Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Un-Stepford Reality- darn writing classes
Gabrielle Calcaterra
The Un- Stepford Reality
As part of our final in my human relations class, we had to write a five year plan for what we hoped to accomplish. I remember fantasizing of owning my own restaurant, living in some far off place and starting a family. Newsflash, this was nearly seven years ago and none of those things happened.
Coincidently, two weeks before I could register for classes that spring quarter, my parents informed me that I would need to pay half my tuition. I had been living on * "Broke Food" for months and didn't have that kind of scratch lying around. My memory of that conversation is pretty fuzzy, but I must have informed my mother of my situation because she took pity on me, allowing me to move home for a while to pay off the credit card that I had been using to purchase youth bus passes and supplement my meager wages at the restaurant to make rent.
* "Broke Food" - a ratatouille of sorts with lots of garlic, mushrooms and corn, that can be served with pasta or thinned out for soup. One big pot usually lasts far longer that I can stand to eat the same meal for, usually about a week or so. This costs about $7-10 to make, including a $2.50 five pound bag of pasta and/or top ramen to mix it up a bit. I've always been far too proud to apply for food stamps; instead I make the sacrifice and live very modestly from time to time.
The plan changed...drastically. I enrolled in culinary school in order to gain useful skills and make contacts to obtain a better paying job, I would have never expected there to be so much struggle involved. Years would pass and I still hadn't gone back to school, I finally gave in to the fact that I will never make much more than minimum wage and possibly some tips in a restaurant. Around the time I made the decision to find a new job, my younger sister tells us she's pregnant, then a year later my brother and his girlfriend (with twins!). That was it, I knew that I didn't want that fate for myself - a drastic change was in order.
Genetically predisposed to be a collector, I tried to fight the urge by purging: kitchen appliances to friends and my siblings, art supplies to the children's art museum downtown, the rest to Goodwill. The guy at their donation center asked me more than once if I was getting rid of a bad roommate, I was tempted to tell him yes - myself. What I did I keep filled four plastic tubs, which were stashed in the crawl space at my parents’ house. One bin with nice clothing, the second full of books, another with cds and a few movies and the last with yarn and some expensive watercolor supplies, slowly acquired over the years as I could afford them. For years my mother had been trying to talk me into joining the military, telling me stories of people she knew who it had changed for the better. Maybe it would do wonders for me, make me less shy – and it was free, so I decided to at least give it a shot.
I packed a small duffel bag with toiletries and boarded one plane after another, bouncing around the country and finally arriving in Columbia, South Carolina. I had only heard of this place in books and movies, but I was stationed there for basic training. Pictures of nearby Myrtle Beach lead me to expect something strange, foreign I guess. Really, the town surrounding Ft Jackson didn't look that different from the valley near the town I grew up in, only there were beach grasses that seemed very out of place that far inland, and the pale sand that surrounded the cookie cutter buildings we were hurried between like cattle; everything was very concrete and seventies style, oak veneer and brown berber carpet covered every vertical surface.
The next couple of months were a blur of sorts. Scars on my elbows and knees from crawling around in the desert remind me of day to day events and disasters documented for posterity in handwritten letters that I sent daily to my family back in Washington. Afternoons spent hand scrubbing linoleum floors of the portable classroom the fifty of us women called home for ten weeks provided plenty of fodder to write home about. Though communication was better when basic training was over and I had my phone and access to the internet while I was stationed at Ft Sam Houston for medic training, I still felt very disconnected from my family. Missing summer barbeques, holidays and the birth of my nephew was not my intention. I shipped presents home hoping alleviate my homesickness let everyone know I hadn't forgotten about them. Although I missed my family terribly, I couldn't go back to living in Spokane. Moving back home would have been too easy; leaving the house was like attending a high school reunion. I had joined the military to make a change in my life, so after scouring the internet and comparing rent prices and local activities, I decided on Portland; it was close Seaside where my family used to vacation and I could put my knitting obsession to use during the mild winters. Assigned to the Seattle Armory, I would be able to commute for monthly drills and maybe squeeze in some shopping as a bonus.
I spent four days in Spokane after flying home from San Antonio after our AIT (Advanced Individual Training) graduation. In my experience, that is the amount of time I can spend at my parents house before they forget I'm an adult with a job and start assigning me chores and asking where I am heading. Loading the pickup truck borrowed from my father to transport my few belongings south to Oregon, I didn't even consider staying a bit longer, visiting my niece and nephews that I hadn't seen since Christmas. An exciting life was waiting six hours south, and a few snow flurries weren't going to deter me.
It has been eight months since that move; I've ditched the roommate that I was convinced would make it cheaper to live here (it didn't) and found a walkup apartment with large closets to stash my treasures, but still something is lacking. I really should have waited longer to go back to the job I was on leave from. It really isn't as fun, or even tolerable as I remember. I really thought that I would have accomplished more. It's hard to even look check Facebook, nine out of ten people I graduated with are married and most of them have kids. The most I can really lay claim to is that I escaped the black hole that is our hometown and have never received welfare benefits.
Maybe there was just too much "Stepford", not enough reality in my expectation of what my life would be like at twenty-six. My aunts and uncles had married fairly young - so I never expected to be this close to thirty with a yarn collection and not so much as a goldfish as a housemate. Each of my closest siblings (both younger) have a pair of kids, and I'm starting to wonder what the family says about me when I'm not there. About three years ago, shortly after my niece was born, I was at a baby shower with my mother and a bunch of her friends. Over mimosas on a Saturday afternoon, they were talking about their children. I just happened to be within ear shot when one of them motioned toward me, coincidently holding said niece, and they asked my mother when I was going to have kids already. I don't remember the exact quote, but her response was something to the effect of, I had some time, but my parents were going to start badgering me about it before too long.
My mother was the queen of casseroles when we were growing up, but there were some things that she didn't have time for raising us rambunctious four of us – from her I learned the basics: how to sew on a button, iron a dress shirt and calm a screaming infant Though occasionally I sew a button onto something I have knit, I don't even own an iron and the only babies I'm calming aren't my own. Yes, I am the baby whisperer, a beer in one hand and a formula bottle in the other. Occasionally it seems strange that my two younger siblings have children and I do not, but I have so much more freedom and I travel too often to keep a more than a fern, let alone a toddler.
