I feel like lightening the mood after yesterday’s post, so I’m going to do a little bit of a memoir piece today. I’m going to write about the first birthday I can remember.
I think I was five, maybe six. We were living in my “grandmother’s” basement, and I am pretty sure I hadn’t started school. I only remember a couple of things about this birthday, but they’re super-vivid memories.
One is that I asked for a care bear cousin, so I can use that probably, to figure out how old I was. Hold on, let’s see. It was 1984. I was turning seven. At any rate, I really, really wanted this particular stuffed raccoon:
I was really into purple and really into animals, and this will sound super-pathetic, I suppose, but since I didn’t have many friends and we’d moved a few times in the previous years (plus I’d spent almost a year in a body cast), I had taken to thinking of my toys as my friends.
My mom found him for me, even though he was a tough find in Indiana back then. She also made me this amazing cake that looked like him, out of a racoon pan, with cool icing art details.
And my dog at the time got onto the table and ate the racoon’s foot before any of us could cut into the cake.
I mention this because it’s just a happy memory. There’s a sense of warmth and love and contentment. I had a rough childhood. That time was a million times worse for my mother, who had to try to take care of me while she dealt with all the things that happened to her.
I sometimes worry that even she thinks that most of my memories of that time are bad. But they aren’t. I’ve had a happy life. In fact the worst memories I have are from more recent days, when things were presumably better, struggling through graduate school and sitting in career limbo for years.
I loved my childhood. It was a magical time.
I’m glad that for all the stress and trauma, my first memory– the very first thing I really remember about my life– was my mother and I singing in the basement, listening to her 8-track tapes.
I miss her being able to do things. We grow up and we realize our parents are just people, but a part of me remembers when she was the only real super hero. I’m glad to do anything and everything I can for her, but sometimes I wish I had a way to make her life better than it is now. I hope she knows how good she made my life.