Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Fifteen

This is the final installment of my life stories. A special thank you to Janna at Mommy's Piggy Tales for doing this project and letting us all play along. It's been a blast tripping down memory lane, even if I was frequently scrambling to get my post finished. Another thank you goes to Spitfire for pestering me encouraging me to join in. You uncorked the genie and now you're stuck hearing all the stories to come.



When last I wrote, I had just received a proposal on Valentine's Day. I said yes. Well, the rest of the year went along and we finally reached graduation. After my brief stint at college, my boyfriend and I did tie the knot on New Year's Day. It's been a wild ride since. This only child from such an odd background went on to become the consummate homebody and mother of 10. I learned to cook and sew and knit and crochet. I worked as a receptionist, a convenience store clerk and a picture framer. I studied the florist business and accounting. We moved around some when we were first married and looking for work, but we have now lived in the same town for 20 years. It seems my gypsy days are over. I don't miss them.

They say that time heals all wounds. I don't know if that's true, but time does give us perspective. Over time, I have realized that some of the scary situations I was put in as a child weren't my parents first choice either. They were fighting to survive and doing the best they could. I can only hope my own mistakes as a parent are viewed in the future with the same charity.

This project has brought back so many memories, both good and bad. I plan to continue on my own, writing some of the smaller details and stories that have come to mind in the course of recording these stories here. I remembered the scare we had in sixth grade when a criminal was on the loose and going through a hurricane and stepping on a snake and raising various animals over the years and spelunking and ... well, you get the idea. There is still lots to tell. Who knows. Maybe I'll write a book. I'm not sure who would buy such a thing, but you never know. Maybe I'll use my life as the basis of a fictional book so it doesn't sound quite so crazy. Time will tell.

Stories of an Unconventional Childhood, Week Fourteen

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales, there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

 My senior year started off differently, but that was nothing compared to the rest of the year. First of all, after seven years in band and one in orchestra, I wasn't signed up for any form of instrumental music. I had a major falling-out with my band director and decided I didn't need the aggravation. Meanwhile, my best friend talked me into trying out for the choir. I did and was accepted. I was on the yearbook staff and was elected senior class historian. The year was shaping up.

Meanwhile, some of my friends from the year before drifted away and others got much closer. My best friend and I were inseparable. If you saw one of us, the other was probably nearby. We didn't see this as a problem until we found out that a mutual friend of ours wanted to become more than a friend. The only problem is, he knew he really liked one of us, but since we were always together and always playing off each other, he couldn't figure out which one it was.

Finally, he picked one and took the plunge. He asked out my best friend. I think it took only one or two dates for him to figure out he had picked the wrong one. They parted ways as friends. He waited a couple weeks and asked me out, but I was afraid of hurting my friend's feelings so I turned him down.

But we started talking more and he started calling me. When I got sick and was quarantined to see if I had rheumatic fever (I didn't), he sneaked in a visit and talked to me through the window. People at school were beginning to notice that he walked me to classes and carried my books. Our circle of friends, which had extended to 5 of us (my best friend, the guy, his best friend, the best friend's girlfriend, and me), went everywhere and hung out together. Soon he and I  realized that we were much more than just friends.

Then Valentine's Day drew near. Student council was selling carnations as a fundraiser and delivering them to the classes with a doily attached and whatever message you wanted. The carnations started showing up about 3rd period. By lunch I had about 10. Then he presented me with a gift. He had tracked down 3 albums by a band I had mentioned liking, that most people had never heard of. I was overwhelmed. When he invited me on a date doubling with his best friend and his girl, I accepted immediately.

The logistics of the date got a little crazy when the restaurant they had planned to take us to turned out to be closed, but the guys came up with plan B and we had a nice meal anyway. His friend was driving, so we were sitting in the back seat. We talked and talked, until he got really quiet, took my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, "I don't suppose you'd marry me?"
Join me next Thursday for the exciting conclusion!

Stories of an Unconventional Childhood, Week Thirteen

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales, there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

When we left off last time, I had just moved (again) and was set to begin a new school. Picking up there, my mom registered me for school and I started summer band. I showed up the first day and received a large packet of music and information and was introduced as the new student. We started practice and I was scrambling to learn the music and the way this band worked, as well as everyone's names. One week in, and I found out we couldn't stay in the house because it had sold. So, in the midst of all the newness, we were packing and moving to another house. This one was further away from the school and so I had to ride my bike.

