February 22, 2008

• Before I was ten….

  I am writing this in response to the Kween of the Queens challenge:

  Here are some things I remember from before I was ten:
  ♦ Woke up one Christmas morning and opened the new doll Santa left for me and exclaimed with all the awe of a two-year-old, “Look! She has blue hair just like Mommy’s!” (Mom has always had dark brown hair, even now in her seventies, and it’s natural, too!)
  ♦ One evening when I was three, my divorced mother was going on a (first) date and there was much happiness in the house. My older brothers and I were waiting to meet the man. When he came into our kitchen, I saw how handsome he was and walked up to him and held out my arms to be picked up. He didn’t hesitate. Once I got up to eye level I said, “Will you be my Daddy?” He still is!
  ♦ One weekend, when I was four, I went to Renfro Valley, Ky. with my Granny and Grandpa. We stayed in a motel room and the beds had yellow sheets. I said, “Boy, Grandpa, I don’t know how you’re going to sleep. You hate yellow!” He always told me how that “tickled” him.
  ♦ Sitting outside our house in the sunshine while Grandpa helped dig a new stairwell to the basement. I was positioned so I could see everything he was doing. I was singing “You Are My Sunshine”. Grandpa kept saying, “Sing it again.” He evidently was tone deaf because he seemed to enjoy it.
  ♦ Going to church with the grandparents almost every Sunday. Most of the time my brothers and sister would go, too. Then after church, we would go for a Sunday drive or go to our home to have Sunday dinner which my mother prepared. She would make fried chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes, green beans and crazy cake. That would make us all sleepy.
  ♦Sometimes Grandpa would drive us somehere and say to me, when it was time to go home, “Okay, tell me how to get home.” I almost always knew the way!
  ♦One time we were all watching Wild Kingdom and Marlon Perkins said something like a Cheetah can run as fast as 40 mph. Granny exclaimed, “40 Miles?!?” And Marlon said, “That’s right. 40 mph!” We all laughed so hard we woke up Grandpa. When he heard the story, he said to Granny, “I told you your voice carries!” Hilarity ensued.
  ♦ One Halloween, when I was 8, my Mom had this huge belly. She told me she was going to the hospital and wouldn’t be home for a week. I asked if we could go trick-or-treating, but once again, she said no. (We lived on a secluded farm and there wasn’t anywhere to go.) That evening Dad came home and told me I had a little sister. I was so happy, until my older (step) sister said, “You realize you’re not the baby anymore don’t you? You won’t be Grandpa’s favorite anymore!” I was devastated. I could deal with Mom and Dad loving the new baby, but I couldn’t bear to live without “My” Grandpa. When I saw him that weekend, I told him what she said. He said, “That’s not right. I’m a big man and I can love all of you, but you have a special place.”
  ♦ Months later, Mom went back into the hospital for surgery and was gone for two weeks. So was the baby. She went to stay with Granny and Grandpa. It was okay with me though, because she never really took to Grandpa, she was more Granny’s baby. Around this time, my older sister ran away from home, causing turmoil. She and Mom got into a screaming match, (she did most of the screaming) and she said, in her bitchiest tone, “You are NOT my mother!” Mom came right back with, “No, I’m not. And right now, I don’t want to be!” I was torn between my allegiances to my mother and my only older friend, from whom I learned a lot. ….especially how not to act!

  Okay. After reading this over, my siblings may have been right. I was spoiled and I wouldn’t change a thing.

  • 12:25 pm
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