For now, I occupy a tidy little walk-up apartment filled with handmade items and treasures from my travels. It is kind of nice to have the option to stay up to make jam at night and knit a few rows on a hat, without worrying of waking anyone. I can sleep in and go for a run in the morning. It may be three or four hours into my day before I speak to another human (until I can learn to order coffee by sign language that is). Someday I will have that place with canned fruit and veggies filling the cupboards, wool spilling from the closet and waves lapping at the shore. Until then, this place will do.
The Un- Stepford Reality
As part of our final in my human relations class, we had to write a five year plan for what we hoped to accomplish. I remember fantasizing of owning my own restaurant, living in some far off place and starting a family. Newsflash, this was nearly seven years ago and none of those things happened.
Coincidently, two weeks before I could register for classes that spring quarter, my parents informed me that I would need to pay half my tuition. I had been living on * "Broke Food" for months and didn't have that kind of scratch lying around. My memory of that conversation is pretty fuzzy, but I must have informed my mother of my situation because she took pity on me, allowing me to move home for a while to pay off the credit card that I had been using to purchase youth bus passes and supplement my meager wages at the restaurant to make rent.
* "Broke Food" - a ratatouille of sorts with lots of garlic, mushrooms and corn, that can be served with pasta or thinned out for soup. One big pot usually lasts far longer that I can stand to eat the same meal for, usually about a week or so. This costs about $7-10 to make, including a $2.50 five pound bag of pasta and/or top ramen to mix it up a bit. I've always been far too proud to apply for food stamps; instead I make the sacrifice and live very modestly from time to time.
The plan changed...drastically. I enrolled in culinary school in order to gain useful skills and make contacts to obtain a better paying job, I would have never expected there to be so much struggle involved. Years would pass and I still hadn't gone back to school, I finally gave in to the fact that I will never make much more than minimum wage and possibly some tips in a restaurant. Around the time I made the decision to find a new job, my younger sister tells us she's pregnant, then a year later my brother and his girlfriend (with twins!). That was it, I knew that I didn't want that fate for myself - a drastic change was in order.
Genetically predisposed to be a collector, I tried to fight the urge by purging: kitchen appliances to friends and my siblings, art supplies to the children's art museum downtown, the rest to Goodwill. The guy at their donation center asked me more than once if I was getting rid of a bad roommate, I was tempted to tell him yes - myself. What I did I keep filled four plastic tubs, which were stashed in the crawl space at my parents’ house. One bin with nice clothing, the second full of books, another with cds and a few movies and the last with yarn and some expensive watercolor supplies, slowly acquired over the years as I could afford them. For years my mother had been trying to talk me into joining the military, telling me stories of people she knew who it had changed for the better. Maybe it would do wonders for me, make me less shy – and it was free, so I decided to at least give it a shot.
I packed a small duffel bag with toiletries and boarded one plane after another, bouncing around the country and finally arriving in Columbia, South Carolina. I had only heard of this place in books and movies, but I was stationed there for basic training. Pictures of nearby Myrtle Beach lead me to expect something strange, foreign I guess. Really, the town surrounding Ft Jackson didn't look that different from the valley near the town I grew up in, only there were beach grasses that seemed very out of place that far inland, and the pale sand that surrounded the cookie cutter buildings we were hurried between like cattle; everything was very concrete and seventies style, oak veneer and brown berber carpet covered every vertical surface.
The next couple of months were a blur of sorts. Scars on my elbows and knees from crawling around in the desert remind me of day to day events and disasters documented for posterity in handwritten letters that I sent daily to my family back in Washington. Afternoons spent hand scrubbing linoleum floors of the portable classroom the fifty of us women called home for ten weeks provided plenty of fodder to write home about. Though communication was better when basic training was over and I had my phone and access to the internet while I was stationed at Ft Sam Houston for medic training, I still felt very disconnected from my family. Missing summer barbeques, holidays and the birth of my nephew was not my intention. I shipped presents home hoping alleviate my homesickness let everyone know I hadn't forgotten about them. Although I missed my family terribly, I couldn't go back to living in Spokane. Moving back home would have been too easy; leaving the house was like attending a high school reunion. I had joined the military to make a change in my life, so after scouring the internet and comparing rent prices and local activities, I decided on Portland; it was close Seaside where my family used to vacation and I could put my knitting obsession to use during the mild winters. Assigned to the Seattle Armory, I would be able to commute for monthly drills and maybe squeeze in some shopping as a bonus.
I spent four days in Spokane after flying home from San Antonio after our AIT (Advanced Individual Training) graduation. In my experience, that is the amount of time I can spend at my parents house before they forget I'm an adult with a job and start assigning me chores and asking where I am heading. Loading the pickup truck borrowed from my father to transport my few belongings south to Oregon, I didn't even consider staying a bit longer, visiting my niece and nephews that I hadn't seen since Christmas. An exciting life was waiting six hours south, and a few snow flurries weren't going to deter me.
It has been eight months since that move; I've ditched the roommate that I was convinced would make it cheaper to live here (it didn't) and found a walkup apartment with large closets to stash my treasures, but still something is lacking. I really should have waited longer to go back to the job I was on leave from. It really isn't as fun, or even tolerable as I remember. I really thought that I would have accomplished more. It's hard to even look check Facebook, nine out of ten people I graduated with are married and most of them have kids. The most I can really lay claim to is that I escaped the black hole that is our hometown and have never received welfare benefits.
Maybe there was just too much "Stepford", not enough reality in my expectation of what my life would be like at twenty-six. My aunts and uncles had married fairly young - so I never expected to be this close to thirty with a yarn collection and not so much as a goldfish as a housemate. Each of my closest siblings (both younger) have a pair of kids, and I'm starting to wonder what the family says about me when I'm not there. About three years ago, shortly after my niece was born, I was at a baby shower with my mother and a bunch of her friends. Over mimosas on a Saturday afternoon, they were talking about their children. I just happened to be within ear shot when one of them motioned toward me, coincidently holding said niece, and they asked my mother when I was going to have kids already. I don't remember the exact quote, but her response was something to the effect of, I had some time, but my parents were going to start badgering me about it before too long.
