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.