age 4

all things considered, i had a really good childhood.

mom stayed at home with my brother and i until i was in 5th grade and she really was a great mom for those years. she loves children and she really did (does) love my brother and i so much. she was always thinking of fun things for us to do. there were many afternoons where she would take the big blanket off her and my dad's bed, throw it over the kitchen table, and my brother would i would crawl under the table into our "fort" and listen to books on cassette and eat big bowls of fresh green grapes and laugh at absolutely everything and nothing.

about once a week, my mom would put on one of her favorite records as loudly as possible and take my brother and i into the laundry room for what she called a "crazy morning." we would spin around in circles until we couldn't stand up and my mom would sing along with the music until we all fell on the floor in a cackling heap. i think it was my mother's way of telling us, "today is going to be a fun day." and it almost always was. she would always make our eggs just the way we liked them (scrambled with cheese, of course), she never let us get bored, she encouraged us to learn things and read books and laugh and sing and just be kids. my mother has changed a lot over the years and isn't the woman she was when we lived in that little brown brick house in birmingham, but during the years that really mattered the most, she was wonderful and i am so grateful to her for giving me such a good start and helping me appreciate little things like a good baked potato or a really shiny penney. my mom would look at a cardboard tube from an empty roll of paper towels and instead of thinking "garbage" she would think "kaleidoscope," give me some crayons, a rubber band, and some waxed paper and in a few minutes, it really would, somehow, be a kaleidoscope.

we had a lot of tea parties. adam and i would dress up in a combination of our "church clothes" and our parents' cast-off hand-me-downs, and my mom would serve us kool-aid or apple juice out of my pink plastic teapot and use cookie cutters to make us finger sandwiches shaped like butterflies and dinosaurs. a few of these tea parties have been captured on film. in a video from one particular tea party, i got up from my chair, clomping through the kitchen in my mother's high heels that barely stayed on my little feet, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out an individually-wrapped slice of cheese. i brought it back to the table, unwrapped it, and ate it along with my dinner mints and mixed nuts. the best part of this scene on the video is that my mom is laughing hysterically the entire time and i am oblivious as to why chowing on a kraft single at a tea party could possibly be funny to anyone. not too long after this tea party, we had a really fancy one with our friend jessica, the daughter of one of my mother's friends, linda. we really dressed up this time. i wore a blue striped dress and white tights and a floppy straw hat and a hot pink feather boa that i pulled out of my big bag of dress-up clothes. adam wore our mom's bright red blazer over his superman pajamas and his black oxford shoes. jessica, on the other hand, came wearing her genuinely nice easter dress, a white fake fur stole, and bright pink lipstick. best of all, she spoke in a really bad english accent the whole day, which amazed me. my mom got out the good china dishes and a pretty white table cloth and served us at the dining room table. she got little white petit fours with tiny piny roses on top from a nearby bakery and told us to call her madam since she would be serving us for the afternoon. i remember feeling like this was all too much, that my mom wasn't "madam," she was mommy, and that i'd much rather be eating a single slice of cheese and apple juice than petit fours and actual tea. i suppose i've never really been cut out for things like fancy teacups on decliate saucers and food that's meant to be eaten in one bite. while jessica spoke in her put-on accent, demanding, "madam, i will have some more tea now," i was spilling mine down the front of my dress. at one point, i leaned forward to reach for another mint and slipped off the high-backed dining chair, falling to the fluffy beige carpet with my hot pink boa trailing behind me.

growing up, i spent a lot more time with my mother than with my father. aside from the fact that my dad was at work all day when my mom stayed home, he traveled a lot for work, as well. on top of that, he had a really bad temper and i was, frankly, sort of afraid of him. my mother had taught me from the beginning that if you're upset about something, there is no reason to raise your voice; just state, calmly, what you are feeling and try to come to a resolution. my dad, on the other hand, was a shouter. he would get angry at the drop of a hat and every word would come out in this booming yell that immediately brought tears to my eyes. i learned really quickly that i do not like being shouted at, ever. so i spent a lot of time avoiding my dad and playing quietly in my bedroom by myself. when i was about 4 years old, i had a little yellow plastic piggy bank with a black rubber stopper in the bottom. i kept a handful of loose change that i'd found lying around inside the bank and every now and then i would pull out the rubber stopper, pour the contents out on the carpet, and count how much i had. i vividly remember one sunday before church i was counting my coins. i was all dressed and ready for church and it was almost time to leave and i was just passing the time while i waited for the rest of my family to be ready to go. my dad came storming down the hallway, saw my pennies strewn out on the carpet and my church clothes getting wrinkled. he jerked me up by my scrawny little arm, whacked me far too hard on the rear end, picked up my pennies and put them in his pocket, and yelled at me to never make a mess like that again. i have never been so terrified.

that same year, my half-sister lisa left. she and my dad had always had a difficult relationship, but i have never really known or understood why. even as a little kid, though, i could tell that she was sad about something. she just always had this really vacant look in her eyes and it seemed like she would cry at any moment. but i loved her so much. our birthdays were just a couple of weeks apart, so for the first few years of my life, a birthday, to me, meant a big cake with both of our names written on it in swirly yellow icing and birthday cards with phrases like "the best little sister" written in her messy cursive. i remember the last time i saw her. we were in the parking lot outside of the department store where she worked. she kneeled down and gave me a hug. she had this really big 80's hairdo with enormous, hair-sprayed bangs and it smelled clean, like shampoo and hair gel. and she wore this really sweet-smelling perfume that would linger on my clothes after she'd been around. she looked me in the eye and i saw that she was crying but i didn't know why and i didn't know what to say. she told me goodbye and that she loved me. she got in her car and my mom and i got back in ours and i didn't see her again after that. nobody would ever give me any explanation as to where she went and why she was gone and i still don't really know what happened. all i know is that i spent the next 18 years of my life desperately trying to contact her and she rejected me so harshly. and i cry, still, every time i think about how much it hurt to see the words "return to sender" written in that same messy cursive on the outside of the purple birthday card envelopes i'd painstakingly addressed to her with my favorite sparkly pencil. i know that nobody ever told me why she left because i probably wouldn't have understood. but, no matter what, i will never believe that she had a good reason to, not only ignore me, but to outright reject 4-year-old me. i am the most forgiving person that i know, but i don't think that i will ever be capable of forgiving her.