My Life Story, Part 1- Redwater

 Hi! After talking to some people at work, I have been thinking about this life I've had the privilege to lead, and I think I'm going to tell my story. My whole story. It's weird, and it's long, and hopefully it will be entertaining enough that somebody might be like "hey, I don't regret the time I spent reading this!"

As a preface, I want to note that my mother was a bit more open with me than many parents are with their children, so I learned details that I probably didn't need to know, at least I didn't need to know them as early as I did. I was born on March 18, 1976 at Wadley Hospital in Texarkana, Texas. My mother never married my father, though I understand they were engaged for a while. He had a daughter when they met, he had recently divorced. According to my mother, he was an alcoholic but not a bad man. He loved his daughter and he loved his ex wife. He and my mother dated, I don't know how long, but they broke up and he remarried his ex wife. I am not sure, but I've always believed they broke up just before my mother found out I was on the way.  My mother often told me the circumstances of my conception. She had worked that day and they were not supposed to see each other, she was tired and went to bed. Apparently, at some point in the night, he came over and woke her, she said she woke up in the middle of intercourse, and her first thought was that they should not be doing this, it's the wrong time, and then she tried to imagine what their child would look like. The only thing she could think of was Alfred E. Neuman from Mad Magazine. You know, this is the first time I have realized that I am technically the product of rape. 

Now, my mother truly loved my father. She told me often that he was really her "one true love". But, he felt the same way about his ex wife. When she took him back, they remarried and she promptly became pregnant with my younger half sister; younger than me by three weeks. I think my mother has told me stories of my father meeting me, but I really don't know if that is true or if it is something I made up to make me feel like he ever saw me. I know that he worked at Red River Army Depot with my grandmother, that is how he was introduced to my mother. My grandmother decided that he would be a good match for her and introduced them. My mother said she wasn't immediately attracted to him. She said their first date she was stood up, but found out it was because he had been in a car accident, so she gave him a second chance. 

I know that I had met my grandparents, my mother told me that my grandfather enjoyed when I came over. He passed away in 1977. My father died in an accident at work on February 2, 1978. He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Texarkana, Texas. 

We lived off and on with my grandma, who was also an alcoholic and abusive. She was in and out of abusive relationships, and when she was between boyfriends she would live with us, or when things went wrong in places, my mother would move in with her. I know at one point my mother and grandma fought and my grandma kicked my mother out of the house, but told her she couldn't keep me. I was a pawn in their relationship. I was always close to my grandma. 

In the process of moving around, one of the places we lived  was a trailer in a very bad neighborhood. My mother said she had gone to a Tupperware party one night. She brought me into the house and set her purse on the porch. She went back out to get the items she had bought and when she came back, her purse had been stolen. I was safe. In another place we lived, there was an elderly woman who lived a few houses down. My mother said that I would go into the bathroom, strip off all my clothes, and leave to go see "Miss Fanny". 

In September, 1978, my younger sister, AJ, was born. I will not use the full names in this blog. She was a sickly child, having breathing problems from birth. My mother fought with doctors for a diagnosis, she knew the symptoms of asthma, but doctors insisted a child cannot be born with asthma, and that it was just bronchitis, or a cold, or anything else. They prescribed medication that would exacerbate her symptoms. At 2 years old, my baby sister barely weighed 12 lbs. Just before Halloween in 1980, she had a severe asthma attack. My mother called an ambulance, but we lived out in the middle of nowhere in Redwater, Texas. The ambulance passed our house, so she ran out to go up the driveway to flag them down. I was left to watch over my sister, and one of my very first memories is kneeling beside the couch, my sister a strange shade of blue, as my mother screamed at the top of her lungs from the front door. It's just a picture in my head, but it's been reinforced by the  many tellings of the story by my mother. They took my sister in the ambulance, I stayed with a neighbor, and my mother rode to the hospital. My sister was not breathing, they were able to resuscitate her but she went 5 minutes without breathing. The doctors said they didn't know if there would be lasting brain damage or to what extent. As a toddler, my sister was precocious and observant, to the point that my mother said she had psychic abilities. She seemed to know things before they happened. After her asthma attack, she lost that. She was still precocious, but that extra spark was gone, according to my mother. 

