Your Earliest Memory

 

Your Earliest Memory?

• by Dixie Dawn Miller Goode on May 19, 2022

I have scattered childhood memories, a dog, an airedale, that we lived 
next to in Cheyenne that “guarded me from my parents in our front yard, 
until the owner came home. We moved from there when I was two. 
I remember going to the house I mainly grew up in in Cody, when 
it wasn’t our house yet, and playing with a boy and girl who lived there, 
and I remember a blue plastic pool filled with stuffed animals in the red 
house we rented in between Cheyenne and home owning in Cody. 
But those are brief and tied only to places or times I can use to anchor
 when the memory is from.
Do you ever remember, remembering something and yet, 
no longer remember the actual event?
 When I was very young, my grandfather’s brother, Clarence,
 was grilling chicken on a backyard BBQ grill and we smelled it 
as we arrived, and instead of going through the house as we usually did, 
I ran around to the side gate and entered the backyard 
with wet laundry billowing on the clothes line, and he turned
 from the Smokey grill and shouted, “it’s the birthday girl!”
Years later, watching my moms silent, black and white 8mm home movies,
 “You won’t remember my Uncle Clarence, because he died when you 
were too young.”
 I argued with her, describing all those details I just mentioned, while her
 little movie only showed him bringing a platter of chicken over
 to the table. But a couple years after that, I remembered watching
 the movie, and the words I had used to tell her about that early birthday, 
but I no longer actually remembered that backyard picnic,
 or that strong man who I knew was happy to see me.
Now my only memories of him are of the fast moving cancer. 
I remember riding along when Mom picked him up and drove him to Dr. appointments. I remember when he was too weak to shift his legs and he asked my Dad to cross his legs for him because he’d been in the same position too long and was hurting.

Thinking back, from this aged place of 58, to that early, probably about age three, birthday, and the people who always have surrounded me each year, with love and fun times and celebrating my birth. I realize that I’ve been so blessed. My family members here today, and those back then are all different people, but that thread of family that connects us, is a thread of love generations long.

“What Was Your Mom Like When,. . .?”

 

I’ve never known anyone who was so compartmentalized in my life, as my Mom. When I think of her, it is with intense love, and great regret. I miss her, but I always felt conflicted. We were best at getting along once we lived a thousand miles apart. She was a loving person who had trouble believing she was worth loving and I wish I had understood her more when I was younger. She changed a lot, so that when I remember my Mom, who was 24 when I was born, I remember a different woman than my brother, who was adopted only 4 1/2 years later, remembers. My youngest brother, born when my first brother was 8 and I was 12, had a different mom altogether, even though to the world we all had Priscilla June Miller as our mother. 

When I was a child, Mom was loving, demanding, scary, and unpredictable. She was Eleanor Rigby from the Beatles song, “wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.”

I understood that line as soon as I heard the song, instantly remembering the screaming woman who had out “the board” to spank me, dropping it in the potato bin when the doorbell rang, the furious scowl transformed into a delighted, welcoming smile as she smoothly pulled open the inner door, unlatched the screen door and beamed, “come in, come in.” to the Avon lady or neighbor who had just “popped in for a visit.”

She might drag me from bed in the middle of the night to beat me with every hanger I had left on the floor of my closet, or to hug me and cry that I had never loved her. But she always smoothed on some lipstick, pulled a precurled wig over her hair, donned a dress with a big twirly skirt and high heels before taking me to school or church. She always kissed me goodbye at the door or before letting me out of the car. 

I didn’t understand as a child, the damage done to her soul by being the odd one out in school. I heard the stories of having to wear two pink Terry cloth towels her mom had sewn together into a “dress” and having to wear thick woolen stockings and a crown of long braids wrapped around her head when the popular girls wore Bobby socks and saddle shoes and a high, short pony tail dancing with every movement. I saw her make excuses to avoid meeting my friends moms, and missed the “they won’t like me” behind the excuses. I knew that her friends were mostly poorer, needier, happy to have her bring groceries and canned food when we came to visit. I missed the belief that no one would like her if they didn’t need something from her. She couldn’t trust friendship without strings attached. 