It was a long hot ride. The house we were living in was very different from the first one. I loved the built-in bookcase in my room, but disliked pretty much everything else about it. I missed the plush carpet and beautiful yard. Our new back yard was tiny, bare and surrounded my an 8-foot cinder block wall. But I didn't even have time to fully unpack because about a week and a half later, my mom got a call with a job offer, in another city.

We packed what little we had unpacked and loaded into a trailer and moved to Carlsbad, NM. My mom had scouted out a new home while she was there signing her contract, and soon we were unpacking in a small apartment and registering me for yet another school and starting summer band, which was well in progress.

The school was laid out like a college campus and the buildings were sprawled across a hill. It took a bit to learn where everything was and map out my classes. But eventually, I learned my way around, and learned the music, and learned people's names and began settling in and making some friends. I met some special people there, but most special among them, are my still good friend November (name changed to protect the insane LOL) and my dear husband, thecooldad. Of course, like any good romantic comedy, we didn't get off to such a great start, but that's another story for another time.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Twelve

Just before tenth grade started, my mom and I moved again because she got a new job across the state. Interestingly enough, because I was registering right before school started, I received some interesting benefits. In that school, high school covered 10th through 12th grade. Yes, that means I was low man on the totem pole again. But there was a pecking order in the school. The lockers lining the halls were in three layers. Tenth graders got the bottom lockers. Juniors got the middles. Seniors got the top lockers. However, they were out of bottom lockers when I registered, so someone assigned me a top locker. When school started, everyone assumed I was a senior, so I didn't have to deal with any of the junk the other sophomores had to deal with.

School was interesting and I quickly made friends and enjoyed most of my classes. One of the highlights was a cool field trip to some nearly cliff dwellings. Another was my geometry class, which much to my surprise, turned out to be one of my favorites. For some reason, geometry just clicked with me.

We lived in a small cinderblock house on top of a hill overlooking the town. It was surrounded by evergreens and large rocks, which made the yard pretty unusable, but nice to look at.

Toward the end of the year, we learned that my mother's position, along with about 20 others, was being eliminated. While Mom was job-hunting, she found out she had been hired to work at a summer camp. She was a former Girl Scout leader and director of a Camp Fire camp, so they jumped on her application. We put everything in storage and headed to the mountains outside Cloudcroft, NM. We lived at the camp for the better part of the summer, and my mom went on interviews on practically every day off.

I found ways to amuse myself as well. I made friends with the camp director's daughter, who was a couple years younger. I also had a blast teaching camp songs, which I knew tons of thanks to years in Girl Scouts and the summers my mom was a camp director. When they had a week for high schoolers, I actually got to be a camper and attend. The week was a backpacking trip covering a long trail through the White Mountains outside Ruidoso. It was an amazing experience that pushed the boundaries of what I thought I was capable of.

Meanwhile, she had decided we were moving to Las Cruces. We found a beautiful house in an older neighborhood and began moving in. It was a lovely house with thick carpeting, a mural on the dining room wall, tons of storage, and a small fountain in the backyard. Unfortunately, I didn't get to stay long enough to get fully unpacked, but that's a story for another day.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Eleven

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

 Image via Wikipedia

My ninth grade year was a study in contrasts. It seemed as if anything that could change, did. The year started off pretty normally. I started the ninth grade enjoying school and spending spare time at the beach. But things were far from ideal. My parents were having issues. Dad was spending more and more time away from home and with his friends. When he was home, there was obvious friction. A couple months into the school year, we all needed a fresh start.

Initially, it was proposed that he would move to Albuquerque and find work and housing, and we would follow later. However, he started packing and dividing up the household goods, even sorting out the albums and negotiating about the ones he wanted. It was all very surreal.

Image via WikipediaDad left and it was a few weeks before we heard from him. He finally called and said he had found a job and a nice apartment. We began packing and I began once again saying goodbye to my friends. Little did I know just how different this move would turn out to be. As soon as we hit Christmas break, we finished packing and left to spend Christmas with my grandparents. My mom left from there to go see my dad and check out the situation.

When she got there, she found the apartment was in the wrong part of town and the job was dead-end. She was furious. They had a huge fight and she drove across town and rented an apartment. After Christmas, we loaded everything we owned into a moving van and moved to Albuquerque. If you've never had the chance to move from below sea-level to one mile altitude, I don't recommend it. I was sure they had removed all the oxygen from the city before I got there.
 

School was an adventure too. Before I moved, I was in a school that ran from 7th through 9th grade. When I moved, 9th grade was in high school. I went from top of the heap to low man on the totem pole. I couldn't breathe, I was pond-scum in the big pond, and my mom and dad were getting a divorce.

