Continued from last Tuesday...
Little did I know my future husband's brother & sister-in-law lived right down the block where my family lived. Then the “black people” as my mother called them and “beaners” (I didn't agree to either term) as everyone called them started moving into the Dream Homes.
By this time, I had a little brother but he was still a baby. The Doctor had made a mistake cutting his forehead during his C-Section which really pissed big sister off!
I am having an epiphany writing this. I am reading a book that was given to me and came across a paragraph that pretty much described what I couldn't really put into words but knew it was there all along. It says the following:
“There were times, like today, when she realized that after a youth of skating along slippery surfaces, she had now settled into a domestic rut of dazzling sameness, each day forced to perform the same show with the same players, just each player one day older. She wondered why it had to be this way, why are we forced to choose one life. Why do we insist that there can only be one “us”, one life that makes us up in our entirety? Why can't we have more than one identity? And why do we have to destroy one life in order to create another? We claim to long for the “well-rounded,” the Renaissance man or woman inside all of us, yet our only variety is cosmetic. In reality, we do all we can to smother that spirit out, to make us conform, to define us as one thing and one thing only.”
Looking back I have had many lives in this same life. When I had my own children I used what had happened to try and protect them and it never seemed enough knowing what was really out there.
It's funny sometimes the bits and pieces that come back as memories so long ago. So I pretty much made it through Elementary School where the 6th-grade girls were all into wearing training bras and I wasn't allowed a bra.
Between the peer pressure of wearing a bra, saddle shoes and nylon ankle socks not to mention plain dresses that looked like I was in a Catholic School I got very creative at breaking and wrecking these things I hated. Which when I became a mother it was very important to me for my children to feel comfortable in clothes they liked not hated, which lucky for them I liked their clothing choices as well.
That went for hair also. My son started liking a shaved head , my daughter wanted short hair for a long time.I think my mother thought of me like a Barbie Doll only Barbie was way hipper than I was!
My absolute happiest memories are when I was 15 years old going to the pool every day if possible. My High School's pool was open all summer so that’s where I spent my summer days swimming, tanning, and acting oh so nonchalant around the boys. I would hop on my bike and spend the day carefree under the blue Californian sun and the crystal clear blue water of the swimming pool.
Junior High went a little bit better for I got better at telling lies and finally taking more control over who I was. Before you get the wrong ideas let me explain...
To be continued next Tuesday...
