidays just weren't ventured into with the same intensity. The Summer Trip was the big one - the one that needed to be planned, required a car load of gear and mandated a certain amount of conveniences in lieu of the comforts of home.

I remember sitting with my Dad at the kitchen table where he would have all the information that he had sent away for the previous spring. There were brochures from campgrounds that listed the types of amenities each had available and the daily camping rate. Sometimes he received information from Historic Societies and Visitor's Bureaus. Envelopes of all different sizes and colors might contain maps, hand-written letters with suggestions, brochures for local attractions and all types of information. Even then I found it hard to believe that some stranger in another town so far away could care about the questions of another person on such an individual level as to motivate him or her to write a personal correspondence. It was amazing to me.

My Dad would show me all the brochures and talk about the types of choices that we had. He really didn't mean 'we' but 'he'. Which campgrounds were the cheapest, which had showers and a local store. Those that didn't - didn't last long. Those that didn't offer hiking trails were immediately disqualified - from everything.

I always wanted the ones that had playgrounds and beaches or the ones that were near cities that we might explore. My Dad's idea of a vacation was to get away from towns, away from crowds and away from spending money so places that were close to tourist attractions that cost money were not popular either - unless a relative lived nearby who we might stay with if we were lucky enough to be invited.

Part of the reason for our esoteric vacations was my Mom's influence. She never liked to do anything the 'regular way.' She always preferred (and still does to this day) the road less traveled - the off brand - the small local businessman - the sleeper. As a child I used to be so thoroughly embarrassed by her vivacious need for differentiation in everything. Wonder Bread, Holiday Inn and Theme Parks just weren't options. Those were for the masses. She deserved something less available, less ubiquitous. She was unique and so were her needs. She wouldn't be satisfied by the ordinary. She was better than that. Camping destroyed her ability to maintain oddness because it was just so time consuming. I loved camping.

When we camped we got Kool-Aid, Mini Kellogg's Cereal boxes, store bought ketchup, and Hostess Pies.
-Heaven! Even if there were spiders in your sleeping bag. It was a fair trade.

Classless

The neighborhood I grew up in was probably the most nondescript place I could have possibly imagined. Located in a suburb close to a big city, the town-proper was centered around a small village that dated from the 1700s. It was truly a middle class haven. All sorts of people lived there that were both unique and obsequious. As I think back on all the drama that happened in that small sphere, I realize that there must have been a lot more that either escaped me or got sucked into another black hole that was my Mother's communication style. I could write an entire book on this and still not understand. Suffice it to say that she spoke in riddles, was intentionally evasive in hopes of being so severely misunderstood as to cause the listeners to simply give up any inquiry. How much could I have actually picked up on and still pay adequate attention to my expeditions into parts unknown? Imagine how much really went on if my tiny childish brain absorbed as much as it did.

One of the most exciting events happened one summer night when a car went careening through our front yard and ended up in the ditch across the street. It was like the car had appeared from another plane in the universe and was so shocked upon entry that it simply went haywire and decided to self-destruct, but the physics didn't go according to plan and instead it ended up just wrecked, immobile and abandoned.

That morning, neighbors emerged from their houses scratching their collective heads, delirious with questions - looking at one another in disbelief. How could this happen here? Like most members of the middle class, they firmly believed that some behavioral barrier existed around their social rank that would protect them from intrusions like this. The barrier looked like this,"This person must be some sort of degenerate. They must be from the other side of 8 Mile. How did they get all the way up here?" The shocking part was that they were so quick to assume that people couldn't misbehave or have accidents or become irrational if they were truly members of their middle class. Yes, they owned it and it was being stolen while they slept.

Protecting Bliss

I was only two when the Riots began in Detroit. At that time and in my own little world, my biggest problem was trying not to stub my toe when I rode my bike because I was too impatient to put my shoes on. At the end of the driveway was a patch of torn concrete curbing that had been chipped away to allow street traffic into the drive. It was rough, jagged and I always stubbed my toe running too fast across this danger zone. What I knew of danger zones was so small.

The US Army didn't have convoys patrolling in our little city. None of the buildings in my neighborhood looked like third-world war zones. The tension level wasn't palpable. But I knew they and these conditions existed in places my family could and did travel to get to in a short time. In the neighborhood my grandparents lived in. For as much as they tried to accept diversity, my parents were simply more comfortable in their isolated suburban community.