To say I was miserable, would be putting it mildly.
 

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Eventually, I learned the charms of the area. I could stand on my balcony and watch the hot air balloons and hang-gliders coming off the mountain. I loved to watch the clouds coming over the mountains, which meant snow. I spent a couple of weekends with my dad (after he moved to a better part of town). After a while, I began a life-long love affair with the New Mexican cuisine. I learned the proper answer to the question "Red or green?" for me, is always "Green" and the hotter the better.

Image by svenwerk via Flickr

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Ten

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.


The beginning of my eighth grade year, I was feeling fine. I was living in the same house and going to the same school. School started as usual, but with a few interesting twists. My favorite teacher from the year before moved up with me and taught the subject I had struggled with the most the year before.


The other thing that happened had me dancing a happy dance. Two weeks into school, someone came to my PE class. They were looking for volunteers to help with the PE classes at the primary school. Apparently, due to budget cuts, they had lost all their teacher's aides. They decided to use students instead. When they explained the details, my hand was the first one up. During my PE class, I would get to walk down to the primary school next door and help out with the K-1 class during that period. That would count as my PE class as well. I would get to play with the little kids and get my credit. Woo Hoo! They were looking for two people and one of my friends nabbed the other spot. When I thought it couldn't get any better, I found out my mom's class was in the PE class. I was awesome!


I soon found out the one down side to the job. It was dealing with heartbreaking situations you couldn't control. One little girl in the class wasn't allowed to play with neighborhood children so she cried every day because she thought she would get in trouble for playing with her classmates. I found out that during recess each day, she went off and sat by herself so she wouldn't be in trouble. It took a few months to convince her that it was alright to join in the games and activities.


The other thing I had to deal with broke my heart and made me mad all at the same time. One little girl showed up almost every day with a new set of bruises and bandages. She always had some explanation for how they got there, but it wasn't very convincing. Then one day, I hugged her shoulders and she winced in pain. I questioned her and she finally pulled her shirt aside enough to reveal what looked like cigarette burns. I was horrified and angry. The little girl looked almost apologetic. I knelt down and told her this was not her fault. She told me that sometimes she couldn't help being bad. I wanted to hit someone and it wasn't her.


I reported this to the PE teacher who nodded her head sadly. She said that she and a couple of the other teachers had reported it several times to no avail. When I told her the little girl thought it was her fault her parents hurt her, I saw her eyes flash and her jaw clench. She asked if I could watch the class for a bit while she made a phone call.


The next day, she wasn't in school, and I have to tell you that I feared the worst. Another day went by and she still didn't show up. I fretted about her all weekend. But on Monday, she came in all smiles and clean and dressed up cute. She told me that some people came and got her and sent her to live with her grandmother who was very nice. I was so happy I thought I would burst. She was safe, the other little girl was coming out of her shell and my mom's students came in every class and gave me big hugs and told me what they were learning.


Imagine my distress when I learned we were moving over Christmas vacation. My mom would still be teaching there, but we would be living in a different district so I would have to change schools. Again. Sigh.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Nine

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

When I was in the seventh grade, my mom got her first full-time teaching job. It was in the same school system as I attended, in the building right next door. She was teaching in the primary school and had the class of first-graders that were labeled "educable retarded". I just thought they were adorable. Whenever I had opportunity, I would visit her classroom and the kids would always tell me all about whatever they were learning. And they were learning. I loved being around them because everything was a delight and a wonder. If they could figure out how to sound out a letter it was cause for celebration and another's success would cause everyone in the class to break into clapping and cheering.

Meanwhile, I was trying to make my way through my first year of junior high. Most of my classes were just alright, but three really stood out, the first two because they were so good and the last because it was so awful.

The first two classes were taught by two of my favorite teachers. One was my life science teacher. She was an amazing person who was full-blood Cherokee Indian. She pushed me in a good way and never let me get lackadaisical, as good students sometimes do. The other teacher taught Texas history and was the science teacher's best friend. When they figured out that they both had me, and I was teacher's pet in both classrooms, they really started having fun. One would send me with messages or jokes or Dr. Pepper's to the other's classroom. I dearly loved both teachers and classes.

The last one was my PE class. I never was a big fan of PE anyway, but that was the year they instituted co-ed PE classes in my school. Suddenly, we were expected to play baseball with the boys and flag-football with the boys and so on. Worst of all, I was in the class taught by the male coach, who thought it was funny when the boys interpreted his flag-football rule of "two hands below the waist to tackle" as "it's okay to pop a girl on the butt to tackle her". Needless to say, if I could find a reason to be gone from PE, I took it.