Later, through my Dad’s devotion and my brother’s needing an advocate, and being there for my Dad during a drawn out cancer battle, she began to see her own worth, but by then I had moved away, and then dementia set in and I was missing her, even if I was in the room with her, and again, I didn’t really understand how her stiffening body betrayed her, and made her need support, until she was gone and I found her in my own aches and fears. Now sometimes I cry or scream for my mama - missing the woman I never really convinced that I loved her and wishing there could be another opportunity to tell her she was enough for me.

Autobiographical Challenge: Day 7 & 8

My Great Grandma, Emma was born in 1875 and died when I was 10 in 1973. She has confused me a bit as she has a lot of relatives on Pine Ridge Reservation, and several of them came to her funeral, but that was the only time I met them. I have seen her family names on a family tree, but they are only names to me and I have no idea of any relatives connected from her family before her generation, only her sons and their children were a part of my life. She married a stage driver in Hot Springs, South Dakota when she was 17 and her father disowned her and she never got to go back to see her mother until her Father died and she herself was in her 50's.  My Mom's Dad was one of her 4 sons, and my Mom is the young girl in the top picture, with an aunt and Great-Grandma Emma.

The middle row is the wedding picture of Emma Lafferty and Frank Slack and a picture from the middle of her life and one about 90

in the bottom row, she is the grainy young mother holding her son, Bill, Then in the middle is a picture of her holding me, and the bottom right she was riding with my grandpa Lawrence and a friend named Bill Anderson, at the Cody, Wyoming 4th of July Parade

She was a feisty woman who drove the stage, danced with Buffalo Bill, (she told me he was so drunk that he fell into the punch bowl) She survived her battle torn younger years which included Custer's Last Stand and the massacre at Wounded Knee and married a white man who gave her a life of adventure and four sons. They ended up on a ranch outside Cody Wyoming for awhile and tun on the banks of the Greybull River in Meeteetse, Wyoming.

She was tiny and I always called her "Little Grandma" but she was strong and determined and fled with love for her great-grandkids.  I remember her singing School Days, School Days" and slipping me peppermint stick candies in the log cabin her sons built - then sleeping in a twin bed in my room when that cabin burned down.

I remember when she died, I was her size and I got a bag of sweaters and long nightgowns and when I wore them they felt like a hug, but also it felt so wrong that this simple cloth should still be around when she was not.

See this girl, awkward yes, different than most of my classmates, true, but not as ugly and stupid and obviously bad as I believed at the time.

True bullying makes you believe everyone else sees the reason you were targeted. It makes you believe there is no escape, that everyone is on the side of those tormenting you, and that those who you could ask for help won't be able to do nothing.  It isolates you and makes you feel like asking for help will only increase the abuse that you must somehow deserve.

Not everyone who bullies you is the primary instigator.  Some will just be almost as weak as you and be afraid that if they speak up the attack will turn on them. It is hard for anyone to willingly volunteer for that kind of abuse and it takes courage and the ability to see that bullies are afraid of groups. There is strength in numbers if other people can join together, which is precisely what the bully wants to avoid.

In grade school I started first grade not really knowing how to relate to other kids. I had a lot of grandparents, great-grandparents, great-Aunts and Uncles, but no siblings until just before I started school. I was severely pigeon-toed and the Dr. ordered dance classes but I failed drastically at dancing when I could barely walk. I was freckled and loud and tried to argue with the teacher who was teaching us to spell wrong, when I had started school already knowing how to read.  The class was using a phonetic program that taught that school was spelled "Skwl" and I knew better.  Cat was not Kat no matter what the teacher said. Not a good candidate for ITA learning!

In grade school, I had a battle every day. My things were stolen and destroyed or passed around from child to child with great drama and screams of "Dixie Fleas! Pass it on!"  They pretended to spray my chair with disinfectant before anyone else would sit there.  I came to believe I really did stink.  I started not doing homework just so I could be kept after school so the kids who threatened to beat me up as I walked home would get bored and be gone.