It's sad really. But ignorance has provided us with the bliss we so hope for when contests happens within our proximity. If ignorance is bliss then the converse, 'knowledge is hell' must be true. It is, seeing people fighting, getting injured and being suppressed or oppressed hurts even when you're just two. You know something is wrong because everyone is tense. Nothing is easy and people don't spend time doing anything except being at home. They can't even remember to put shoes on their children's feet.

Growing up in Detroit, we learned very quickly and from a very young age that people can say one thing and believe another entirely. "People are all the same - but you stay on your side - or we'll make you." It was so wrong. Everyone worked so hard to protect the bliss that they worked so hard to establish. Would it be so hard to agree to disagree? But this is nothing new. Detroit certainly didn't have patent rights on sectarian beliefs or ethnic division and the corresponding attempts to maintain it. These type of fights have been happening throughout history. Detroit was just another mark on the racial timeline. But it was the first mark on my timeline.

I still don't understand why it happened. I don't understand the level of hubris that would be necessary to support the belief that it would ever be okay to dis acknowledge one rational person's beliefs for another based on the outward ramifications of tiny alterations in DNA.

My Bliss doesn't look anything like this picture. I don't understand how any one's definition of bliss can look like this.

No Dogs Allowed

Halloween . . . there were some good ones and some not so good ones. The costumes were great, but were not always what I would call ethnically sensitive. So many years later, they are almost humorous if you have really poor taste and no decorum. At the time, nobody thought too much of it - at least nobody in our little white bread (white-trash would be more accurate), homogenized middle-America community.
They started out okay and got progressively worse. I can't imagine that my Mother ran out of characters to emulate, but my Mom was in charge when it came to sewing. She always had to push the limit - but that applied to everything. Not just costumes. My sister made such a cute Little Dutch Girl. Of course the costume was recycled when it didn't fit her any longer and I wore it while she graduated to Aunt Jemima. Seriously! Look.

Somehow I think I knew this was questionable - even then. We got other costumes that were equally questionable. My brother was Fu Man Chu one year. My sister dressed as a Geisha Girl.  Normalcy was a Raggedy Ann and a big fat pumpkin. These weren't so bad. I love that she painted my white baby shoes green. I wonder if these were the same pair my brother wore after I grew out of them.

I never understood why I had to dress up as something that we never came in contact with except to destroy (the pumpkin). Honestly, carving them was the slimiest task. I hated it. In years when we weren't diligent about bringing our Jack-O-Lanterns inside after dark the hoodlums that lived behind the fence would smash them across the front lawn and leave pumpkin shrapnel smeared everywhere before you could say, "Boo." Sometimes our artwork didn't even make it through Devil's Night. So disappointing!

One year my Dad tried to roast the pumpkin seeds. We collected the seeds, rinsed, soaked them in saltwater and toasted them for what seemed like hours.I think it worked, but eating them didn't bring the same holiday sentiment that it had before. It just wasn't the same. Somehow when you illuminate the mystery behind these childhood rituals, they're ruined forever. Pumpkins seeds taste better at Halloween. It's a fact.

One year we made popcorn balls. They weren't as good either. I'm pretty sure they ended up in a Teacher's Lounge somewhere. I swear, that place was like a black hole for left-overs.

The worst Halloween was the year that I couldn't go out. I got really sick a few weeks before Halloween - Tonsillitis. I missed school and the doctor told me that my prescription was to chew gum! I was so excited, but it really hurt. My entire jaw ached all the way to my ears. Once I was feeling better, surgery was scheduled. But I had to stay inside until after I came home from the hospital. Such a shame because I had the BEST costume! A beautiful, floaty, sparkly, yellow fairy costume complete with a wand and halo. And I couldn't go out and show it to anyone.

The best part about Halloween might have been the candy. Candy was never off-limits as a kid because my Dad had (has) a serious sweet tooth. It was the sheer volume that was so blatantly exorbitant. Then there was the matter of protecting it from a mysterious transportation to the black hole, aka Teacher's Lounge, for disposal under the premise that we had too much. It would rot our teeth. Did our Dad honestly think we didn't know that he worked in the same building as the black hole? My Dad was ever the one to give away possessions - even stuff that wasn't his - like our hard earned candy. As long as we got to sort it first, I don't think it mattered that much. We didn't really eat it, the quest that was what made Halloween so much fun. We went out with our wolf pack of neighbors and ran as fast as we could from one house to the next. No parents and all the candy we could get our hands on. A true raid of sorts. I don't think we wouldn't have cared what our Mother chose to dress up as so long as the end result was the same. But seriously, what would have been wrong with dressing up as a ghost or a dog?