The highlight of my seventh grade year would have to be the end-of-the-year trip that was the reward for the "A" students in the Texas history class. We went on an all-day trip, first to the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, and then across the border to Mexico to spend the day. The zoo was amazing and enjoyable except for the mandrill who was overly excited about my strawberry blond hair and went berserk every time he saw me.

That hair was a real problem for me on that particular trip, but everything worked out. At the time, there was a gang in Mexico, that was kidnapping red-headed Americans. Alerts had been sent out throughout the region, so my teacher assigned two large Hispanic boys to be my bodyguards for the entire time we were in Mexico. Fortunately, they took to their role as protectors and treated me like a beloved little sister. I was a little nervous, but managed to have a lot of fun, knowing I was safe and well-looked-after. I came home with lots of pictures, a belly full of good food, some wonderful memories and a lovely pair of maracas.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood: Week Eight

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

Sixth grade began with me sitting on top of the world. I was in a classroom I loved with teachers that were awesome. I had my circle of friends around me. I was starting my second year of band, playing the oboe. We had just moved into a studio apartment in a nicer neighborhood and I had a cool room with a big closet and had a swimming pool a few feet from my front door once again. Life was good.

My friends and I had the sleepover club in full swing. We had a group of girls that took turns hosting sleepovers at the rate of one about every other week. The best part was that each house was a little different. My house had a lot of open space in the living room, a great stereo and a swimming pool. Janice's house was small, so her older brothers set up a tent in the backyard. They would then wait until we got ready for bed and do stuff like scratching on the tent pretending to be an animal or unscrewing the bulb to the floodlight that illuminated the backyard and make ghost noises to scare us. She had a big family and there was always something going on at her house. Wendy's house had a big backyard to run around in and MaryAnn's house had tons of great board games. Laura's house was filled with treasures her father had brought back from various locations where he was stationed and her mother painted all sorts of little wooden plaques and knickknacks. The house rules were posted on Laura's  door and the first one was no pillow fights. The next was no roughhousing. But the last one made up for it. It was the rule that stated that you must raid the refrigerator.

This was a great game in her house. You had to raid the refrigerator but you couldn't get caught. This, of course, kept everyone quiet and sneaking around. Laura's mom would stock the fridge with fried chicken and chocolate cake and other fun stuff prior to the raid. As the evening wore on we would play music and play ping-pong, until her parents said it was time to go to bed. That's when the fun really started. We had to pretend to be going to sleep while her parent pretended to buy our act. We would wait for what seemed like an eternity for their light to go out and the house to quiet down. Then the refrigerator raiders struck.

I'm quite sure, with all the giggling and shushing each other, that we weren't nearly as quiet as we thought we were being. Occasionally just for fun, her dad would shake things up by noisily opening the door and telling his wife in a loud voice that he was going to go to the kitchen and get a drink of water. We would shove the food back into the fridge and quickly scamper back to our sleeping bags and pretend to be asleep, suppressing giggles as best we could, while he got his water and went back to bed.


And so it went until about mid-year, when my dad announced he had a new job and we were moving to another part of the state. I cried for days. My friends hugged me and cried and then got together and threw me the best going-away party. My dad went ahead of us to find a place to live while we packed. When we finally finished and got to our destination, I cried again.


The only house he could find in our price range, was a tiny one-bedroom beach cottage. Because the living room had an entire wall of windows that faced the street, I couldn't sleep in the living room, so they put a twin bed mattress in the floor of the walk-in coat/storage closet in the hallway. It covered the entire floor. I had a section of shelving to put my stuff on and the end of the rod furthest from the door for my clothes. Anything that didn't fit had to be gotten rid of. My beloved record player went away, but I did get to keep my records to play on the big stereo in the living room.


School was a shock as well. My teacher was a cross, bitter woman who maintained discipline by assigning hundreds of lines to be written within a certain time. I anyone made a sound, she would make the entire class write lines. If you didn't finish, you received swats with a large wooden paddle that she wielded like a major league batter. The room was painted gray and the desks were in lines facing her desk. There were no decorations of any kind. Small wonder she was the least popular teacher in the school. Oddly enough, her sister was the most popular teacher in the school and her room was the exact opposite. It was bright and clean and filled with posters and plants, with an aquarium and hamster cage and displays of geodes and seashells. Oh, how I longed to be in that room!


