~A Bitter Swallow~

The blog generator set me up with this whopper of a question today. It dared me to write about ALL of the places I've called home in my lifetime. If it only knew how deeply involved that question was, I wonder if it still would have had the balls to ask it. Probably.

Now, I am not the child of a military family. Nor of a drug abuser (well.. that is left up to the individual to decide upon for themselves I suppose), nor of the foster care system (although we almost came to that). I am merely the child of circumstance; Circumstance that led me to live in a multitude of different places- and not all of them were dwellings.

When I was a wee one, still spitting up on my mama's shoulder, I lived in a little town called Norwalk, California. Apparently, I was born in a hospital made famous on a show called "Emergency" from way back when. As far as I know, my birth was not filmed or shown on any episode. That might have been kind of weird. Now, while I do not recall ever calling that place "home", I'm sure I did. I have very vague memories from that period of time in my life- mainly consisting of the ice cream truck, and sitting on the sidewalk with another little girl, eating our cones. That- and a time when I swear I somehow was able to twist my head around, and see my ear... and there was blood pouring out of it. I ran to show my mom, who was in the middle of talking with someone. All I remember was that he was a man. I urgently tried to get her to see the copious amounts of blood that I was losing out of my head, but she didn't seem too concerned. Ahh... the ways children can see more than what is really there. I still don't know what that was. My mom doesn't remember it at all. I had to have been maybe no more than 3 years old.

We then moved to another small town called Onyx, California. This town I do remember fondly. When I remember the innocent days of youth- the carefree days when the sun was always shining- of laying on the grass watching the clouds paint pictures in the sky- it is to this town that I return. Days that never ended, spent with friends in the outdoors, crawling through rock mountains, sleeping on the boulders with the snakes, resting on fallen logs in meadows of tall yellow grass, traipsing through the old lot that we called the Ghost walk, or something like that. My first boyfriend, and kissing him in that tall grass while we played "house". I was the mom, and he was the dad, and my little sister was our child. We had put her to bed, and that is what the grown ups did when the kids went to bed. They sat on the couch, watched tv, and kissed. He and I would sit on the side of the roads and try to sell the fragments of onyx we would find. I still wonder what happened to him.
That was where we would play Superheros in the park. I was always Fire Woman. It was this same park that we would hold burials for the dead birds we would come across. We came across those fairly often. I think there must have been a hungry cat that lived nearby. It was here that my sister and I (the same sister that played my daughter during my first kiss) were playing tag with our best friends- Heather and Terra. My sister slipped while running by the water fountain and broke her collar bone. I remember her screaming, and walking her home to tell my mom. Heather and Terra's dad was a nurse. He got to fix it.
This was the town where I smashed my ring finger in a big metal door at the skating rink. That same nurse tricked me into letting him pull my dead nail off.

This was the town I lived in where I could still be a kid. I would listen to my older sister playing Quiet Riot's "Come on Feel the Noise" and I would bang my head and dance around the tree outside. The house with all of my mom's beautiful rose bushes that I would water. With the honeysuckle bush that I would lounge by and eat the honey off of while watching the bees and the butterflies. With the garden that I have longed to copy- full of ripe strawberry patches she was constantly chasing me out of, the cherry tree she always drug my sister out of, the radishes I would help her pull, and the luscious peach trees. It was there that I always ate the cat's food. I tried the dog's food once, but it made me vomit.

On days when I feel horribly overwhelmed, it is often this time in my life that I go back to. I will dream about it sometimes. I try to recreate it in every "home" I've had since then, but never quite achieve. I'm hoping that I can come close in the place we are in now.

After Onyx, all of the places I lived in start to blur. At least while I was young. I left Onyx when I was around 7 or 8 years old. We moved all over Southern California. I couldn't tell you the name of any elementary school I attended. I attended quite a few of them. We lived with my father's various girlfriends, and in a few motels. I stopped trying to make friends after awhile, because we were never there long enough to keep them. There was one gal, named Christine, from my 6th grade year. I still talked to her for awhile afterwards. Last I heard, she was married with a child or two, and doing well.

I moved to Palmdale, California when I was 12. We first stayed in another hotel. Eventually we moved in with a lady my father knew. I don't remember where he knew her from- work maybe. She had a son. I couldn't stand her. She was strange, and her son could do no wrong. We hated him. And she just creeped us out. I'm not really sure what the deal with her and my dad was. In any event, we eventually got our own place. I liked that place. I lost my virginity there (well, in that town, not at that house). I still talk with him on occasion. It had the best thunder and lightning storms. We had a couch set up in the garage, and on stormy nights we would open up the garage door, and hang out on the couch and watch the shows.

We left Palmdale and moved next door to Lancaster. I did all of my teen growing there. I was 14 when we moved there. I met the best friends I had ever had there. I found my spiritual calling there, despite the additional problems it posed with my father. I got engaged, dropped out of school, wound up sleeping in a literal hole in the ground, on playground equipment fearing for my safety with the gangsters all around eyeing me, at friends' homes, etc. I broke ties with my dad there. I had a horrible relationship in which details I will not go into here. I had one of the best relationships I've had there. I found myself into drugs there, and at the same time I found a lot of myself there. It was your normal teenage angst growing up stuff, plus some.

I could spend hours filling you in on all of the things that happened in Lancaster. It would be #2 on my favorite places. Despite all of the heartache and hurt and betrayal I went through there, it was also where I found the best in people, where I found some of the best in me.

I left Lancaster in August, to full fill my promise to my mom that I would be in Washington in time to start school back up in the fall. I got here a week before school started. Washington has been very good to me, and I was able to go back to school and graduate. I met my husband, had my children, had my horrible time when I went through my separation, and have found a great guy in the meantime. I have a wonderful new place, which I do indeed call "home". Every day we are making it feel more and more like it. I still have a lot of work left to do. I think my work will never be done. But I am closer to achieving that haven I had when I was a 5 year old child living in Onyx. I am well on my way, and I am thankful for it every day.