When I was chased to my house and tried to hide between the screen door and the locked inner door as 4 older girls threatened to kill me, my mom drove up. In sweet voices they told her that "we don't know what is wrong. We came by and she was just crying."  Mom thanked them for trying to help and I claimed I had just had a horrible head-ache.

Once I went to Jr. high it got better, and I had some friends from the other grade schools, but I still had kids who stole my PE clothes or cornered me and smeared raw eggs in my hair and poured cans of soda on me.  Pretty girls would catch my eye and I would stare back, wondering what they knew that made them accepted, that I was missing, then they would snarl at me to stop staring.

I never quite got it right. Once the High School held an anti-bullying assembly with a movie about a boy who tried so hard to be invisible that he stepped off the bus and died of a heart-attack and when the school tried to find his friends, none of his classmates knew who he was.  More kids told me "Hello" after that assembly than ever before but it only lasted a day.  I too was learning to hide, I carried a book and sketch pad and I hid behind them all the time.  I ate lunch in the art room and went straight home after school. I tried to be aloof so no-one would be able to tease me that no-one wanted to be my friend.  

It made me a bad friend to the people who really were trying, because I was afraid it was a trap and then they would laugh, and I was convinced I really didn't deserve a friend anyway.

How did I learn to move on?

First I had to move on.  I could never have become the loving friend and Mom and wife and teacher and writer that I am now, had I stayed in that town.  When I went away, I literally kept my head down and made no eye contact, and could not believe those other kids on the college campus were talking to me when they said "Hi"  It took a lot of them to make me understand that there wasn't some scarlet letter branding me an outcast. Then it took one very confident and loving friend to keep holding on even when I pushed away, and another, and the man who loved me and married me, and kept insisting I was a treasure.  It took seeing my worth in a lot of other peoples eyes before I could see it in the mirror.

It took leaving home and creating my own home. It took living overseas in China for awhile and being in the minority and still making friends

So then I became a teacher of special ed. children and a Mom of loving men, and a writer of novels that are anti-bullying pro-loving and I have made a conscious choice to add to the love in this world

So now school is starting again, and kids will be bullied again. What can we all do?  Love each other, hold a hand, offer a smile and a validation of worth, refuse to be silent audiences any longer. Ask for and offer help.

There is more good than bad people in the world.  That is why the bad ones are the news and the good ones are the norm.

Autobiographical Challenge: Day 5 and 6

When I was a child I lived in the desert, the high mountain desert of Wyoming, and spent summers at 10,000 feet in snow and tundra. But somehow, I wanted to grow up and be a dolphin. At first I went through a phase of being very angry that my parents had not named me flipper, then when I talked the two of them, who were both so afraid of water that they held on to the towel rack all the way through their bath, into signing me up for swim lessons, I spent hours swimming underwater, pretending to be the mermaid I knew I would grow up to be. And that was years before Disney showed me there could be redheaded mermaids. Ariel came to the big screen the year I started teaching and I took my first class to the theater to see her.

From there I decided that what I needed to become was a dolphin trainer, working with my beloved animals at Marine Land or sea World.  I know that there has been a lot of negativity toward the idea of the marine mammals being trained and kept captive. I am sure that some of those complaints are justified but I firmly believe that humans only save what they care about, and only care about what they know. I don’t think there would be people making films like Blackfish, or Free Willie, or doing things to try to ban the slaughter in the wild of those incredible creatures, if there had not been a place where children like I was, could press out hands to the glass and see the dolphin making eye contact or see the killer whale begging us to play.

So we have learned, and need to change as we grow, but that does not mean we could have ever gotten to the point of caring without the zoos and Aquariums which turned the animals real in the minds of those of us who care, not just about animals in general but about the death of one specific Orca named Keiko and the happiness of a sealion named Red and the friendship of Flipper.

