Dark, warm. That’s the first thing I recall.
Then it was bright and cold, and I didn’t like it.
After that, there’s nothing for a while. Then I remember laughter, bright colored lights, and a sense of something important. I have no memory of words to describe this at the time. I had the words later, but there are no words or understanding associated with any of that at the time.
My next memory is of riding my tricycle in the house, followed by playing a piano my size beside my mother and her grown-up upright Metropolitan piano.
I recall getting stung by a bee on the bottom of my foot, and my Grandma Hartin scooping me up and taking me to a little stream at the bottom of the back yard, slapping mud on the bottom of my foot.
I remember my duck, Petunia, ruining my wading pool by crapping in it constantly.
I remember cats as a constant part of my tiny world. I watched them eat, bending down to see the way the food disappeared between their small, sharp teeth.
I remember Candy, the family dog, nominally the “property” of my brother Douglas. She and I played in every yard we had until her sad and unfortunate passing at the age of 13 from a perfect storm of old age and lead poisoning. She had found a painted bowl somewhere and brought it home, obviously fond of it….. So, not knowing better at the time (1977), we fed her from it, to her distinct pleasure. And her unfortunate detriment. The paint was lead based, and it contributed a great deal to her slow deterioration, and a truly heartbreaking trip to the vet. My parents didn't admit to me that she was not, in fact, waiting for me in California during our year in Alaska, until we had been there six months.
I remember sitting on my Grandma Hartin’s lap, begging her to read children’s books over and over. She was so patient with me, and it was because of her I learned to read by the age of three.
I remember reading, and reading, and reading….. Everything I could get my hands on, all the time. I drove my mother crazy because she couldn't get me to go out and play because my nose was buried in a book constantly. I eventually learned to somewhat balance my book time with outdoor time enough to build treehouses and forts and get into fights with the neighborhood boys.
I remember:
a big house with a nice backyard and a sort of trickling stream at the bottom of the yard
a ratty single-wide trailer, pink with a wide white stripe lengthwise, chickens, pigs, cats, especially SoWhat, a Manx mackerel tabby; and Smokey, a black, long-furred, loud voiced, wonderful cat
a big, beautiful white house with a shed and a wonderful yard, where I ran across the back alley to play with Gene and Alrick Bills, and where I found a kitten dead under the shed, dragging it out by its ear with my tiny fingers, learning about death
a green duplex with a tiny back yard and big orange apartments across the fence next door, and Lisa Andrews lived in the other half, and Smokey got hit by a car and had to make the trip to the vet so he could cross the Rainbow Bridge, and where something awful happened, was discovered, and I spent a very late night chattering to a police officer in the dining room, making paper airplanes and trying to tell while not telling until it finally all got told and Christopher Darling ended up in handcuffs somewhere else
a friendly white house with a huge barn/shed/garage, a gazebo, a pumphouse, apple and cherry trees, a big garden, berry bushes, and pot plants growing wild under the spigot in the back yard that my father was horrified to see I had in my ignorance cultivated at the age of six, and took pictures with my friend Dennis Carver in the front yard
another ratty trailer where ice formed an inch thick on the insides of my bedroom windows and froze the curtains to the glass
an apartment in a big complex where the manager screamed at me not to play with the black children at the bottom of the complex and was told off by my mother in no uncertain terms, and we saw a mama moose and her baby walk right past the front door, only the length of a 1973 Chevrolet Impala away
a shady brown house with yellow shutters and a stepped back yard with huge trees where I jumped off a barstool in the wet bar/den and cut my face just below my nose and just above my lip so deep that at 43 I still carry the scar
a tan duplex where I had a good friend and could walk easily to the library and school and many other places
a big brown apartment complex where I built a three-story treehouse and got the cops called on me for no good reason, and had to take the treehouse down by the start of school that year
another brown apartment complex with a pool where I tanned so brown people asked what tribe I belonged to, I met a cockatiel who lived with a policeman, and I rode my bicycle farther than ever and very nearly got into trouble once that I couldn't have handled had I not seen it coming
a big rambling white house with strange rooms, windows with no glass inside the house, where I played Chinese Checkers with my Uncle Bob until I beat him, upon which he refused to play any more
a small green apartment complex where a young married woman across the hall tried to teach me Hebrew and Arabic, and fed me fascinating foods, and gave me a foreign coin that I still have in my collection, and where I climbed over the rails and roofs to shinny down the drainpipe or step directly onto the back fence of the school I attended to get to school when no one was watching, and Kristen Baker gave me a cat she called Apricot, but who I called Lancelot
a doublewide trailer in a big park with lots of other kids and a basketball court, where Chad Cover and his friend Mike accidentally hit me in the face with a basketball (I was dumb enough to be sitting under the basket reading while they played) and it terrified my mother to see the vast amount of blood, but I could only laugh at my own stupidity despite the pain
a wonderful brick house where our housemates were awful, one ate ranch dressing by the spoonful and would eat a whole freshly made container in 15 minutes and none of them washed often, and Lancelot died in the back yard on an awful day after a long illness
a red duplex where I spent my high school years as a delinquent, a truant, a reprobate, a fighter for justice, a terrible pain in the ass for my parents, and where I had a job and paid actual house bills most of the time starting at 15, and I had wonderful parties that I could decide to have on the spur of the moment, make two calls on the pay phone down the street and have twenty people there in an hour, which is odd because my mom was there, and there was no alcohol or drugs except tobacco (which was required to be consumed on the sidewalk out front) and we made dump cake and cooked and played old vinyl records and danced, and boys and girls were not allowed down the back hall at the same time
And those are the houses I recall.
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