Change

"Things change." It's such a hard thing to learn at such a young age. Just like, "Nothing stays the same." My older sister is resigned to accept the idea that things change. She was the oldest. She'd been through it before. I'm upset, but not hysterical. The middle of the learning curve. My poor little brother is just beginning his initiation into the cruel world of "Grown-ups Rule Disappointment" and "Fun Doesn't Last Apathy." As I said, it's really much too heavy a lesson for such a small person. I suppose it's good most people don't remember the lesson, but learn the rule.
For me, I didn't forget the lesson - not one.

Some of them I embraced. As a percentage of the whole, hardly any, I believe that I remember more of the pleasant times than the bad ones. Or I might also say that I'd rather remember the pleasant - so I tend to dwell  on those as opposed to the latter. Who wouldn't?
There were plenty of hard lessons that were no fun at all. Why concentrate on those?

On the day this photo was taken, my brother, sister and me - along with some neighborhood kids, set up our own flower stand. You know how most kids construct lemonade stands? Well, we made a flower stand. We got empty peat planting pots and used plastic flower flats from the barn and filled them with dirt. We picked Dandelions and packaged our own flowers. We sold Pussy Willow Trees too. We also set up a table at the street so that people could buy our lovely flowers. In retrospect, I don't think we actually believed anyone might. We were just playing a game. We were little entrepreneurs. We had no idea that our hard earned business, our precious time and our spectacular merchandise would have to be summarily destroyed when it was time to come in for the night. We hadn't learned yet that things change. But that's how our Dad was. He probably told us to clean up and come in and we probably didn't want to. So, he helped. Granted his way of helping was to accomplish the task as quickly and with as little discussion as possible. He dumped out our flowers, stacked the containers, folded the table and everything we had worked so hard on was gone in less than a minute and without the slightest apology.
We hadn't yet learned that 'Things Change.' We did that day.

Happy Cars

As I eluded to earlier, we drove a lot as a family. We drove everywhere - all summer long - every summer and every point in between. Day trips, weekend trips, month trips. No distance was too far.
This was my brother's standard position on most trips. (Yeah, I know. I don't think our car even had seat belts.) His other favorite was the same, but with his arms around my Dad's neck - practically shoking him without understanding.
My spot was lying down up on the ledge between the rear of the back seat and the back window. My Dad had built another 'bed' out of plywood that fit over the drive shaft hump on the floor in the back seat. Technically, my brother was to lie down on the floor, I got the window ledge and my sister got the bench seat. But my brother preferred lying on my Dad's shoulder.

For most of my Dad's career, he taught kindergarten. Not always, but always elementary school in some capacity. Because of this, we always had games to play on these long rides (or maybe he taught kindergarten because he was so good at the games). We would guess distances, we would make sayings out of the letters on a license plate, we would see if we could get long-haul truckers to honk their horns for us, we took turns with the coveted task of throwing money out the window into the toll booth basket as he sped through and hoping all the dimes went in. Sometimes they didn't and my Dad stepped on the gas anyway. We were hysterical! Regular outlaws.
My brother's favorite game was one that I never understood. To this day, I still don't know how to play. My Dad got it. My Mom got it. You would have thought they would have explained it to me - nope. On my own inside the group as usual.
The game was called "What Kind of Car?" It was simple really. All you had to do was look at an oncoming car and determine what type of car it was. Something about the way the front end looked made the ditinction clear to everyone except me. They were either 'happy' or 'sad.' The part I didn't understand was the criteria. Some looked 'happy' to me that were categorically labeled 'sad.' The opposite happened too. To this day, I'm sure there were strict rules. My Dad didn't typically enjoy games that were subjective, but he did like tricks and jokes.

View

As I said, I was logical if nothing else as a kid. I am still. For example, I spent the formative years of my childhood believing that all anyone had to do when they needed something was to go to the local credit union and ask for money - they provided it. I believed this because my Dad was a teacher and my Mom didn't work until I was much older. Because of my father's career choice, he was home almost all the time. Early evenings, weekends and entire summers. He was there.