No, I didn't grow up to be a dolphin or a Mermaid or even a dolphin trainer, but I teach children every bit as funny as Flipper and I live by the Sea, and more than once I stood eye to eye with Keiko and shared a glimpse of similar souls

this picture, for my brothers birthday back on August 27 Is the one that made me decide to spend this month with old stories and old family pictures.

My parents were sure that they could never conceive another child after I was born, and then one day asked me what I thought of the idea of a baby in the family. I thought having a little sister would be wonderful and told them so. I hadn't known that the reason I had been having a babysitter once a week was because they were attending pre adopt meetings. At that time adoptions were very secretive things and babies were placed far from their family of birth. So we had to drive nine hours to pick up the six month old baby boy. My brother was adopted when he was 6 months old and I was almost 5. I remember driving clear across the state with my parents to pick up my new brother. Actually I was convinced it would be a girl, and when the social worker heard me ask where the girl was, she pulled out his picture and showed me, and said, "I guess we have to find another home for this boy then" and I remember screaming at her as I stared at the photo, "Don't you dare give my brother away."

 I gave up the idea of a sister as soon as I saw his picture and fell in love.

The worst part for me was that my Dad’s big sister came to see the baby and decided that a new baby and my long hair were too much work for my mom, and gave me a pixie cut. I hated it and soon started school where I became known as Pixie-Dixie but wasn't allowed to grow out my hair for a few years.

I did love having a baby brother. But we hadn't had him long before he ended up in the hospital with pneumonia and children were not allowed in as visitors. I wasn't happy that they took my baby away, and even angrier when mom bought him a stuffed panda. I cried and begged and got her to give it to me. So then she bought another, this one in powder blue and pink to take to him in the hospital. My panda still gives me a twinge of guilt - even knowing that sibling rivalry is common and knowing that little girl was missing her brother and being the center of her parents attention - I still cringe about trying to steal the toy from a sick baby.

When we first brought him home, he became hysterical at night. The social worker only told us it was because he had been used to sleeping in a crib with two other babies. I was never sure if that meant he had been a triplet or merely that there were a lit of babies in his pre adopt foster home

Now 46 years later, and the mom of an adopted boy myself - I can say adoption is a wonderful way to build a family.

Thankful For Family This November

Mom and Dad

My Mom, Her Aunt and Grandmother in Wyoming

Dad & I

So all over facebook there are people posting about the things that they are Thankful for, at least one a day for the month of November.  I did that last year but a lot of it just came down to one thing.

My husband's parents at their wedding

 And it wasn't a thing. What I kept writing about in my list was the people who are my family and friends.

When I was a child, Family was My Mom and Dad and I, living a long way from any other relatives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  I thought family was a rock solid, unchanging concept.

Great Grandma Emma Lafferty Slack and I

Then when I was only a couple years old, we moved diagonally across the state from the South East corner to the North West. Back to the part of Wyoming where my Mom's family had long roots.  Suddenly I had Grandparents and great Grandparents and Aunts and Great Aunts and cousins by the dozens and I was happy with the change.  Adding more family was great.

And we added more.  When I was nearly 5 we adopted my baby brother, and when I was 12 another brother was born and more cousins came along and family was a growing, entity.  A wonderful circle of loving security.  I am grateful for those years.

Of course they couldn't last.  Sooner or later everyone learns that family isn't permanently growing, sometimes it is losing members too.

My cousins divorced, My great Grandmas both died at age 98 and another 18 year old cousin died of cancer, and another, favorite cousin came home from the marines safely only to be killed by a drunk driver.  Then my Mom's Dad died of Cancer before I graduated from High school.

And  I grew older and moved out and my home was just a converted garage with my 19 year old boyfriend in it.

Greg and I at 19

My wedding finery! just an hour after the JP married us

and then I was moving farther away, and the boyfriend became a husband and my family expanded to include all his, in-laws and nephews were great to add in. But all too soon there were days of driving between my family in Wyoming and us in Ashland, Oregon.

When My family came to visit Ashland, Oregon where I was in College

 and a month after we graduated from college in Ashland, my Mom's mother died.  I didn't like this part of family.  The losing ones you loved part hurt.

