About Me

I  was born in Colorado in the 7th month of 1977.  My parents had had a whirlwind romance and married about a year before I was born.  My mother was a single mom of 24, my father a bachelor of 35.  They divorced when I was still very small.  My late father fought my mother for custody of me.  He won by threatening to take me out of the country so she'd never see me again.  His mother helped out while he was the custodial parent.

In March of 1981, when I was 3, I accompanied my father on a business trip to Australia.  These are some of my first memories.  Shortly after we arrived in Australia, we were checking in to a hotel.  My father and I were both jet-lagged.  For whatever reason, we had to walk past the hotel pool on our way to our room.  I stumbled in to the pool.  Someone in the pool fished me out safely and handed me back up to my father.

While my father was working in Australia, I stayed with a host family.  I missed my father a lot and didn't fit in with the children in the host family.  I remember them laughing at me.  Later, my grandmother and step-grandfather joined us for a bit.  We went and did some tourist things - I recall an open-sided red and green train, and seeing a kangaroo.  We also went to a playground with a very tall slide.  I climbed to the top of it, perhaps 20 feet (6 meters), but when I got there, I was too frightened to slide down.  I wanted my father to climb up and get me, but instead of him or even my step-grandfather, some other man did.

My final memory of Australia takes place in the Sydney airport.  My father and I were waiting for our flight, and I was watching planes take off, taxi, or land.  I began speaking very rapidly and excitedly.  I thought I traveled back from the future and there was something very important that I wanted to tell my father, but there were too many things to explain, and I didn't have the vocabulary to get them across.   It's like I was trying to describe the cell phone.  I remember saying, "and you could maybe watch movies on it."  Eventually, someone who I think was a flight attendant came over to us.  I can't recall what happened, exactly.

We moved around a lot when I was little, and I went to a number of schools early on.  Wooden Shoe elementary schools featured prominently, but there were some Christian schools in Colorado too.   One time in Colorado, some kids were bullying me and I ran away from them.  I got a bit lost and some woman found me and took me to her house.  She was making macaroni and cheese for me when my father found me.  Other times my grandmother watched me.  She was an operator for the telephone company and lived in a manufactured home park.  I helped her with the tomato plants when I went to visit, and she cooked and baked for me.  

My father moved to California, to the Watsonville area.  At first we lived in a camper in the parking lot of the tech company he was working at.  I began having a lot of asthma attacks, sometimes being rushed to the ER by my father so that I could breathe again.  Later, my father rented a house on some land in the area.  I began reading the Nancy Drew series around this time, and had my first pet, a cocker spaniel named Midnight.

When I was about 6, my mother remarried to her third husband.  After awhile I asked to move in with them so I could be with my older half-sister.  My parents had agreed when custody was settled, that I could go live with my mother later on if I chose to.  So, when I was 7, I moved into my mother and stepfather's household in California.  My stepfather spanked me, something I had barely experienced at all until that point.  He would also threaten to use his belt on me.  Usually my "misbehavior" consisted of something like, not eating my vegetables.  I began wetting the bed.  

My stepfather got the idea to buy some land in Montana.  We moved there shortly before I started 3rd grade.  At first, while waiting for our manufactured home to be delivered, we stayed with the neighbors in a spare manufactured home they had on their property.  It had bullet holes in the door; a man had murdered his wife there, I was told.  The neighbor had a pig; I named it; it ended up as bacon.  I don't recall being popular, but I liked my classes and teachers.  My sister was, as usual, more popular; she made friends easily.  She missed her California friends, New Wave music, and being able to see a movie less than a month after its release (it was the 80's and a rural area; the movie theater didn't get new releases).  But she learned to drive in tough conditions and had her sweet 16th birthday that year.

We didn't stay, though.  My mother moved us back to California.  My stepfather was with us for just a bit longer before they split up.  My mom did something a lot of people suggest for those who have promising offspring.  She moved us to the best school district she could barely afford to live in, in Silicon Valley.   I liked school there a lot and was quickly added to the gifted program in that elementary school.  But within a few months I was in a fight with an older student - she went on to become a Yale-educated physician.  I had tried to avoid the fight (caused by my wearing a pink sweatshirt like her clique did) by staying late in the school library, but it was only open for a bit after class.  Then I had to walk home that way anyway, so the fight happened.

I met my first California best friend right before starting 5th grade; she was in 6th.  We remained close until high school, when she moved to Oregon with her family.  We used to ride our bikes all over the place - both were made by a reformed biker, a really nice guy with the nickname Teddy Bear, who genuinely was not a creeper at all, but someone who was helping kids whose families might not have been able to afford bikes.  He fixed them up in his garage and let me choose the paint colors for mine - pink and purple.  My mother was suspicious of him at first, and wouldn't let me accept the offer of a bike.  After talking to him and to the neighbors, she agreed.

The next year, when I was 11, my best friend and I both started middle school.  (Although she was a year ahead, entering 7th grade, it was the first year they had 6th graders in that middle school.  They needed more elementary school classrooms to hold the Millennial generation that was just a few years behind me.)  6th graders who came from several different elementary schools came together for the first time, and I had to make new friends again.  I had my first introduction to the usual Mean Girl routine that year.  While at a lunch table, one friend stepped away from the table for a bit.  Another girl began badmouthing her while she was gone.  In my naivete, I told the first girl what had been said about her when she returned.  I had no idea until I did so, that this would be a bad idea.  I was just being honest and pointing out an injustice.  It didn't make me popular.  I didn't learn much from this - I still tell it like it is.

To be continued...

Coming soon!