I tell this story with my one sister, Christine by my side, November 25, 1961, because she was there for it all and to this day we still need each other to deal with it all. Further into the story my parents have another daughter, Lynn, so I had another little sister, born on April 18th, 1973, but I don't want to get ahead of myself.
I've heard people say they can remember being in the womb, if I did remember that far back, I would say most likely the feeling of not being wanted probably started then. What I do remember from those young years is in little pieces, little fragments of time, that for some reason stayed with me, some good and some bad. I didn't realize of course how these memories or lack of them were going to be effecting the rest of my life to this day.
Back to 1963..........
The first place I can remember living was in a small town called Graham Hill in Pennsylvania, my family lived in the middle house of a row of three town houses. My mom, Darlene was just 18 when I was born and my dad Lewis just 4 years older then her. My maternal Grandparents and two youngest Aunts lived on one side of us. I have brown hair, blue eyes and chubby checks, and it has been said that I look like my mother's side of the family, though my dad also has chubby checks, my sister is blond haired and has hazel eyes, fair skinned and it's said looks more like my dad's side of the family .
Some of the things I remember about living in Graham Hill, it's where I learned to ride a bike. I remember the first time riding down a small hill by myself, I ended up riding right onto a big branch of a pine tree because I couldn't figure out how to put the brakes on. Another time I ran into the cellar- way with the front tire of my bike and went right out over the handle bars almost knocking out my front teeth. I learned to tie my shoes there, I remember we had a swing set in the back yard and I'd sit out there and practice and practice tying my shoes. It was really hard because I had broken my right arm. I was at my paternal grandparents house when I broke my arm, there was an old sand box there that had a little canvas roof over top, the canvas had rotted and I broke off the one board (1"x3"x5') when out in yard by myself. For whatever reason I had to show-off how strong I was, by trying to break the second board off with grandma as my audience When I tried it the second time I fell, landed on a tree root and broke my arm. Even then I had the impression that my being strong, was something that received approval.
In case I forget to tell you I'm a Murphy's law person, what can go wrong will and usually does in my case.....memories from there.....a family picnic in the back yard, someone put put a watermelon in the small creek that ran out back to keep cool. When we went to get it we found a water snake curled up next to the watermelon.....behind our house a neighbor had some ponies in a pasture. I was always scooting under the electric fence to go play with them, you just couldn't keep me away from horses.....at the town Firehouse there was a pond that we would ice skate on in the winter time. The grown-ups would build a fire along the bank and we'd go out and skate around that little pond, seemed so much bigger then.....There's a picture of my father standing in a snow drift that's up to his waist