After a while, survival mode kicked in. After getting a few swats because I couldn't write that fast, I found out my teacher always assigned the same line, "I will not talk in class". The kids had caught on to this,  and prepared pages of lines in their notebooks. When she assigned lines, they would write until the deadline and then count out the needed number of pages and turn them in. Schoolwork was so predictable that I would do a week's worth on the weekend, and then write stories or stockpile lines during school time. I learned to cope with the teacher's temper tantrums and waited for the school year to be over.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood: Week Seven

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

The summer before my fifth grade year, my parents decided they had had enough of roughing it. The animals were sold or given away, the wood cook stoves sold and the rest given away or packed. By this time, my grandparents had been asked to run a combination hotel and apartment complex in Austin. They offered my dad a position as handyman which included a one-bedroom furnished apartment. We pared our belongings down to the bare minimums and moved in.

I loved living in the apartments. We had a TV for the first time and a swimming pool a few feet from our door. I got to see my grandparents all the time too. The one thing I didn't like was sleeping on the couch. We had lived in a communal room in the tent and the structure built after that. I missed my old room with the patchwork rug and the big windows. After a year and a half of sleeping on a mattress on the floor, now I was on the couch.

When it came time to register for school, my mom made a call to find out where my school would be. She left to go register me, but came back looking grim. There were then more calls made and a lot of discussion in the bedroom with the door shut. When they finally came out, I was told I would be going to a private school nearby, a Catholic school.

Now for a girl growing up with a Baptist mom and a sometimes Church of Christ dad, attending a Catholic school seemed like quite a stretch. It seems the school the apartments would use was a black school. I would have been only the second white child in that school and the only white girl. My mom wasn't comfortable with that scenario, so she looked around to find a private school that was close to home.

Catholic school was quite an adventure. It came with religion classes and mass every Thursday morning. A lot of things were new to me like rosaries and confessionals and holy water. Although I didn't really fit in, I did make friends and really enjoyed school. The curriculum was quite progressive and filled with interesting hands-on projects and free time to read.

Getting to school was an adventure in itself, as I had to ride the city bus every morning and then walk a couple of blocks to school, past the school I would have been attending. The catcalls  and indecent offers that came my way confirmed my mom's concerns. In the afternoon, I walked back down those blocks and waited about 20 minutes for the bus to arrive and then rode it the rest of the route until it circled back around to my house. I was really nervous at first about missing my stop, but soon got comfortable with the journey.

We eventually moved into our own apartment a little further from the school and the bus didn't run close to our place. I had to be taken to school and picked up when my parents got off work. I would sit in front of the school and watch my friends leave, and then the teachers, and then the administration. I would sit and read or do my homework until my parents came about 6PM. I didn't like having to sit out there all by myself, but I considered it a small sacrifice to make for what I gained...my own room.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Five

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

When I think back to the fourth grade, the thing that jumps out at me most is animals. You see, we had settled in a bit, there in our cozy tent on the hill. I was really getting accustomed to our odd way of living. Mostly.

The one major problem I had was the wildlife. For some reason, our tent attracted Daddy Long-Legs spiders. Lots of them. The corners of the tent would fill up with them, a mass of legs and bouncing bodies. It was seriously creepy to wake up and see that every morning.

My other encounter in the tent was even less pleasant. One evening, as I was getting into bed, I felt a sharp pain in my ankle. I cried out and jumped back. My dad searched my bed and uncovered a nasty little visitor...a scorpion. He quickly dispatched the scorpion, while my mom treated the sting. I was fine a few days later.

Other wildlife included field mice, which were kept in check by our two cats. We also had rattlesnakes in abundance. In addition, we had king snakes and coral snakes, and learned quickly how to tell them apart, especially when I encountered one stretched across the road as I walked home from school. It was a coral snake and I threw rocks at it until it moved.

In addition to our cats, we had a Bassett hound named Tony. Tony's one great love was chasing armadillos, something else we had in abundance. The only problem is that he would get so involved with chasing them, he lost track of where he was. The armadillo would disappear into a hole and Tony would be left, standing and baying until someone came and found him and took him home.

Eventually, we added several rabbits, two Nubian goats named Billy and Blue, some turkeys and some chickens. I gathered eggs every day and really loved the Ameraucana chickens because they laid colorful eggs, with various tints of pale blue and green. Of course, we also had some Rhode Island Reds and some Leghorns as well.

An incident that is etched in my mind happened on the school bus one morning. After I was picked up we went a couple of miles down the road to pick up an older girl and then a few minutes later, three brothers who lived on a farm there. This particular morning the boys were full of mischief and acting squirrelly. They sat down behind me and we continued down the road.