My mother was the queen of casseroles when we were growing up, but there were some things that she didn't have time for raising us rambunctious four of us – from her I learned the basics: how to sew on a button, iron a dress shirt and calm a screaming infant Though occasionally I sew a button onto something I have knit, I don't even own an iron and the only babies I'm calming aren't my own. Yes, I am the baby whisperer, a beer in one hand and a formula bottle in the other. Occasionally it seems strange that my two younger siblings have children and I do not, but I have so much more freedom and I travel too often to keep a more than a fern, let alone a toddler.
For now, I occupy a tidy little walk-up apartment filled with handmade items and treasures from my travels. It is kind of nice to have the option to stay up to make jam at night and knit a few rows on a hat, without worrying of waking anyone. I can sleep in and go for a run in the morning. It may be three or four hours into my day before I speak to another human (until I can learn to order coffee by sign language that is). Someday I will have that place with canned fruit and veggies filling the cupboards, wool spilling from the closet and waves lapping at the shore. Until then, this place will do.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Third Paper
Around the time that I turned seven, the two sides of my family merged. My father had grown up an only child and was the center of his parents attention until we arrived, us three kids were a bonus to marrying our mother. All of a sudden they became grandparents, and it was very different from the family that I had been surrounded by up to this point.
My father’s parents were very neat. The rancher style home that they owned while we were growing up was always decorated according to the season, not just storage for treasures like we were used to. Whenever we arrived at the house there always seemed to be something baking and had activities planned for us kids. The rancher style home that they used to own had a country kitchen homeyness to it, the antique furniture that they owned had been passed down in the family, and was well kept. They had black and white pictures in frames from when they were young and lived in Montana. Up until that point I never knew anyone who had cable television. I was used to waiting for Saturday morning cartoons, but they had a channel that played cartoons all day, it was awesome. My grandparents cooked meals from scratch and lived in a subdivision that we could ride our bikes around. Before I met them, I had never heard of spring cleaning, when you go through your possessions and purge.
My mother's family was quite a stark contrast. One of my first clear memories was following my grandmother around the farm to tend to the few pheasants she still kept. There was a collection of outbuildings that my grandfather had built when he was still alive: the a-frame, the tool shed and flat roofed delapated garage that housed my grandmother's treasures. I don't believe I ever saw my Grandma Mickey baking, save a tv dinner or two for us kids. She was no Betty Crocker, but she did own all of the cookbooks. Always a collector, my grandmother was always saving, tucking things away. Born in 1923, she and her four sisters were raised during the depression and saw many wars. It may have been some type of coping mechanism or just a habit that stuck after raising five children. If she was out shopping with any of us and saw something on clearance, she would purchase it, often in multiples. Once home they were store away, nearly always forgotten about.
The three of us oldest grandkids didn't go to daycare until I was in school. Instead we spent our days with my mother's overwhelmingly female family. My mother would drop us off at grandma's before the sun was up most mornings and we would watch the morning news while grandma made us instant oatmeal. She would stand in the back corner of the kitchen ironing, half-listening to the scanner and telling us stories about growing up, peppered with slight anger toward one of her sisters or a classmate, something that happened more than fifty years previously.
It was my grandmother who taught us about buttercups, willows and the other plants that blossomed around the property, about gathering aluminum cans that had been tossed into the ditches of the country road she lived on and recycling them for money. Grandma's house was a haven for things that had potential to be fixed, but rarely did they. There were stacks of fruit boxes that lined the hallway leading to the back bedroom, and that stack housed three Easy Bake ovens. This was torture to my five year old self, to see these boxes everyday, knowing that not one of them was in working order and I wasn't able to play with them. There was an unknown number of Barbies, collectors items we were told, kept in their boxes and never enjoyed. Thousands of books, stashes of art supplies, and tons of dress patterns filled these boxes. There are somethings that will always remind me of my grandma's house; Aquafresh toothpaste, Head and Shoulders (and the way it makes your scalp tingle), Irish Spring and the smell of Folgers instant coffee.
Aunt Rita would show up most mornings, before The Price is Right, to take my brother and I on an adventure. Usually it was work, disguised as fun; going on a hike around the property to scout out a fence that needed repair, figuring out what was wrong with the well, or loading up fallen branches or recycling. Rita drove the big blue pickup when I was young, teaching me to shift out of necessity, because my car seat got in the way and I was the only one who could reach second gear. She taught us how to fix things around the house, about making faces at strangers at stoplights, and how to suck helium out of balloons and sing Happy Birthday on people's answering machines.
When she wasn't working at the hospital, my mom's oldest sister would take me for the day. My Aunt Rocky lived out in the country when I was young, and along with grandma, had us convinced that the television only worked during certain times of the day; coincidentally during the news, MASH or Masterpiece Theater. She collected mystery novels and I would help her bake peanut butter cookies before settling down for the night and working on the ever present crochet blanket project. My uncles, my mother's older brothers weren't around quite as much but did take us fishing occasionally, stomping through the woods to get there, and pointing out which leaves were okay to wipe with. Most of my aunts and uncles didn't have children until we were a bit older, so us three were like practice children.
My parents are the grandparents now to my niece and nephews, and time has mellowed them considerably. The house is a mixture of the two sides; it's very neat, although I think my father only vacuums once a day now. There is lots vintage sports equipment along with pictures of the family, both from when we were growing up and some older photographs of our grandparents and great-grandparents. They purchased right before my sixteenth birthday, and they have nice things now, and white carpets. Both of them are collectors to an extent, but they have a garage sale nearly every year to keep the garage from getting out of control.
I can only hope that I've made the right decision, to move away from home and everything I knew. I hope that the time that spend with my niece and nephews will be enough and they will have funny memories of riding around in shopping carts or running errands with me and my youngest sister the way I remember my aunts as a child. Baking cupcakes with sprinkles or coloring pictures, I try to allow them to do fun things that their parents don't have the time or patience to do. I buy them the "cool presents" for christmas and knit them toys and hats throughout the year.
My father’s parents were very neat. The rancher style home that they owned while we were growing up was always decorated according to the season, not just storage for treasures like we were used to. Whenever we arrived at the house there always seemed to be something baking and had activities planned for us kids. The rancher style home that they used to own had a country kitchen homeyness to it, the antique furniture that they owned had been passed down in the family, and was well kept. They had black and white pictures in frames from when they were young and lived in Montana. Up until that point I never knew anyone who had cable television. I was used to waiting for Saturday morning cartoons, but they had a channel that played cartoons all day, it was awesome. My grandparents cooked meals from scratch and lived in a subdivision that we could ride our bikes around. Before I met them, I had never heard of spring cleaning, when you go through your possessions and purge.
