Vitamins and the Bus Stop
I’m the oldest of 10 siblings. 3 sisters, 5 brothers and 2 step brothers. Everyone has always said that I’m the responsible, mature one. Oldest child syndrome I guess. My mom had me when she was just 18, my father was 17. She was the oldest of 5 sisters and a brother. I guess Mom and I learned how to grow up together back in those days. We lived in a lot of different places. Our first apartment was a one bedroom , a small little place where some of my first memories of my mom come from.
Our next house was a cinderblock two bedroom cottage in Warrenton , Va. We lived there with my step father, and this is the house where we lived when my brother Jason was born. I was 5 years old when we lived in the house on the hill. It had an old wood burning stove in the kitchen. I can see that kitchen clearly as I spent lots and lots of time in that kitchen, sitting at the table for endless hours, told by my step father that I couldn’t get up until I finished all the food on my plate. Food was scarce in those days, and to waste it was a shame. I can remember my mother pleading with me to just eat, so I could get up and she could stop worrying about me sitting there. I would sit there for hours. I didn’t care. I wasn’t hungry and couldn’t eat what was in front of me. I also spent lots of time in the kitchen trying to swallow adult “One a Day” vitamins at my stepfathers insistence, possibly since I wasnt eating properly and needed some vitamins. I can still taste that vitamin, slowly melting in my mouth as it dissolved completely as I could never swallow such a huge pill. It was bitter and nasty and sort of sweet at the end , and I could drink a whole glass of milk before it was gone. As always, Mom was secretly hiding behind the wall, urging me to please just swallow it so we could all get on with our day.
I started kindergarten while we lived in that cinderblock house. I had to ride the bus to school in the mornings and the bus was all the way at the end of the driveway, at the bottom of the hill. That dirt gravel road must have been a mile long and I can remember in the early mornings walking down there all alone, watching the bats circle the light posts, hoping and praying they would not swoop down and bite my neck. But I walked, one eye on the bats and one on my feet precariously on the gravel. It was easy to fall down that driveway, and then I would be dirty. I didn’t like to be dirty. At the end of the driveway was the bus stop and Jefferson Davis Highway, a 4 lane highway. I never remember anyone standing there with me. Mom knew I would never do anything stupid like play in the road, or run across traffic. I was too responsible and that would be haphazard. Somehow she knew I would be ok. I think now of my own 6 year old standing at the side of a 4 lane busy highway and it terrifies me. Yet, I never was scared of that road.
I grew up a lot in that house, learned quite a bit of life lessons. I came home from school one winter day, fresh snow on the ground and white as far as the eye could see. As I walked up that long hill, I could see bright red all over the snow. Upon further inspection as I approached, I saw that the pen to my beloved pet rabbit , Bugs, was wide open. As I scanned the bloody mottled snow for a sign of him, I began to realize that our dog had somehow gotten in to the pen and the crime scene in front of me was the last I was to see of good ol’ Bugs. Lesson learned ? Dogs like rabbits. I do remember my dad taking the belt to the dog that night.
I also learned that Santa Claus was not real in that house. I found my Christmas list in the shed on one of my saturday morning excursions of playing alone outside. Mom tried to tell me that one of the elves left it, but I knew better. That was where my stepdad spent the afternoons, in that shed, listening to America, smoking pot. I don’t remember getting anything on my list, so I pretty much knew the elf story was a cover up. I wouldn’t tell my mom that I knew it was all a sham until I was 12. I spent most of my childhood playing alone outside. I had secret hiding spots, forts made out of big rocks in the woods, imaginary friends and always our dog by my side for compainship. I played outside for hours. Just entertaining myself, never really any toys to play with…just nature and my imagination. I loved those days. I could be anyone, do anything. It was magical. After all mom was busy taking care of the new baby, and I don’t know where my step dad was during those days. Sometimes he would take me out in the big fields or woods with him, and we’d walk and walk for hours. I’d be 10 feet behind him, struggling to keep up, but always right behind him. Those were good days and I remember them fondly.