Suddenly I felt something in my hair. Imagine my horror when I reached up and felt something moving on top of my head. I began to shake my head and frantically try to get it out, when a tarantula the size of my palm dropped out of my hair, accompanied by the shrieking laughter of those boys. They have no idea how close to death they were at that moment.

The bus driver stopped the bus, pitched the spider off the side of the road, asked me if I was hurt and then scolded the boys, who didn't look one bit repentant. At least they didn't until the older girl told them they were either really brave or really stupid. When they asked why, she turned to me and winked and then turned back to them and said, "She's German and they have tempers like rattlesnakes. They don't get mad but they do get even when you least expect it. I'd watch my back if I were you." They looked at me wide-eyed and gave me a pretty wide berth after that.

Later that year, we moved down the hill into a small structure my dad built, because a different sort of animal, the two-legged kind, ransacked our place while we were visiting relatives, and stole what they deemed as valuable, destroying the rest by throwing it out onto the ground for the weather and animals to have their way with. Most of our books, my dad's paintings, and all our pictures and keepsakes were destroyed. We came home to waterlogged things strewn everywhere amidst the broken ceramics and dishes. Our mattresses had been dragged out as well. It was a mess and it all seemed so senseless.

I never felt really secure out on the property after that. It seems funny that I felt perfectly safe in the midst of scorpions and rattlesnakes, by one or more human animals shattered my peace.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Five

I started third grade with a settled feeling. My teacher from the second grade moved up to teach third grade. I had been selected for a special program that met a couple times a week and did interesting projects. I had a waver in the school library that allowed me to check out books from any area (our school library had a rule that you could only check out books from your grade level or below, but my teacher fought for a waver because I had read all of them and my reading level was several years beyond my grade level). I was in Brownies with my mom as troop co-leader.  Life was good.

My parents were still attending college. I had gotten accustomed to being a latchkey kid and had a pretty set afternoon routine. We were still living in our old rent house and had been able to replace our truck. My dad had purchased an army squad tent  from a military surplus store and set it up in our backyard as his art studio. We'd been in the same place for over 2 years and I was beginning to feel a sense of permanence. Little did I know what was on the horizon.

One day I came home to an envelope taped to the door. I carefully took it down and set it inside and impatiently waited for my parents to get home to find out what it was. When my mom opened the envelope she drew in her breath and shaking her head passed it to my dad, who read it and frowned. Meanwhile I waited for someone to tell me what was going on. It seems our landlord had received an offer to buy his house and he accepted. The letter said we had until the end of the month to move out. I shouted, "No! How can he do that?" "My mom shrugged and said, "It's his house."

We began looking for a place to move but nothing was available in our price range, so my parents hit upon a wild idea. They were in the process of buying a piece of property out in the country and had plans to build a house there. There wasn't enough time for that of course, but they figured out a temporary measure. The next thing I knew we were packing everything and moving it onto the property, which was 7 miles outside a different town, almost an hour away.

I was devastated. I had to leave my friends and my school behind. Because of where the property was located, we weren't in the school district of the town we were right outside. I had to ride the bus to yet another town, 20 miles from our new home. I was scrambling in school because in my old school, we were just about to learn cursive, but in my new school, they had learned it the end of the previous year. All the notes written on the board were in cursive, which I could neither read nor write.

Remember that army squad tent?

It was now our new home. It was unloaded and set up in a clearing atop a hill, with a plywood platform floor about a foot off the ground, built by my dad. We had an old-fashioned, pot-bellied, wood-burning stove for heat. We had no electricity or gas or running water. We hauled water from town in big plastic garbage cans. It was like slightly upgraded camping out. When it was warm, we showered in an area outside with an enclosure around a tree with a large juice can with holes punched in it that warm water could be poured into. The first pouring got you wet. Then you soaped up and poured another batch to rinse off.  In colder weather, a metal washtub was set up by the stove and filled with water. After a month or so of cooking on an open fire outside, we added a wood-fired cook stove to the tent.

My head was reeling from all the changes, but I loved living out in the country. There was always somewhere to explore and discover and I had managed to make a few friends that lived out there too. Our property was covered in big oak trees hanging with Spanish moss, wild persimmon trees, and mesquite. Large prickly pear cactus dotted the landscape. I never knew if the rustling in the bushes was going to be an armadillo or a jackrabbit.

My parents were commuting almost an hour each way to college. I was dropped off at my bus stop at the crossroads early in the morning before the sun came up. Eventually, other kids catching the bus to the school in town would arrive, as well as the little boy who rode my bus. I felt safer then, because there were kids and parents I knew there.  I was about 20 miles from school, but my bus picked up all the kids that were in the outlying areas, and I was the first one picked up, so it took over an hour to get to school.