As a result, we spent a lot of time together being separate in proximity. Well, not all the time. My Dad had chores to do which without he failed to thrive. Us kids had showers to inspect or campground stores to examine. My Mother got effectively lost - oh yeah - "exploring" when there was work. She still does that. How does she get away with it? Still, we camped a lot. In fact, I can't remember a time that I didn't know camping would be a part of our summer vacation as sure as the sun would rise. We stayed at a hotel only once in all those years despite that some of our trips might have been improved if we had.

But . . . . this was the way life was in my house. It didn't matter that there were dead fish everywhere. No thought was given to why the fish had died. Or if there might be something in the water that had caused their death that might affect any other species that came in contact. If the fish died, it was their poor luck. A few hundred dead, stinking, fermenting fish were completely inconsequential. You just had to go out into the deeper water - where the bigger fish lived. Or better yet, just don't think about it. -Go play.

Not all the trips were horrible. Most of the time, camping was the only time we saw our relatives - with the exception of one of my Dad's brothers. His wife only "camped at the Hilton." As a kid, I had no idea what this meant. That remark may as well have been in Portuguese. As an adult, I cannot believe that this woman wasn't ostracized to the fullest extent of the family law. She was practically a heretic. I wish I had the nerve to be like her.

We saw so much. We explored. We learned about other places. We thought about what it would be like to be in another place and to think of it as home. We learned about the stories of history that lie in wait all but forgotten in every small town. There is one. You can find it. We saw what was available and how far we could go and we learned how to get back home. Most important, we learned that the view (any view) looks different depending on where you might be viewing something from.

Finding My Own Way

I guess when you're little, you spend a good part of your life trying to find your way without even realizing it. You try to find where you fit in among others. You try to determine how others fit you in and figure out if there's a difference. And if you're really ambitious (or think too much as was in my case) you attempt to discover how your place in a community could look when you grow up and how you as an incapable, less listened to piece of that puzzle can possibly do anything big enough or with enough determination that might you could possibly affect that goal in any direction. You have to take control when nothing lies within those boundaries.

I knew I had to look after my brother. That was very clear, very early. He was so small. Despite the fact that he was a boy and the youngest of us (the children of my parents) two attributes that should have and did provide him great favor and autonomy at times, he sometimes received favor or attention of a different type that wasn't entirely positive. That's as civil as I can be about it.

I should say that those times were not consistent.

For a time, I thought I wanted to be a ballerina. Everyone in my circle of wise seven year-old advisers told me I should become an Artist. I preferred any profession where I would be allowed to wear Tulle, Chiffon, Satin, Sequins, Ribbons, Heels or anything extremely feminine, would have been good. Today, I'm glad my parents never took me to a Circus. Who knows where I'd be today? This costume was SO incredibly scratchy. But I gladly suffered, because in it, I thought I was beautiful. And, everyone would believe I was graceful, which if you know me, is the last quality I could be guilty of possessing.

Maybe I just loved to dress up. I still have this costume. You know what? I wish it still fit! Our neighbors, Ed and Shirley Connor brought it back to me all the way from Hawaii. I remember seeing their 'PanAm' carry on bag that they were given as part of their flight. Can you imagine? The airline gave away canvas travel bags! What other social souvenirs were available? It looked a little bit like a bowling ball carrier. But it was cool and somehow I knew inherently that I would NEVER get one. Air travel - at least commercially - was simply too extravagant. Somehow, it wasn't humble enough to be allowed to permeate the culture of our family.

No matter the occasion, I realize today that I was finding my way without knowing it. I was a girl, I loved sparkles, sandals and being a girl, but I also just adored work. I like the types of jobs that my brother should have liked, but honestly didn't. So, being the logical child that I was. I put them together. I simply couldn't understand why these two activities might have to be mutually exclusive. I wore my new sandals in the sandbox. I dug trenches in my ruffly swimsuit. I mowed the grass on fall days in my favorite outfit (a red and white halter top and matching cropped pants) which was strictly for summer even though it was so cold outside and the required accompanying coat buried my sophistication.  Do you remember those plastic princess shoe and tiara sets that used to be sold in dime stores? Yeah . . . those were all me - while I was fishing leeches and tadpoles out of the ditch to keep in jars on the front porch. They lasted about a day and an half before the heels broke. But I was determined to make then work for steep grades, mud and algae-infested water. I just kept on buying new ones.

I never wore this dress anywhere. I just wanted to make it. I saw the pattern at the fabric store and that was that. It was pretty and I needed it - just to know that it was there was enough. Some things never change. You still can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. If you try - you end up looking like a sow's ear in a silk purse. (See photo at left.)