My mother's family was quite a stark contrast. One of my first clear memories was following my grandmother around the farm to tend to the few pheasants she still kept. There was a collection of outbuildings that my grandfather had built when he was still alive: the a-frame, the tool shed and flat roofed delapated garage that housed my grandmother's treasures. I don't believe I ever saw my Grandma Mickey baking, save a tv dinner or two for us kids. She was no Betty Crocker, but she did own all of the cookbooks. Always a collector, my grandmother was always saving, tucking things away. Born in 1923, she and her four sisters were raised during the depression and saw many wars. It may have been some type of coping mechanism or just a habit that stuck after raising five children. If she was out shopping with any of us and saw something on clearance, she would purchase it, often in multiples. Once home they were store away, nearly always forgotten about.
The three of us oldest grandkids didn't go to daycare until I was in school. Instead we spent our days with my mother's overwhelmingly female family. My mother would drop us off at grandma's before the sun was up most mornings and we would watch the morning news while grandma made us instant oatmeal. She would stand in the back corner of the kitchen ironing, half-listening to the scanner and telling us stories about growing up, peppered with slight anger toward one of her sisters or a classmate, something that happened more than fifty years previously.
It was my grandmother who taught us about buttercups, willows and the other plants that blossomed around the property, about gathering aluminum cans that had been tossed into the ditches of the country road she lived on and recycling them for money. Grandma's house was a haven for things that had potential to be fixed, but rarely did they. There were stacks of fruit boxes that lined the hallway leading to the back bedroom, and that stack housed three Easy Bake ovens. This was torture to my five year old self, to see these boxes everyday, knowing that not one of them was in working order and I wasn't able to play with them. There was an unknown number of Barbies, collectors items we were told, kept in their boxes and never enjoyed. Thousands of books, stashes of art supplies, and tons of dress patterns filled these boxes. There are somethings that will always remind me of my grandma's house; Aquafresh toothpaste, Head and Shoulders (and the way it makes your scalp tingle), Irish Spring and the smell of Folgers instant coffee.
Aunt Rita would show up most mornings, before The Price is Right, to take my brother and I on an adventure. Usually it was work, disguised as fun; going on a hike around the property to scout out a fence that needed repair, figuring out what was wrong with the well, or loading up fallen branches or recycling. Rita drove the big blue pickup when I was young, teaching me to shift out of necessity, because my car seat got in the way and I was the only one who could reach second gear. She taught us how to fix things around the house, about making faces at strangers at stoplights, and how to suck helium out of balloons and sing Happy Birthday on people's answering machines.
When she wasn't working at the hospital, my mom's oldest sister would take me for the day. My Aunt Rocky lived out in the country when I was young, and along with grandma, had us convinced that the television only worked during certain times of the day; coincidentally during the news, MASH or Masterpiece Theater. She collected mystery novels and I would help her bake peanut butter cookies before settling down for the night and working on the ever present crochet blanket project. My uncles, my mother's older brothers weren't around quite as much but did take us fishing occasionally, stomping through the woods to get there, and pointing out which leaves were okay to wipe with. Most of my aunts and uncles didn't have children until we were a bit older, so us three were like practice children.
My parents are the grandparents now to my niece and nephews, and time has mellowed them considerably. The house is a mixture of the two sides; it's very neat, although I think my father only vacuums once a day now. There is lots vintage sports equipment along with pictures of the family, both from when we were growing up and some older photographs of our grandparents and great-grandparents. They purchased right before my sixteenth birthday, and they have nice things now, and white carpets. Both of them are collectors to an extent, but they have a garage sale nearly every year to keep the garage from getting out of control.
I can only hope that I've made the right decision, to move away from home and everything I knew. I hope that the time that spend with my niece and nephews will be enough and they will have funny memories of riding around in shopping carts or running errands with me and my youngest sister the way I remember my aunts as a child. Baking cupcakes with sprinkles or coloring pictures, I try to allow them to do fun things that their parents don't have the time or patience to do. I buy them the "cool presents" for christmas and knit them toys and hats throughout the year.
Second Paper
“So, what brings you here today? What is it that you would like to do in the army?” the recruiter said. My mother had finally convinced me to go stop by the recruiting office after work that day. For many years she had been telling me about women that she knew who had joined the military and how it had changed their lives dramatically for the better, how it had made them confident and financially independent.
I didn’t know what to expect walking into the office that day. What I did know was this, I didn’t want to spend my entire life in the town that I grew up in. a place where everyone I knew was having children and working in dead end jobs. I wanted to travel, to see things outside of my comfortable existence in the Pacific Northwest. I guess that I wanted to have stories to tell to my children one day, should I decide to have any. What I would learn was that everything takes time in the military, and nothing is for certain until it is. It would be many months, filling out forms, documenting every move that I made as an adult, and getting myself physically prepared for the journey I was about to embark on.
It would have been very easy for me to stay in Spokane; my life had become very predictable. Going out to the local bar was like a mini high school reunion of sorts. I lived in a small cottage in the art district, close enough to downtown that I only drove to work or out of boredom. You could stand at the end of the driveway and watch the local musicians skateboard by. But I had always thought of my hometown a little like a black hole, no one got out for good. We had graduated less than ten years ago and yet very few of us were still kid-less, employed, and didn’t live with Mom and Dad. I knew I needed to get out before I ended up with five kids and a part-time job at Wal-Mart.
I had a strange approach to get ready for basic training. I wasn’t much of a runner and I knew that that was a big part of what would be a challenge for me, so I joined a running group. The Flying Irish meet every Thursday at five pm outside O’Doherty’s Irish Pub in Spokane. They take a three to four mile tour of downtown and then meet up at the pub for half price pints until closing. The fact that some of the guys from the Gonzaga soccer team were a part of the group was all the motivation I needed to show up every week and earn my shirt. Once you ran with the group six times you earned your shirt by climbing up onto the bar and telling an Irish joke. As for altering my diet, I just avoided all weekend movie marathons involving Johnny Depp and Tillamook Ice cream. Before I knew it the four months had passed and it was time to pack up my things and get the heck out.
