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Posts tagged memories
I was such a bitch back then
Jul 20th
A few years ago I corresponded with my first real boyfriend. I was married, he was married, we caught up a bit with emails and let it sputter out. Recently we friended each other on Facebook and it turns out I’m no longer married and he’s going through his divorce. Which doesn’t really mean anything in the long run…
But it has brought back some memories. Not that I ever forgot about him. He lived on the corner where I caught the bus to school, and many was the time I never made it into school. We were together for 18 months and most of that time was spent in bed. Great experimenter, ready to try anything. You name it and we probably did it once or twice. I was pretty fast and loose before we got together but this was really good.
But my parents divorced, Mom dumped me with strangers for the summer and I wasn’t allowed to use the phone, and then Mom and I had moved into town, she hated him, life moved on and I broke it off. There was some fairly serious psycho shit from him including a bit of stalkerish stuff and his motorcycle through our picture window and then he finally wandered off.
Hey, we were young. I was 15-16 and he wasn’t much older.
But I remember thinking about my choices at that time. I wanted out of my small town, out of Michigan altogether. Everywhere I looked seemed like a trap of rednecks, beer bellies, babies, and being a factory rat. EVERYONE worked at a factory. Mom worked at Ford putting windshields into Granadas, Dad hauled cars out of GM, all my friends’ parents worked at some auto-related plant or another. I knew I didn’t want that.
I took computer classes in school back when computers took up entire rooms. We never mentioned college in our family but the military was talked about a lot. Most of my older cousins were either Navy or Air Force. And I knew R, who had a disabled father and no mother around, would be trapped in that town for a long time. That’s ultimately why I broke up with him. He wasn’t gonna get me out.
There was another fella between R and Buck. K was also older (I never hooked up with a guy my own age) but he fucking painted designs on cars for a living. Another variation on the auto-worker mentality. When he started talking about buying a house there I was done with him. He ended up marrying a girl from my graduating class and now owns a wheel store in Tucson. Anyway, I wanted OUT.
Turns out Buck wasn’t a lot of help in that department either. I knew he’d lived in AZ for a couple of years and had only recently come back to his family. I thought it meant he would be more apt to move us away. Nope. He settled into factory life so I joined the Air Force right after my graduation. I broke it off with him after basic training when he didn’t want to leave Michigan. Turns out a few months later he had a rethinking and moved in with me in Virginia and the rest is history.
But the moral of the story is I got MYSELF out. Not that there was anything particularly wrong with any of these guys, but that I had an agenda. I don’t think I was that coldly determined at the time, but I see it clearly now. Of the three R was probably the best match for me, but I shed the poor guy and never gave him the chance. I settled in with Buck because he chose to follow me when I left. I married him because I wanted kids and that’s what you were supposed to do. K had no hard feelings about our breakup, even got together with his buddies to pay for our wedding night hotel. But because of the aftermath of the breakup with R, I don’t think I could have given him the chance until… now.
We’re all grown up now. Let’s see what happens.
What is a memory?
Jun 13th
Sometimes what I remember about being a small child and what family/people have told me over time all runs together.
We lived in a house in Flint, Michigan until I was six. I remember playing in our basement a lot when I was a kid. Dressing Barbie under the bar, some film strip machine under the pool table, and playing three records over and over and singing along. Steve Lawrence: Go Away Little Girl, Nancy Sinatra: These Boots Were Made for Walking and I can’t remember what the third one was.
I’ve been told that after my father came home and found out She’d used her tranquilizers on me She started locking me in the basement instead. I remember the kitchen sink windowsill in the corner being stocked with pill bottles.
Even smaller I remember my bedroom door was cut in half and I was on the inside. I remember one day emptying my toy box and pushing it over to the door so I could stand on it and climb over. I remember the triumphant feeling of accomplishment, but I don’t remember anything after. Did I actually get out? I have a vivid memory of the color and smell of that toy box. Was I always shut in my room or was that a single memory?
My father tells me that he put up the chain-link fence in our backyard to keep me in, but I’d already learned to climb over it before he finished the job. Did I just love to climb or did I feel I needed to escape from something?
I do remember sometimes playing with a neighbor girl. I remember the old black lady up the street that used to give kids popsicles and pennies to pull weeds in her flower garden. I remember watching out the front window as my older sister went door-to-door in the snow to deliver Girl Scout cookies, but I have no other specific memory of my sister until I was much older. She’s five years older than me so I’m not surprised we didn’t spend time together.
Wait, I do have one more memory of her. One night we were sleeping together (it must have been some holiday and maybe we had guests – I don’t think we shared a bed regularly) and she’d snuck a piece of hard candy to bed. I remember the crinkle of the wrapper and her smirk that she had one and I didn’t. Then she spitefully clicked the candy around on her teeth so I could hear it. Annnnd then she choked on it. Seriously choked. I remember a split second of thinking she deserved it before I chickened out and yelled for my Dad. I don’t remember what happened after that, but she’s still around to hate me so she lived through it.
I remember freaking out late one night fter catching a glimpse of my dad as he walked naked to the bathroom.
I remember the layout of that house, I even remember the address: 1222 W. Coldwater Rd. I have a vague memory of kindergarten and walking to and from school.
The rest is stuff people have told me and of old black and white home movies of holidays.
How much do you remember of life before you started school?
| Originally published at Spellwight. |
