Growing Up Me

Growing up me.  

How do you put it?  You can say what you'd like about me, but if you know me well enough then you love me.  I mean you really love me as a person.  Not that I am trying to toot my own horn so to speak or anything like that.  I am just the type of person that is very easy to get along with and would do anything for you.  Even if I have to go out of the way to do it.  Not that I will go and purchase a new car for you or something of that nature, but I will help you within whatever means I can.  

As a small child, as my mother tells me, I could always get what I wanted.  I don't know how or why, I just did.  It didn't matter if it was a relative or a complete stranger.  There was just a way about me, mom would say, that made people just love me instantly.  I could ask for just about anything and get it.  Not that I asked for much, because I rarely did.  Looking at something with that awe in my eyes would be the dead give away most of the time about how much I would admire something.  For example a doll or stuffed animal.  I would end up with it the next day or week.  

Growing up I was quite poor.  I can remember living in low-income housing, on the other side of the tracks, in a place called "The Project."  I loved it there because there was this huge metal slide in the front and I could go on that for hours.  There was also concrete sidewalks and I could ride my tricycle on them.  We were always playing outside until dark with all the neighborhood kids.  Living in The Project there were so many kids around all the time it was great.  We could play tag and jumprope.  Thats where I learned to play double dutch jumprope.  Now that hard to play, but so much fun.  Look around today, you barely see kids playing that.  I was two or three when we moved there and then my mom saved enough money to buy a trailer on a piece of land on the outskirts of town.  As happy as I was to move I was sad to lose my friends.  We moved during the nice weather and had to start finding friends all over again.

I remember smelling the stench of cows all the time.  Every time I drive by a farm to this day it brings me back to those days.  The property my mom bought was an old cow farm.  We had the bogs in our front yard, which eventually over time we filled in.  It was a great place and out of the way, but close enough to get to town quick.  I can remember my mother always saying she didn't want us to grow up in The Project because we needed to be better than she ever was.  I understand that now, then I was just sad to lose my friends.  I was very young when we moved, five, but yet I remember most of it.  That was the summer my brother cut my finger off in my new bicycle. 

Five, I know, how can I say I remember anything, but this was a very traumatic age for me.  Not only did I have the finger incident, but my mom and dad split that year, we moved, I started school and had to make new friends.  My mom bought a mobile home.  It was blue and white with two lights that hung down outside in the front facing the dirt driveway.  I remember so many things about being there like the sounds and the bugs.  Oh the bugs, so many, many sounds and annoying.  I went from living in a town, which felt like a city to me to the suburbs.  A place that was a cow pasture at one point, smelly, full of bogs and bugs.  Sleeping, ha, you try sleeping.  This was hard at first but once you did, there was no turning back.  I lived on a dirt service road as my mom called it.  There was four other mobile homes on it and they all owned property, so no it wasn't a trailer park.  Across the street was an old couple, they were really nice.  They turn out to be my best friends grandparents in the end.  Above me are two more mobile homes and they are mother and daughter.  There was this little pond in between them with a few geese running around along with a miniature pony.  It was somewhat of a farm you could say, a small one, but yet farm like.  I can remember the daughter, Lizzie, well her husband drove for Hostess.  

He used to drive the big truck in and out of the dirt service road all the time, stirring up dust.  I can still feel it in my lungs.  They had three children who were about the same ages as me and my sisters and brother, so this was good.  The neighborhood was a very nice one and there was quite a few kids around.  I was happy to be there, or starting to be.  I am the youngest of four kids.  It's not easy being the baby.  You get treated so different.  Its like you never get to grow up and my oldest sister always had to take care of me no matter what.  I quite ofter felt bad for her, having to be responsible for me.  To this day, I think she still resents me for it.  I remember my mom decorating the house and saying ok, "us girls" had to share a room.  There were three girls.  UGH!  My brother of course, getting his own room, lucky dog.  Our trailer was so small, but me being five, I was tiny, so I couldn't tell.  It was 12 by 56.  Now I want you to imagine six people living in this.  Two adults and four kids.  I don't think I could ever imagine doing that today.  

Well,  It wasn't long after that when my mom and dad, who fought constantly finally split.  I can remember the big white Pontiac in the driveway and my dad walking by me in his platform shoes,  bell-bottom pants and his rust colored paisley patterned shirt.  I asked him where he was going, because he had a bunch of clothes on hangers swooped over his one shoulder.  He told me, "I'm going to the dry cleaners, baby girl, I'll be back later."  The he got in his car and left.  To this day, I don't know what pissed me off more, the fact that he called me baby girl or the fact that he never came back, that he lied to me.  I wasn't even six.  I mean, don't lie for one and two I have a name or were you using a term of endearment.  I will never know, because my father died by the time I was 17.  