I picked up Isabella at school and drove to Coeur d’Alene for my “Last Hurrah” lunch at The Beacon. I had to check into the hotel by five pm that afternoon; I was scheduled to leave on a plane in less than 48 hours for basic training at Ft Jackson, South Carolina. But for the next few hours, I was going to enjoy my Jamaican Jerk Salmon Sandwich and soak up all the fountain root beer and professional bull riding that bar had to offer, I was in Idaho after all.
I packed everything on the required list that my recruiter had given me, unaware that most of these items would be packed away for the duration of basic training because they didn’t want us getting too comfortable. Two full size towels, three sports bras, five pairs of travel underwear (made to be hand washed and air dried, even in super humid climates). The biggest bottle of shampoo and conditioner I could find, two bars of Irish Spring and a hand knit washcloth that I had made myself and one tube of lipgloss. I wrapped each item in a plastic bag and sadly had to check it at the airport due to the presence of shampoo. It was the one “luxury” I was allowing myself, and probably the only thing that saved me from having a q-tip for hair in the 100 percent humidity.
In a way, I’m kind of glad that I didn’t know what was in store for me. It would take fourteen hours and three planes zigzagging across the country before we would arrive in Columbia, South Carolina to board a charter bus that would drive us to post. Once we arrived at the gate, a large, blonde Hulk look-alike, with no neck, boarded our bus and ordered us to take out our military identification before we could enter. Most of us just looked at each other and wondered whether we really wanted to anymore, or if there was another option.
Unfortunately he allowed us to pass, and the charter bus drove us through the maze of windy roads in the dark, finally stopping at one of the many beige buildings that all looked alike. A tall drill sergeant boarded and ordered us off the bus immediately. I nearly fell getting down the steps, and struggling with my carry-on bag to join the others in formation. It was after eleven o’clock and it would be many hours before we would see the barracks. We had huge stacks of in processing paperwork to do and they would bring us to the chow hall to eat at two am, a sad introduction to the food that awaited us. Then it was to CIF to be sized for pt uniforms that we would wear until we were issued our ACUs. At four am, we were finally allowed to enter the barracks that would be our temporary residence for the next nine days until the drill sergeants from our company would come to pick us up.
The joke amongst the thirty or so of the girls that I was with at reception was that they were fattening us up to bring to slaughter, because all we did was get up at 4 am and take roll, go to breakfast and return to “clean the barracks” aka station someone in the hallway and the rest of us would sleep until a more reasonable hour and or write letters home. Then take roll before lunch and the same before dinner. I was still attempting to sleep off the jetlag that I was suffering from, so I slept most of the time. It was probably for the best, because there wouldn’t be much time for that soon.
The one thing that we did accomplish that week was a trip to the “Reception PX”. The special thing about this one was that there was no contraband available, no soda, candy or snacks. Only digital camouflage items, black spandex and cotton granny panties obviously mismarked bikini cut. What about this was bikini cut? I could have tucked the top into the massive sports bra that I would take to wearing two of in order to provide some support. When we returned to our quarters to store our purchases, I watched the other girls start marking their items with their name like in summer camp, and wondered who would want more of this crap?
On Sunday morning we brought all of our possessions downstairs along with all of our issued clothing and pretty calmly loaded onto the white school busses that would bring us the company on the other side of post. The ride over was eerily quiet. DS Carr was stationed on our bus, but we were lucky, and we didn’t know what we were in for. He was stoic; most of us were convinced that he was catatonic.
A soon as we pulled up in front of the “company area”, a group of portable classrooms surrounded by deep gravel pits, they pounced. At least three drill sergeants jumped onto the bus and were screaming commands all at once. It was chaos, you couldn’t discern one voice from the next and I just kept my head down and followed the herd in front of me and tried to block it out. I stumbled in the rocks and made my way toward the covered area where they were dividing us into platoons. I couldn’t understand the number that they gave me, so I just went to the group that the sole female drill sergeant was standing with. Boy was that a bad decision.
We had to stand with our bags over our heads for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a couple of minutes. One girl collapsed on top of her bag, pretending to pass out. But all that got her was a few quick slaps in the face “to revive her”. She would be one of the first to become a “Sick Call Ranger” and feign illness to get out of training, which in turn just gets you chaptered out via a medical discharge or incompetence, without the shiny bonus check the rest of us were here for.
Once we were allowed to go inside, the females were separated and instructed to dump out our bags. Of the items I was instructed to purchase and bring with me I was only able to keep the travel undies I was wearing along with the shampoo and conditioner I had packed (and my hair thanks them). Everything else was packed up in our personal bags and stored behind a locked door in the female restroom. We were organized alphabetically and assigned to our bunks and corresponding lockers. I was trying to be nice when I let my bunkmate take the bottom bunk, despite the fact that I am 5’1” on a good day. I spent the next ten weeks silently cursing that decision every time I nearly face planted on the tile floor.
Over the next few weeks the shock of what I had done wore off and I began to feel homesick. At home I don’t go four days without talking to my mother, how was I going to go ten weeks? The one thing that made me feel better, closer to home was writing letters. I hand wrote at least two pages directed by the red lens on my flashlight. I wrote about everything, my bunkmate and her neurosis (holding it and not going #2 for weeks), the girls who refused to bathe, and who was in trouble. I was probably the only one in our company who wore out a bulb in their army issue flashlight from overuse. But mostly I just wrote about what I missed about home, what I knew I was missing; my twin nephews, then just eight months old were learning to walk, my two year old niece started to talk or that I wouldn’t be there for the birth of the nephew that my sister had just announced she was having. It helped that I received a few funny letters from my family with pictures of everyone. I started a list of food that I was craving, mostly fresh vegetables and baked goods from the Greek Festival or just anything that hadn’t been fried and/or removed from a gigantic aluminum can.
Despite the fact the heat and humidity that comes with summers in South Carolina, the males never ceased to believe that they were still attractive. Nothing could dampen their spirits or make them aware of the gigantic sunburned whitehead that was pulsating at my eye level. I just kept my mouth shut and tried to keep out of sight. It turned out that our female drill sergeant happened to be a medic with a bit of a sadistic side and pushed those of us who were potentially up for that job so that she could decide whether we were up for it. If not, you weren’t going to leave Ft Jackson.
