Memories...All Alone...

My earliest memory is from when I was still sleeping in a crib.

We lived in a house in Metz, Indiana, a place so small that there wasn’t a post office. The only form of commerce was the Pepsi machine that stood outside the volunteer fire departments garage.

I slept in a crib that was under a west-facing window. I’d wake up from my afternoon naps and lay there, watching the dust motes float lazily in the rays of sun shining in the window. I could hear my mom outside the room, sometimes in the hall, sometimes in another room, humming. She often had a laundry basket on her hip.

I’d wait for her to come check on me. She’d approach the crib slowly and smile when she saw me awake, saying softly, “Oh, you’re awake.”

I always felt so safe in that home with that lady. I always knew she’d be glad to see me.

I was a November baby, so this memory (or conglomeration of memories) is probably from when I was seven or eight months old. I say that because the weather seems warm in my memories, like summer time.

I have a scar on my right hand. The injury that resulted in that scar happened in the house where my first memories were built. We must have lived there until I was a toddler because my mom says the scar happened when I was maybe a year and a half. We were outside on the front stoop of that first house. My mom was sitting on one of the step. I was probably toddling around on the steps too. I started to fall and my mom reached out to stop my fall, forgetting she was holding a cigarette in her hand. The cigarette burned my right hand, leaving a small scar that is there to this day.

I don’t remember that moment though.

I also have a scar just below my bottom lip. I don’t remember getting this one either but my mother reports that this scar was the result of me being a bit of a brat. I wanted lunch and I wanted NOW. I was small enough to be in a highchair with a tray. She told me it would be ready soon. I didn’t want ‘soon’ I wanted ‘now’. When she didn’t produce food right that second, I threw my head against the tray. I put my bottom teeth (probably the only teeth I had at that time) through my lower lip.

My mom pulled my lip off my teeth, blotted the blood and fed me. She was one tough lady.

I have two younger brothers. My closest sibling is my brother who is four and a half years younger than I am. But I didn’t grow up isolated with just a brother or two. We had cousins galore. We were never, ever lonely.

My mom and her sisters basically raised us as if we were all siblings. There was always someone around to do something with, even if it was just playing with Matchbox cars in the dirt outside beneath the boxelder tree.

And yet with all those cousins and brothers, I had plenty of time alone too. I hit a tennis ball against the roof of our house. I swung on the tire swing so much I had calluses on my hands. I created all these stories in my head, riding my bike as if it were a horse through the town.

My parents divorced when I was eleven. My dad moved three houses away. He was always just up the street.

I guess you could say I had an idea childhood. I was so, so lucky. So very blessed.

I hope with all my heart that someday, my girls feel that way about their childhood.