I wish things were simpler

Some days I wish that life were as simple as having nothing more to worry about than whether or not my Mom was going to be mad at me for wearing my new shoes in the sandbox again. (Why couldn't she just accept that this was what was going to happen?) But I don't think I'll get my wish.

I don't think life will be simple - or that simple - ever again. I don't think there will ever be days when the most crucial problem I have to is to figure out how to make the mud the exact proper consistency so that I can load trucks with it and dump it out again without having it all run out the sides or just melt into a puddle.

I'm not convinced that I will ever enjoy doing the dishes solely because it meant that I would be able to play in a sink full of warm water with loads of bubbles in it and use all the soap I wanted under the disguise of 'doing work.' And I'm pretty sure that I won't ever have the opportunity to drink so much water that when I jump up and down I'll be able to hear it sloshing around in my stomach - just for laughs.

Instead, I have other simple pleasures now. I can walk into my sons' rooms and see them sleeping - or not arguing.

I can call my sister and talk about a memory from a past life that nobody but she will understand and or identify with. I can take a great deal of comfort in the certaintly that at least one person knows I am not entirely insane or ruined. My children are not convinced of this.

And . . . . I can remember the joy that I found in wearing my new shoes in the sandbox because I knew it would irritate my Mother.

Sisterhood

At the time this picture was taken, I was too young to see it; the bond that existed between me and my older sister. We never talked about it and never recognized any type of formal relationship other than simple acceptance that the other existed regardless of any opinion of her.

It wasn't until we began sharing a common task - caring for our aged and active grandmother - that I began to understand the very deep and meaningful bonds that had been established as very little girls and how they had influenced or eroded the relationship that I discovered again as an adult sibling.

Here we are . . . like Charlie's Angels or something. Only we weren't protecting the world from invaders. My sister was protecting me - from the world. I never saw it that way, but it's there in celluloid, Ektochrome.

She's always occupied this position - my protector and I've never acknowledged it. I didn't need a protector. Well, actually I did. Our parents didn't fill this position very adequately so it's no wonder that she assumed someone should step in and at least try. So she did.
To me - she was the role model. A job description I think she not so secretly hated. I tried so hard to be like her. After all, what other option did I have? Should I allow my Mother to be my role model? Well, no that just wouldn't do. Even at three I could see that this was a bad idea. So . . . it became my sister's job.
As adolescents she would get so mad and tell me, "Stop copying everything I do!" But I didn't know how to. There were no other good examples to be had.

I didn't copy everything. For example, I don't think my sister would have been caught dead in a decidedly juvenile cherry-print halter set, she never spent hours playing with paper, crayons, paints and glue and I don't believe for one minute that she was always happy about having her little sister trying to hang around her and her "grown up friends" being obnoxious and wanting to do everything they were doing.
But what choice did I have? She was the only one I could find to keep company with and crayons just can't remain interesting for an eternity.

Life hasn't changed much.

You Think Too Much

I have a shoe tied around my neck!!

And dolly dresses around my ankles!!!

God knows what's on my head. I'm not sure if this is a picture of'desperation' or 'creativity.'

I look happy.
My sister looks sort of embarrassed but also a little as though she's thankful that she's the only one who sees the lunacy in any of this. Likely because this type of behavior fit in seemlessly with the other dysfunctional activities that regularly took place in our house.
Shhh. . . . no body is going to notice.

Maybe 'pathetic' is funny. The again, maybe it was just simple fun being very silly. Somewhere I lost the ability to do this. If I knew where, I'd rush back to retrieve it. These days, I long for hours where I could simply tie a shoe around my neck and be blissfully happy and simultaneously proud of my creativity.

I'm sure that the reason why I appear so happy is that I didn't take the time to consider how silly my choice of entertainment actually was. I didn't consider what anyone else might think about wearing tiny pink dresses around my ankles and over my pajamas. I didn't stop to consider whether or not the shoe tied around my neck looked enough like an amulet to pass as one or that my sleeveless frock would only be wearable if placed on backward. None of this mattered to me in the slightest. What I cared about was that what I was doing worked for me. I was having a good time.

In some ways, I'm still this little girl who simply doesn't take the time to consider too thoroughly what other people might think about her ideas. I know some of them are. . .   well, they're far-fetched. I know they're not always popular. They definately do not offer a good representation of any conventional approach to problems solving. I understand that if I explained them beforehand in an attempt to make them more universally rational - I would fail and likely create even more skepticism. This is what usually happens - these days.

As an adult, I've tried to play with real props and use them only in the manner for which they were intended. I've had to. Social conventions have demanded it of me. It certainly isn't as much fun as finding my own way to solve problems. These days, looking for a new job or trying to drastically change my career path  is difficult to determine under the most practical and defined of circumstances. My approach is definitely not conventional. I know. Even if I did explain it, you wouldn't understand completely or be entirely convinced that my plan might work; nevermind be achieveable. The only thing I can tell you is; trust me. It's going to work out.
And look!
Shoes tied around your neck can work.
And they make me happy. Isn't that the real goal?