I am not physically coordinated, so doing choreographed movement was something that drew a fair amount of unwanted attention my way. The last few weeks I spent most of the day just praying for the day to be over so that I could go to bed and mark that day off the calendar. DS Burt took to threatening a size 14 gauge needle IV to anyone who passed out from dehydration (Note: most IVs that are preformed in this situation are given with a 20 g needle, a much thinner gauge that is easier to insert into veins that have shrunk due to lack of fluids.)
One of the few times I saw my cell phone at basic was on Mother’s Day. I happened to call home during our family party and they passed around the phone so I got to talk to everyone. My mother had passed around some of the letters that I had written home and we joked about the raspberries taking over the garden at home and my impending graduation. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room that afternoon. Somehow these moments were forgiven and we never teased each other for getting teary eyed on the phone with loved ones. Our collective longing to be home with our families seemed to edit it from memory.
But before I knew it, those long days were over, and I was at rehearsal for graduation on the one patch of grass that was well maintained on post. Sixteen of us, all between 4’11” and 5’3” made up the front row in formation and stood for what seemed like hours in the early morning sun. Our drill sergeant had warned us not to pass out there on the field, and with that the one joke I uttered to him during the entire ten weeks escaped. “Don’t worry. If I fall, I’m too short to hit anyone on the way down.” I think that was the only time I saw him laugh that week.
It took me two trips to get all of my baggage to the bus stop that would take us away, but I was determined to leave. We sat in the 110 degree “breezeway” for three hours waiting for the briefing that we needed before boarding the plane to Ft Sam Houston. Once they did let us inside, it was just to hand out our graduation packets and shove us on a charter bus to the tarmac and board a chartered plane heading directly to the San Antonio airport in which there was another chartered bus heading directly for reception at Ft Sam.
Luckily when we arrived, the former drill sergeant that was in charge, Sgt Wilson, was too tired to yell, it was a nice change. The forty or so people I had travelled with from Ft Jackson had all been female, save one. So when we showed up at G Company, it was quite a surprise to see all males. We had all been told that medics are primarily women and had expected this time to be more estrogen filled than basic, we were out-numbered 5:1.The next six months would be a blur of long days starting at four am and ending long after the last light was shut off in the barracks. The biggest change was that I actually talked to people at AIT and just avoided trouble, which was really the only time we had to talk to the platoon sergeants in charge of us.
Morning formation was at five am, followed by an alternating schedule of either a three mile run or muscle failure; when we would essentially do as many push-ups and sit-ups as we could in order to cause muscle failure combined with some stretching and cardio. Breakfast was at 6:30 and there was barely enough time to take a shower and change before class at eight am. The first eight weeks our classes were very much like a high school anatomy class, where in we studied in order to take the NREMT test, which qualifies you to be an EMT- Basic. What they don’t tell you is that in the civilian world, that qualifies you to drive the truck and yell “Breathe!” when you aren’t giving oxygen, because that is all you are allowed.
The group I hung out with that summer had a few things in common; we loved to do anything that was free, had an eye for adventure and a taste for Texan beer. Oh… and we made friends with the local bartenders, that didn’t hurt. It was 100 degrees or warmer for over 100 days that summer, so what better place to spend as much of it as possible in water parks and the air-conditioned basement bars of downtown San Antonio sipping pina coladas and watching college football? It was me and Whitney and a rotating cast of guys from our company who could hold their liquor and liked to “ be the gentleman” and pay at least partial cab fare. Now that we’ve graduated, we are scattered around the country and the world. But we have a lot of cool pictures and common stories. Some of these even ended up on video and I’m glad most of it has stayed off of YouTube so far. I can always count on them to fill in the blanks of my memories of that summer.
So as I step out onto the porch in the morning and the damp wind envelops me, I am always surprised to find myself in the city, and not surrounded by dirt paths and tall pine trees that line the shore. It smells just like the lake that I spent my summers at as a child, the air filled with the clean scent that comes after a heavy rain, wild roses and rhododendrons in bloom and the sweet smell of decay. Everything about my daily life has changed and yet I feel drawn to things that remind me of home. I bake cakes that my grandmother baked, knit hats for the family members that I rarely see but talk to nearly every day, and I tend to the vegetable plants on the porch.
I didn’t know what to expect walking into the office that day. What I did know was this, I didn’t want to spend my entire life in the town that I grew up in. a place where everyone I knew was having children and working in dead end jobs. I wanted to travel, to see things outside of my comfortable existence in the Pacific Northwest. I guess that I wanted to have stories to tell to my children one day, should I decide to have any. What I would learn was that everything takes time in the military, and nothing is for certain until it is. It would be many months, filling out forms, documenting every move that I made as an adult, and getting myself physically prepared for the journey I was about to embark on.
It would have been very easy for me to stay in Spokane; my life had become very predictable. Going out to the local bar was like a mini high school reunion of sorts. I lived in a small cottage in the art district, close enough to downtown that I only drove to work or out of boredom. You could stand at the end of the driveway and watch the local musicians skateboard by. But I had always thought of my hometown a little like a black hole, no one got out for good. We had graduated less than ten years ago and yet very few of us were still kid-less, employed, and didn’t live with Mom and Dad. I knew I needed to get out before I ended up with five kids and a part-time job at Wal-Mart.
I had a strange approach to get ready for basic training. I wasn’t much of a runner and I knew that that was a big part of what would be a challenge for me, so I joined a running group. The Flying Irish meet every Thursday at five pm outside O’Doherty’s Irish Pub in Spokane. They take a three to four mile tour of downtown and then meet up at the pub for half price pints until closing. The fact that some of the guys from the Gonzaga soccer team were a part of the group was all the motivation I needed to show up every week and earn my shirt. Once you ran with the group six times you earned your shirt by climbing up onto the bar and telling an Irish joke. As for altering my diet, I just avoided all weekend movie marathons involving Johnny Depp and Tillamook Ice cream. Before I knew it the four months had passed and it was time to pack up my things and get the heck out.