My sister was hospitalized through Halloween. My mother asked the neighbor to come to our house and get my costume, but they didn't. I was taken to my Aunt and Uncle's house (my mother's brother) and spent Halloween with them and their two daughters, my cousins. As I didn't have a costume, they made me a typical ghost costume. Unfortunately, the sheet didn't fit smoothly over my head and, apparently, made a bit of a point. One of my mother's hilarious stories was how the Black families along our trick or treat route were taken aback and had to ask "Are you a ghost?", while my innocent 4 year old self would smile shyly, nod, and hold out my pillow case. 

Because of her health issues, AJ got more of my mother's affection and attention. I had my grandma, and it worked for me. 

My mother said I taught myself the alphabet. We had a set of World Book Encyclopedias, I think they were 1972. My cousins learned the alphabet, and I always looked up to them, so I decided I would learn my ABC's. I studied the encyclopedias and learned the alphabet. We lived in a house off the highway between Redwater and Texarkana, Texas. My mother didn't work and we didn't have a car. She got into raising rabbits, and there were times when that was the only thing we had to eat. She usually had a friend come out and butcher them in exchange for meat, but at one point her friend was away, the kits had reached butcher age, and she had to do it herself. She said after the first one, she felt like she was going to throw up. But, as with most things, she got used to it and it became part of our life. One of her stories was how a pair of women from a church had come to invite us to service, and one of them asked sweet, innocent 3 year old me, "You have bunny rabbits? What do you do with your bunny rabbits?"

With the glee that only a 3 year old can muster, I responded "We get em, we hit em over the head, we skin em, we cut em up, and then we eat em!" Mother said we never heard from that church again. But, there were many times people from various churches would come to visit. I haven't spent any time thinking about it, but I think my mother might have been seeking some kind of path. We weren't super religious, we would go to Easter service, and later we would go to some Christmas services. But we never went regularly. 

In the winter, things would be hard. My mother usually had somebody take her to town to get groceries. The closest store was a small gas station type place that was probably 5 miles up the highway. I know, at least one time, my mother had to leave me and my sister at home while she walked to the store. I think it was one of these times, she came home and I had done something wrong. She told me to sit in the chair and she would deal with me later. She forgot. I was so frightened, I waited in the chair for hours, before she saw me and remembered that she told me to sit there. One night, I got into her purse and emptied a bottle of perfume, her favorite. It was called "Charlie". She would remind me of things like this regularly, reminding me of things that I broke, or wasted, it was always things. It felt like the things mattered more than me. She had a set of hands that were for ring keeping, she called them her lady hands, and apparently I broke one of those as well. 

I started school at Redwater Elementary. I don't remember any of my teachers names from there, but apparently I was very close to my kindergarten teacher. The only memories of that school that I have are making snakes with play doh and the construction paper shoes that I learned to tie my shoes. Oh and the teacher made a recipe book from student recipes in first grade, I told how to make scrambled eggs. 

From that house, I remember there was a hole in the bathroom floor. I remember there were shelves by the kitchen sink. I remember the car port. I remember having a black and white stick horse that my granddaddy's wife made, I named him Cochise after Little Joe's horse in Bonanza. My uncle would visit and one time he cleaned up the yard and put all the leaves and sticks and debris in the ditch to burn. He burned my stick horse. When my mother asked him why, he said "It was outside". They got into fights frequently, she told me how she actually hit him with my baby bottle at one point, he tried to hit her while she was holding me. I remember one of his girlfriends, we went to her family's house and they had a trampoline. That was probably the first time I ever jumped on a trampoline. 

At one point, a neighbor's dog came over and my mother said she heard me cry, she came out and the Doberman Pinscher was running away and I had scratches on my head from where he had bitten me. He didn't bite hard, but Mother said after she told some friends he disappeared. We had a German Shepherd named Candy who delivered a litter of puppies under my bed. And I had an orange cat named Yankee Doodle. When we moved, we never found him and left him behind. The days before we moved, my cousin stayed with us, she was the same age as me and gave us head lice. We moved from that house in 1982.