My Brother and parents at Niagara Falls

 but life moves on even when there is pain and the good years came back and my brother and I and my husbands sister were busy adding babies to the family and life was noisy and exhausting and wonderful.

Greg and I during our term as exchange students in Beijing

Some of the best years

 but all too soon my Dad, who loved being a Grandpa, was dead of esophageal cancer, as was one of my cousins.  My Mom and brothers were changing and moving on, and we heard from them but didn't get to spend enough time together, and family expanded to take in a Day care Grandma and day-care babies who lived with my babies from 7 AM to 5 PM every day and were more like siblings than friends.

Lance and my Mom after Dad died of Cancer

My Maternal Grandma and I

 And still life moves on.  My Mom is aging and her memory becomes confused. Talking to her on the phone is difficult and a strange trip into fears and confusion.  She had to move out of her house this year and my Brother Lance had to give up his 19 year job to move with her. Now in DC they are farther from me than ever, but closer to my brother Brett.

My youngest son and his lovely girlfriend

My sons are grown up and the family home is more a revolving door with people in or out and me never quite sure if it will be empty or full.  There are new children in our life, great nieces and nephews, a grandchild on the way, the babies of extended family. Life filling in the gaps because a vacuum is never allowed to remain

My oldest son working on a crab boat

My Brother Brett and his New wife

 So the family I am grateful for this year is not the one I loved as a baby, not eve the same one it was last November, but still, yes the family and friends are the part of my life I treasure the most.

Mom and my brother Lance

Another September, Another Chance

I love September, especially when we're in it.
Willie Stargell 

We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost.
Henry Rollins 


I also love September, and yet I find myself often depressed by it. As one who has lived 45 years on an American school schedule, I feel September as my true New Year. This is when I evaluate how the last year went and promise myself that I will change the things I didn't like and hold on to the things I loved.

After 45 year it becomes easy to see that doing that isn't easy. The resolutions each year sound a lot like the resolutions of the years before them.  So hope and depression mingle, like the perfection that is my home area in September, when the fruits are ripe and scenting the air and free for the taking. When windows hang open and the temperature both mid-day and mid-night is comfortable without air conditioning or heaters. Life is perfect but also tainted by the knowledge of how quickly things must change, and when they seem perfect, even a small change feels like a loss.

Yet This picture of my Son reminds me that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  As a toddler he wanted nothing more than to be on a boat with a line in the water. So when grandpa took him and his brother out, he was in his element, and now, when he thinks I'd  rather have him in college like his brother, 

he is a commercial fisherman with a lot of hard dangerous work and he is not always happy, not always content, but he is where he was born to be and he is true and loyal to who he is in a way that makes me proud of him.

 Wouldn't it be boring if everyone made the same choices?  If the world had one color, or one species or one religion or one dream?

I find my dreams and hopes in my family and my students and in the books I write and the books I read. I don't think my way is better than yours though, if you never want to have a child, or write a book, if exercise delights you, and you like to get physically tested, I love to hear your stories and watch you work out.

At 50 I have lost enough loved ones to know that the sadness I feel in September is the knowledge of things slipping through my fingers and away, no matter how tightly I grip.  I know my enjoyment of the vivid sunflower will be bittersweet for the knowledge of the grey rainy winter on the way. I know I play with the young dog, and already see him old and limping and grey muzzled now that I have had a series of wonderful dogs live out their life as my friend.

 But I can anticipate more than pain and loss. I also have lived long enough to know the death in the family, is followed by another birth, that the withered sunflower stalks drop the sees that volunteer next springs green shoots, and next Septembers glory.

So I have been thinking about what I have and what I have not done. I was going to make the bucket list of the things I wanted to visit, and do, and own, but while it is true, I want to see and do more, I'm not too concerned with owning THINGS anymore So this is what I really want for my resolutions

 I want to get rid of the clutter the way my neighbor has spent the summer removing the old junker trailer.

 I want to enjoy the gifts of life, like free blackberries

 and beautiful friends
 and bright
vivid
blooms