I picked up Isabella at school and drove to Coeur d’Alene for my “Last Hurrah” lunch at The Beacon. I had to check into the hotel by five pm that afternoon; I was scheduled to leave on a plane in less than 48 hours for basic training at Ft Jackson, South Carolina. But for the next few hours, I was going to enjoy my Jamaican Jerk Salmon Sandwich and soak up all the fountain root beer and professional bull riding that bar had to offer, I was in Idaho after all.
I packed everything on the required list that my recruiter had given me, unaware that most of these items would be packed away for the duration of basic training because they didn’t want us getting too comfortable. Two full size towels, three sports bras, five pairs of travel underwear (made to be hand washed and air dried, even in super humid climates). The biggest bottle of shampoo and conditioner I could find, two bars of Irish Spring and a hand knit washcloth that I had made myself and one tube of lipgloss. I wrapped each item in a plastic bag and sadly had to check it at the airport due to the presence of shampoo. It was the one “luxury” I was allowing myself, and probably the only thing that saved me from having a q-tip for hair in the 100 percent humidity.
In a way, I’m kind of glad that I didn’t know what was in store for me. It would take fourteen hours and three planes zigzagging across the country before we would arrive in Columbia, South Carolina to board a charter bus that would drive us to post. Once we arrived at the gate, a large, blonde Hulk look-alike, with no neck, boarded our bus and ordered us to take out our military identification before we could enter. Most of us just looked at each other and wondered whether we really wanted to anymore, or if there was another option.
Unfortunately he allowed us to pass, and the charter bus drove us through the maze of windy roads in the dark, finally stopping at one of the many beige buildings that all looked alike. A tall drill sergeant boarded and ordered us off the bus immediately. I nearly fell getting down the steps, and struggling with my carry-on bag to join the others in formation. It was after eleven o’clock and it would be many hours before we would see the barracks. We had huge stacks of in processing paperwork to do and they would bring us to the chow hall to eat at two am, a sad introduction to the food that awaited us. Then it was to CIF to be sized for pt uniforms that we would wear until we were issued our ACUs. At four am, we were finally allowed to enter the barracks that would be our temporary residence for the next nine days until the drill sergeants from our company would come to pick us up.
The joke amongst the thirty or so of the girls that I was with at reception was that they were fattening us up to bring to slaughter, because all we did was get up at 4 am and take roll, go to breakfast and return to “clean the barracks” aka station someone in the hallway and the rest of us would sleep until a more reasonable hour and or write letters home. Then take roll before lunch and the same before dinner. I was still attempting to sleep off the jetlag that I was suffering from, so I slept most of the time. It was probably for the best, because there wouldn’t be much time for that soon.
The one thing that we did accomplish that week was a trip to the “Reception PX”. The special thing about this one was that there was no contraband available, no soda, candy or snacks. Only digital camouflage items, black spandex and cotton granny panties obviously mismarked bikini cut. What about this was bikini cut? I could have tucked the top into the massive sports bra that I would take to wearing two of in order to provide some support. When we returned to our quarters to store our purchases, I watched the other girls start marking their items with their name like in summer camp, and wondered who would want more of this crap?
On Sunday morning we brought all of our possessions downstairs along with all of our issued clothing and pretty calmly loaded onto the white school busses that would bring us the company on the other side of post. The ride over was eerily quiet. DS Carr was stationed on our bus, but we were lucky, and we didn’t know what we were in for. He was stoic; most of us were convinced that he was catatonic.
A soon as we pulled up in front of the “company area”, a group of portable classrooms surrounded by deep gravel pits, they pounced. At least three drill sergeants jumped onto the bus and were screaming commands all at once. It was chaos, you couldn’t discern one voice from the next and I just kept my head down and followed the herd in front of me and tried to block it out. I stumbled in the rocks and made my way toward the covered area where they were dividing us into platoons. I couldn’t understand the number that they gave me, so I just went to the group that the sole female drill sergeant was standing with. Boy was that a bad decision.
We had to stand with our bags over our heads for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a couple of minutes. One girl collapsed on top of her bag, pretending to pass out. But all that got her was a few quick slaps in the face “to revive her”. She would be one of the first to become a “Sick Call Ranger” and feign illness to get out of training, which in turn just gets you chaptered out via a medical discharge or incompetence, without the shiny bonus check the rest of us were here for.
Once we were allowed to go inside, the females were separated and instructed to dump out our bags. Of the items I was instructed to purchase and bring with me I was only able to keep the travel undies I was wearing along with the shampoo and conditioner I had packed (and my hair thanks them). Everything else was packed up in our personal bags and stored behind a locked door in the female restroom. We were organized alphabetically and assigned to our bunks and corresponding lockers. I was trying to be nice when I let my bunkmate take the bottom bunk, despite the fact that I am 5’1” on a good day. I spent the next ten weeks silently cursing that decision every time I nearly face planted on the tile floor.
Over the next few weeks the shock of what I had done wore off and I began to feel homesick. At home I don’t go four days without talking to my mother, how was I going to go ten weeks? The one thing that made me feel better, closer to home was writing letters. I hand wrote at least two pages directed by the red lens on my flashlight. I wrote about everything, my bunkmate and her neurosis (holding it and not going #2 for weeks), the girls who refused to bathe, and who was in trouble. I was probably the only one in our company who wore out a bulb in their army issue flashlight from overuse. But mostly I just wrote about what I missed about home, what I knew I was missing; my twin nephews, then just eight months old were learning to walk, my two year old niece started to talk or that I wouldn’t be there for the birth of the nephew that my sister had just announced she was having. It helped that I received a few funny letters from my family with pictures of everyone. I started a list of food that I was craving, mostly fresh vegetables and baked goods from the Greek Festival or just anything that hadn’t been fried and/or removed from a gigantic aluminum can.
Despite the fact the heat and humidity that comes with summers in South Carolina, the males never ceased to believe that they were still attractive. Nothing could dampen their spirits or make them aware of the gigantic sunburned whitehead that was pulsating at my eye level. I just kept my mouth shut and tried to keep out of sight. It turned out that our female drill sergeant happened to be a medic with a bit of a sadistic side and pushed those of us who were potentially up for that job so that she could decide whether we were up for it. If not, you weren’t going to leave Ft Jackson.