As the year progressed, I made new friends at school, learned to decipher cursive and copy it pretty well, and grow accustomed to life in the tent. I was settling in, but constantly wondered what new adventures were lurking around the corner.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Four

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

In the fall of my second grade year, it appeared things were settling down. We were actually still living in the same house and my parents were still going to college. I was attending a school about four blocks down the street from my house. My parents dropped me off in the morning on their way to school. I was accustomed to arriving a bit wind blown from the motorcycle, so imagine my delight when my mom told me we were getting a truck.

My father was still in art school and had really gotten into large-scale paintings. By large-scale, I mean most were 6 foot by 6 foot. As you can well imagine, these paintings were way too big to carry on a motorcycle. My dad was getting tired of having to arrange for a friend to move his paintings every time he had a show or needed to move a painting he had done in his backyard studio. So when he heard of an old pickup someone was selling cheap, he jumped on it.

I loved that old truck. It was a 1949 Ford pickup. It had rounded fenders and a narrow bed. A big stick-shift came up out of the floor and had a large ball on the end. Best of all, I didn't have to sit on the gas tank of a motorcycle to go everywhere. It was a funky old truck, but I loved it.

One day, we were on the way to my school, something went very wrong. A man running late for work, driving in excess of 45 MPH, sped through my neighborhood. When he reached the intersection two blocks from my house, he ran the stop sign and ran right into us. He caught the front of the truck and curled the cast iron bumper. The crunch of metal and sound of shattering glass broke the early morning quiet.

When the dust settled, my dad had bruised ribs from hitting the steering wheel. My mom had flown forward and her forehead hit the windshield. The safety glass broke into a million little pieces. My mom had tiny little sparkles of glass dust on her hand if she rubbed it across her forehead for years thereafter. As for me, I hit that lovely ball on the stick-shift. In the impact, I flew forward and it caught me right at the base of my breastbone. I had a pretty dark bruise there for weeks. The fellow that hit us? He was injury free and mostly just mad that the wreck was making him even later to work. The policeman on the scene was pretty disgusted with him and told him so.

Unfortunately, the accident totaled our old truck and we were back on the motorcycles until another truck deal came along.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Three

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

When I started first grade, it was a bit of a shock for me. I already knew we were different, but when I started school, I was suddenly surrounded by kids that were my age physically, but seemed another age altogether in other ways. Imagine being in college one day and in first grade the next. They had never seen drug use or people drunk or nude. They didn't even know where babies came from! I quickly learned to keep what I knew to myself and talk and act like any other kid my age. I put what I had seen or heard or done in the past. But some things didn't disappear easily. I still had an advanced vocabulary and the top reading group was too easy for me. Still, I managed to make a few friends and learned how to fit in.

My house bridged the gap in my life. The outside looked like every other house in the neighborhood, with it's established lawn, sprawling oaks and white clapboard. The inside, on the other hand, reflected the other part of my life. From the moment you opened the door, it was like stepping into another realm and I learned as much there as I did in school.

The living room was painted matte black. Wild, abstract print black-and-white curtains, sewn by my mother, graced the windows. One wall was covered with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, made from black, painted boards and black fabric-covered cinder blocks, artfully arranged. The shelves held hardcover art books, an assortment of art magazines, a few paperback novels and some textbooks. In between, a variety of pottery and sculpture was on display. The floor was covered in an amazing rug, assembled by my mom and dad, from salvaged carpet scraps and several rolls of carpet tape. Several of my dad's large paintings decorated the walls. Comfortable floor cushions and a black-light completed the look. All their college friends that visited pronounced the room "groovy". From this room, I learned about creativity and making something out of nothing.

The next room was the dining room. It had the same curtains as the living room and paintings on the wall, but the centerpiece of the room was the table my dad made out of part of a chrome sofa base topped with a stained and varnished uncut door, both purchased for next-to-nothing. The table was just tall enough for an adult to fit his or her knees under it while sitting cross-legged on the floor. I have happy memories of this room filled with people, as it frequently was. Mom and Dad loved inviting people over and feeding them. At the end of each semester, they held a stone-soup style pizza party. Crust, sauce and three cheeses were provided and everyone who came brought their favorite pizza toppings. Super deluxe pizzas were made and consumed with gusto. The group could be a bunch of rowdy art majors or a mix of education majors, musicians and guys from the local motorcycle shop. In this room I learned about hospitality and how good food can bring diverse groups together.