I understand now, again, so many thing we, as adults understand that as children never could.  The fighting, bickering, just couldn't live with each other.  I get it.  I totally understand it.  I loved my dad, or I guess I did.  I really didn't know him.  I was so young.  I have no idea who he was or what he did.  I had friends in high school who knew him better than I did, not that just insane.  If you are reading this, you never knew that until now.  He worked for one of my friend's fathers's companies and I never knew it, until my friend told me.  I spent one spring vacation with him, or I was supposed to.  I was ten or eleven and he picked me up in this old green pick up truck.  We drove from NY to FLA.  I think it was the best time in my life.  We talked and just hung out.  My Pop-Pop, who had a summer camp in Florida, was waiting for us.  Weaving around the alligators down the back roads, we finally get to the camp.  It was beautiful.  Wekieva Landing I think it was called.  Aunt Alice, Uncle John, (even though I called them Uncle Alice and Aunt John) Pop-Pop and me, because of course, should have known, daddy dropped me off, said he'd be back and left.  I hung out all vacation.  I had the best time ever.  I learned some great card tricks and games, how to fish for piraña and met family I never knew I had.  It was definitely the best time ever for me.  

My Uncle Charlie and Aunt Louise came and picked me up in their tractor trailer.  They hauled tangerines and oranges from FLA to Boston, so this would be great.  We got in the truck and off we went.  Who wouldn't want to see the USA via a big rig.  It was awesome, just a great time.  They taught me how to use a CB radio and were going to let me drive until they said, well, maybe 11 is a bit too young, lol.  Boston came and went.  Learning how truckers back-up and transport, deliver and just live was incredible.  By far, it is no easy task, job or life.  All I kept thinking is how I sometimes get mad about living is a small home.  Not any more, that's for sure.  Try living in a tractor trailer for weeks at a time and showering in a truck stop, eating on-the-go, never knowing when you will be home if you even have one.    Gosh, I love my family.  So diversified, so loving and caring.  I would watch them with complete strangers while we were on the road just give them food or just talk to them if they needed advice or help.  This trip at such a young age was so satisfying.  It was amazing.  

They dropped me off at home and boy did I miss my bed, well my mom too and my huge (not really) house, well now I thought it was huge after spending numerous hours on the road in a tractor trailer.  Did you ever sleep in a tractor trailer while driving cross country?  It's not easy.  There were so many things that had happened to me since we moved, well besides just growing up.  

My mom met someone after having my dad left us and that was the beginning of what is what I call my learning years.  Frank, as us kids decided to call him, learned a lot from him.  I don't even remember when she married him to be honest.  I remember being in the church and we were all going to stand up and say no.  But, because we saw that my mom seemed happy, we didn't.  Who knew?  This man took and gave, taught and yet hurt.  My mother never laid a hand on us, until Frank.  What did we do that was so bad that we had to be spanked for it?  Kids are kids.  We didn't kill animals, or burn the house down.  There wasn't robbery or torture.  There was however an occasional talking back or being late, hanging out with the wrong crowd, all which stopped in an instant.  

I can remember one day, my sister, I won't say which one, cut the table with a knife; the edge of the table.  My step-dad came home, saw the marks and had a huge fit.  No one admitted to doing it, so as normal, lined us all up and said ok, "bathroom."  This meant that one by one you went in the bathroom for a spanking until someone told, in order.  It didn't matter if you did it or not, you got a spanking.  Sometimes he started at the oldest and sometimes at the youngest.  I guess it was the mood he was in or if he was drinking, which was normally always.  This time it started at the oldest, phew, I was lucky.  I knew it wasn't me and hopefully they would admit it before it got to me.  I hated being lined up, you just knew what was coming.  It could be a hand, or a spoon or brush.  Whatever was close.  If you put your hands to cover you butt, he would hold your hands out of the way and spank you again.  It hurt to say the least.  Well, it got to my sister before me…bathroom was said.  She goes in there and just waits.  I swear, waiting was worse than getting hit.  She sat in there for what seemed like forever.  Next thing you know, I was told to go outside and play.  Wooo, it was over.  Saved!  Well, she's still in the bathroom, she never got spanked, but sat in there for at least an hour waiting.  She knew.  Like I said, you dreaded being in the bathroom waiting.  I don't lie about things.  It's not worth the punishment, ever.  Besides how do you remember or keep up with what you said to who or when?  Just tell the truth and get it over with.  To this day I still get a stomach ache if someone wants me to keep a secret or wants me to lie for them.  It brings me back to my childhood.  I feel as if I am going to be harshly punished and I don't want that again, ever.   

Frank was a unique and very smart man as much as he was a disciplinarian.  He read many books and could create, build and imagine the world a better place.  He would pick up a Mother Earth News Magazine, read it and duplicate the projects in it.  Once he built a solar wood burner.  This had to be in the 70s.  It was incredible the projects he made.  He built my sisters and me beds in our room to have space to play and do our homework because of the limited area.  These were built high off the floor like bunk beds and underneath was a closet on one side, a 3-tier desk on the other and play space on the other.  It was so great.  

There were just so many things that I remember about him, Frank was pretty cool.  I learned many things from him.  I also learned how, again to get my own way, be a perfectionist even more than I already was at such a young age and what was I now, sixth grade and I have learned so much and been up and down the entire east coast, who could say that in the 70's as a young child.  It was great, so far growing up me has been, well pretty good in my eyes.