Pyro

I haven't written too much about my Dad. He was industrious - well, maybe more like ADD -, creative in his own way, (which was usually the result of a great deal of frugality) and patient with every one's children except his own. He loved to have fun even though he always felt guilty about it afterward and had a sweet tooth the size of the Matterhorn. He's still all of these things. However, the trait that defines him best, captures his reckless side, involves his benevolent faith that he is always protected by a higher power and excites his still juvenile sense of adventure is his pyromania.
Fire has always been my father's companion. His philosophy can be summed up as, "When it doubt, burn it. When it's in your way, set it ablaze. When you need a little cheer, light it up. When you're bored, burn something and watch the literal incarnation of "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Purify it with fire."

I mean seriously, who else lights his child's first birthday cake with a blow torch? Why else would someone use gasoline to light a barbecue - all the time and as a matter of practice as opposed to desperation? There was the motor oil on the snowy logs in the fireplace ("just to get them going"). Every fall, huge piles of brush and leaves begged for incineration. And part of me still believes that the only reason we moved to a new house in the late 70s was that the new house had an incinerator in the basement and a yard big enough to build a fire pit. He didn't really care if it was illegal - that was interpreted as a technicality that couldn't be meant for him.

The funniest thing about this picture is that this isn't the only one. There are more. Loads of them. He still loves fire and will disregard almost any neighborhood regulation or city ordinance if it means he gets to or wants to light things on fire.
Once, when we were on vacation in another country we stayed at a place that had tiny beach cabins, picnic tables and fire pits by the lake shore. The only thing that the campground didn't come with was ready fire wood. In his desperation, he decided that one of the picnic tables was dangerous. 'Someone might get hurt', he said. It had to be burned. Of course, he had to rip it apart before the pieces would fit in the fire pit. He happened to have brought a saw along. Apparently, this wasn't an issue either. So we cooked our dinner that evening by burning the picnic table - we ate our dinner from the other one. Thank God there was alcohol and no other guests.

Regular Kids and Then Some

Do you think most families believe themselves entirely ordinary most of the time? I know we did - the entire neighborhood of us. I know I did within my family. Of course, I was four. I had no perspective regarding what 'normal' looked like or was. I just assumed that I was it. There is a line in literature taken from a book titled, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing that says it best. It reads:
"It is ever the lot of children to accept their circumstances as universal, and their particularities as general.”
That's one of the best sentences I know of. And it's so true.

From the perspective of my forties, I can see how flawed and blissfully ignorant my viewpoint was. As well, I am fully aware of how delicate yet opaque the protection of this viewpoint is; not only to me but to all kids and maybe including their parents. In pictures and likely in most behavior and thought we were so normal.

We fought lions in the front yards of our neighbors.We built fortresses behind the protection of parents houses. We sailed on voyages of discovery. We made up games where we could be normal tyrannical and flawed grown ups.We commiserated defeat with our leader and rushed to try again. We were explorers to parts unknown. We formed unions and allegiances. We were just kids; hangin' out, going to school, being friends with people around us and playing all the time.
We didn't know that inside the houses of our neighbors lived lives that we could never have imagined; lives that even the most informed gossip columnists couldn't predict.

Granted, normalcy did exist, but it did so along social immorality, domestic abuse, political struggles, race riots, psychological turmoils and addictions galore. They all had to live somewhere. Some of them even lived in my house. I just thought it was all normal.

Maybe it is. Maybe it still is and it's still my perspective that's not focused or defined.
I mean . . . when I think about all the kids that came out of our little neighborhood and find that there are teachers, managers, bankers and firemen I truly believe that I lived a normal life. But there are also psychotic geniuses, disturbed social outcasts, full-fledged convicted felons and most likely members of organized crime syndicates by now. They all seemed pretty normal when we shared a neighborhood.

Miss Match

I remember this dress of my Mothers. I remember seeing it hanging in her closet as a little girl. She made it from a stiff fabric of turquoise and lime green. It was almost a damask-type of material, heavy and thick. The dress was trimmed in soft, aqua velvet ribbons. The fabric was almost shiny or sparkly but not quite. The ribbons were dull and smooth. I still have those beads she's wearing. They were (are) a sort of light aqua blue too. They were the opposite of the dress, very unrefined, uneven, unsparkly and unsophisticated. I was never sure why she chose them to go with this dress except that they were the perfect color. Nothing else about the pair felt right though. Like many things in her life, they were opposites in every way, but she put them together anyway. Her most prevalent and glaring pairings always included one part extreme sophistication, the other part exquisite cottage art. Her way of illustrating how she felt in her world, I suppose. She would have been happy a medieval earth-mother living in the forests with the druids, but life demanded that she be a member of the working middle class and the wife of a notable member of the community. A sophisticated and rough-hewn piece of the same puzzle.