As much as I loved those rooms, my favorite room of the house was my room. It was actually one of the more "normal" rooms in the house, but special in its own way. It was a bright sunny room at the back corner of the house. Two walls were covered with windows. The rug, another one made from carpet scraps, looked like a giant patchwork quilt. A toy box held my Tinkertoys and blocks, stuffed animals and dolls. My favorite part was the quilt on my bed. It was a quilt made by my grandmother and my mother. The blocks were pictures my mom, as a little girl, had colored. The pictures were then ironed onto muslin and assembled with blue gingham for the backing, binding and sashing. From this room, I learned about heritage and family. I also learned the importance of having a quiet place to think and dream and grow. I also found a love of quilts that continues to this day.

As a homeschooler, my home is, by design, both a place to live and a place to learn. But the truth is that every home is a place to learn something, whether good or bad. What did you learn in your home growing up?

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week Two

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood.

When I was about 3-1/2,  we moved into a downtown loft that covered most of the top floor of a large bank. While there are advantages to such a home, like ample floorspace for riding tike bikes and easy walking access to nearby German barbecue and strudel, a distinct disadvantage is the lack of a yard. My parents overcame this with frequent trips to the park, but Easter presented a problem. The park was too crowded so my folks came up with a creative solution.

In those days, stores sold marshmallow eggs that had a hard candy shell and came in bright cellophane wrappers. My dad took a bag full of them and hid them along the railroad tracks that ran near our home. He told me we were going for a walk and grabbed my plastic pail "in case we found anything". As soon as I spotted the first brightly colored candy egg amongst the railroad ties, I was off and running. Anyway, we lived there long enough for me to develop a love of German food and books. I received the first books I ever owned,  in the mail while we lived in that loft.

After a while, we moved to Austin so my parents could attend the University of Texas. I was enrolled in a nursery school caddy-corner from the white frame house we lived in. After a few months, my mom figured out that their "hot meals" consisted of pb&j and "educational activities" were playing outside and watching TV.  I was removed from the school and began going to classes with my parents, switching off to avoid classes where tests were being given. I sat quietly and looked at books or drew pictures. I was occasionally used as an example in my mom's early childhood education classes. One time I attended my dad's figure drawing class, complete with live nude model, and sat quietly on my stool, avoiding looking that direction. I was sitting so still, that one of the students who was finished, drew me on the side of her drawing. A few weeks later, when the model called in sick, I was pressed into service (fully clothed) after the student showed off her drawing and convinced the instructor I really could sit still that long.

At the university, I saw and experienced a lot of things most 4 and 5 year-olds aren't exposed to. I saw, in addition to nude models, Hare Krishna followers, drunkeness, drug use, lewd behavior and much more. This all seemed like perfectly normal behavior for the time and location. But it wasn't all bad. I also learned to read, learned how to make pottery on a potter's wheel, learned how to make an etching and print it, learned a lot about art history and appreciation and developed a strong love of learning. Over the years, my parents joked about me attending college instead of kindergarten, which was a rousing start to an unconventional childhood.

Stories from an Unconventional Childhood, Week One

Over at Mommy's Piggy Tales there's a cool project going on about family history. There is a challenge to blog for 15 weeks about our growing up years, with a different time period covered each week. Spitfire talked me into joining in because she's hoping for some wild stories from my childhood. So here goes.

I was born in the mid-sixties in a predominately German community in central Texas. My mom and dad were living in a small frame house close to the hospital and the eldest of her two younger brothers was staying with them for the summer.

Mom was getting close to time and anxious to have me. It was late July and the heat and humidity were really getting to her. She decided that something needed to be done, so she and her brother went for a walk in the evening two days before I was born and walked for hours.

Early the next morning my mom's water broke. My dad went and woke up mom's teenage brother. He said, "Her what did what?" He told him he would explain later because they needed to leave for the hospital. They didn't have a car, so they called a friend, who drove them there. My dad and uncle waited for hours while the labor progressed. Things were going pretty well, then the doctor intervened.

Her doctor decided that she had been in labor for too long and was tired so he gave her something to help her rest, which also slowed down her labor. The doctor told my dad is would be a while, so he sent my uncle back to the house. He eventually joined him so they could fix some food. He checked in periodically, but nothing seemed to be happening. In fact, the labor had been slowed down so much that my mom slept through the night, labored slowly the next morning and I wasn't born until the middle of the next afternoon.

After a couple of days in the hospital, we went home. Family from both sides began arriving from all over the state to see me. My dad, overwhelmed by being a new father combined  with the crush of relatives, decided that it was the perfect time to take my uncle fishing.