It's funny. I remember the dress. I remember the jewelry. I have no recollection of the person wearing them. My Mother - happy. Looking at this picture of my Mother makes me feel the same way that I do when I think of this dress and those beads together. They just don't match.
I only remember my Mom as a worried and simultaneously absent participant in our lives. She worried endlessly - about everything. Her fear grew as I grew older. At first it was just concern, then it nervousness, then it became depressed worry and a few years ago it blossomed into full fledged paranoia. Finally it left her essentially unable to concentrate on any matronly task long enough to complete it or care that it remained undone regardless of whom might be affected by it's incompleteness. Big tasks, like 'dinner' or 'being at home' were most days just ignored because they presented too much to worry about. It was so much easier to just go shopping and forget about the hard choices in lieu of the much easier ones.

I don't remember her as chatty or friendly or gregarious - but I do remember her attempts to be. Again, constructing misplaced aliegances to take the place of relationships with actual family members. They were so much easier to navigate when the participants didn't demand her attention every minute of the day as children and spouses tend to do.

Christmas began at 10 o'clock

Now that the holidays are over, I can spend some time - as I always do - thinking about how I wish they were different. I wish there were family around, I wish I could go to bed at nine and wake up with everything done, people coming to visit and have it all happen so effortlessly like I thought it used to as a kid. I thought a lot of things 'just happened' as a kid. What did I know?

Well, I knew enough to know that there was no Santa. I knew that my Mom and Rudolph couldn't possibly have the same hand-writing and I knew that if that were the case then it was just as likely that my Dad and Santa also had identical handwriting. I knew that came at 10 o'clock on Christmas Eve. After we got home from Christmas Eve service, we got ready for bed. We wouldn't have dreamed of opening anything on Christmas Eve despite that there were always a few things under the tree. Gifts we'd chosen for one another. I heard him every year. Once we were in bed - too afraid of repercussions to risk getting up to sneak any sort of peaks - Christmas began.
The back door would slide open in it's aluminum track, there would be footsteps out into the yard right past my window and then the barn door would creek open after the clang of the padlock snapping open against the jam. A few minutes later, all these noises would happen in reverse and they would end with a great bustle of paper bags, and boxes. My Dad loved to put things in boxes. He still does.

Santa? Yeah right. I heard the unraveling of reams of tissue paper, the Scotch tape ripping, scissors being set down heavily on the wooden table and ribbons buzzing as they were curled along the blade of a table knife . . . . and martinis. Don't forget the martinis. It all started at 10 o'clock sharp - those weren't no elves.

In the morning there was always more gifts than there was space around the tree. They spilled onto the floor and blocked the doorway. There were so many colors and so many sizes and just so many, many.

One year, as legend has it, I woke up around 4am. I was probably around eight years old. Of course it was Christmas morning so waking my parents up early was allowed this day. I did just that and was summarily sent back to my room - to bed. My Dad finally had to wake me up around eight o'clock when my sister and brother were out of every last shread of patience. It became the family joke at Christmas. How early was I going to wake or how late would I sleep? The one who couldn't wait making everyone wait for her. The one running the show in her own way.

Why do you think my sister is so pleased that I'm screaming? Maybe she just knew I'd be trouble. Or maybe she was just happy to know that I wasn't actually in charge of everything.

Well, someone had to be.

My sister is three years older than me. My brother is three years younger. I am 'the middle child' in every conventional way.
My sister had the really great clothes. I think my grandmother made most of them for her. She was the first grandchild. In many ways, she was spoiled rotten and always the center of attention. She was truly a physical version of 'hope' and 'expectation.' It could not have been easy. She was going to be great - whether she liked it or not.

My brother had all the autonomy. He could do no wrong. And, he was a boy as well as the baby. He was spoiled in a very different way. He was excused, he was cajoled and he was catered to because he was different (male) and allowances were made for him that were never made for either me or my sister. He was always believed, never doubted or suspected.

I . . . am the middle child. I clung to one of my siblings most of the time. Usually, which ever would tolerate me. I wasn't as remarkable as the oldest and I wasn't as unique as the youngest. I shared each of their respective spotlights with them and likely much to their chagrin at the time. I was autonomous and learned to hide in plain sight - right out in the open where nobody was looking.

We were, for all intents and purposes, entirely regular kids from a middle class neighborhood in the Midwest. We fit the mold of 'suburbanites' perfectly. We went to school and to church. My Dad went to work where he taught elementary school and my Mom stayed home, where she watched soap operas, gossiped with neighbors and attempted to cook dinners.

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.