I am not physically coordinated, so doing choreographed movement was something that drew a fair amount of unwanted attention my way. The last few weeks I spent most of the day just praying for the day to be over so that I could go to bed and mark that day off the calendar. DS Burt took to threatening a size 14 gauge needle IV to anyone who passed out from dehydration (Note: most IVs that are preformed in this situation are given with a 20 g needle, a much thinner gauge that is easier to insert into veins that have shrunk due to lack of fluids.)
One of the few times I saw my cell phone at basic was on Mother’s Day. I happened to call home during our family party and they passed around the phone so I got to talk to everyone. My mother had passed around some of the letters that I had written home and we joked about the raspberries taking over the garden at home and my impending graduation. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room that afternoon. Somehow these moments were forgiven and we never teased each other for getting teary eyed on the phone with loved ones. Our collective longing to be home with our families seemed to edit it from memory.
But before I knew it, those long days were over, and I was at rehearsal for graduation on the one patch of grass that was well maintained on post. Sixteen of us, all between 4’11” and 5’3” made up the front row in formation and stood for what seemed like hours in the early morning sun. Our drill sergeant had warned us not to pass out there on the field, and with that the one joke I uttered to him during the entire ten weeks escaped. “Don’t worry. If I fall, I’m too short to hit anyone on the way down.” I think that was the only time I saw him laugh that week.
It took me two trips to get all of my baggage to the bus stop that would take us away, but I was determined to leave. We sat in the 110 degree “breezeway” for three hours waiting for the briefing that we needed before boarding the plane to Ft Sam Houston. Once they did let us inside, it was just to hand out our graduation packets and shove us on a charter bus to the tarmac and board a chartered plane heading directly to the San Antonio airport in which there was another chartered bus heading directly for reception at Ft Sam.
Luckily when we arrived, the former drill sergeant that was in charge, Sgt Wilson, was too tired to yell, it was a nice change. The forty or so people I had travelled with from Ft Jackson had all been female, save one. So when we showed up at G Company, it was quite a surprise to see all males. We had all been told that medics are primarily women and had expected this time to be more estrogen filled than basic, we were out-numbered 5:1.The next six months would be a blur of long days starting at four am and ending long after the last light was shut off in the barracks. The biggest change was that I actually talked to people at AIT and just avoided trouble, which was really the only time we had to talk to the platoon sergeants in charge of us.
Morning formation was at five am, followed by an alternating schedule of either a three mile run or muscle failure; when we would essentially do as many push-ups and sit-ups as we could in order to cause muscle failure combined with some stretching and cardio. Breakfast was at 6:30 and there was barely enough time to take a shower and change before class at eight am. The first eight weeks our classes were very much like a high school anatomy class, where in we studied in order to take the NREMT test, which qualifies you to be an EMT- Basic. What they don’t tell you is that in the civilian world, that qualifies you to drive the truck and yell “Breathe!” when you aren’t giving oxygen, because that is all you are allowed.
The group I hung out with that summer had a few things in common; we loved to do anything that was free, had an eye for adventure and a taste for Texan beer. Oh… and we made friends with the local bartenders, that didn’t hurt. It was 100 degrees or warmer for over 100 days that summer, so what better place to spend as much of it as possible in water parks and the air-conditioned basement bars of downtown San Antonio sipping pina coladas and watching college football? It was me and Whitney and a rotating cast of guys from our company who could hold their liquor and liked to “ be the gentleman” and pay at least partial cab fare. Now that we’ve graduated, we are scattered around the country and the world. But we have a lot of cool pictures and common stories. Some of these even ended up on video and I’m glad most of it has stayed off of YouTube so far. I can always count on them to fill in the blanks of my memories of that summer.
So as I step out onto the porch in the morning and the damp wind envelops me, I am always surprised to find myself in the city, and not surrounded by dirt paths and tall pine trees that line the shore. It smells just like the lake that I spent my summers at as a child, the air filled with the clean scent that comes after a heavy rain, wild roses and rhododendrons in bloom and the sweet smell of decay. Everything about my daily life has changed and yet I feel drawn to things that remind me of home. I bake cakes that my grandmother baked, knit hats for the family members that I rarely see but talk to nearly every day, and I tend to the vegetable plants on the porch.
First Paper
“Wake up my little sunshine. Are you ready to go to the ocean?” my mother cooed. “I don’t wanna go to the ocean. There’s octopuses there,” was my sister’s response. Not yet four, she didn’t understand the significance of this trip. Though none of us knew yet, it was to be the last true family vacation; before teenage angst would take a strong hold on all family gatherings, before any of us children would start working, before the grandchildren would enter the world and we would all be too busy to all get together as a whole, save major holidays.
As we piled into “The Loser Cruiser”, an aquamarine Chevy Lumina slightly reminiscent of the Jetson-mobile, my family of six was already slightly uncomfortable. It was early July, and from my spot in the backseat, tucked in between the padded Eddie Bauer cooler and a stack of sleeping bags in the back row, the cool air never reached me. I was fifteen that summer and it would be a long six hour drive, where in I would block out my siblings very existence by playing the same mid-nineties rock tapes on loop via my walkman and nearly finish reading a Patricia Cornwell novel.
Most of the drive down is a blur to me, if it weren’t for the videotape and photos of the trip, I don’t know if we would remember the best parts. Like when we crossed the fresh rumble strips along I- 82 in order for all of us kids to trudge through a wheat field to pose next to the lonely tree that made up the Connell National Forest (which, as far as I know, no longer exists). The soundtrack : Bruce Springsteen – Born in the U.S.A., The Beach Boys – Greatest Hits, and Boston- Boston. We would tease our parents about this mercilessly, and beg them to put on something else, anything else. But this was many years ago, when there was no such thing as 5 disc changers, or iPods. I think my parents only packed ten cds, but these were the only ones that made it to film.
We made it to Seaside at sunset with little issue. This is a lot to ask when you have two teenagers, one child on the brink of adolescence, and a toddler in your keep. My younger sister’s pubescent horns were just starting to show, mostly she just whined a lot, but that was to be expected. We stopped by the manager’s cottage a few blocks away and picked up the keys for the tiny house that would be our residence for the next nine days. Our rented abode was a block and a half from the promenade that runs along the beach in Seaside. And though the sun would only make an appearance the day we left, none the less, it was our sanctuary.
As we carried our bags into the house, I remember being very annoyed; I had to share a room with my eleven year old sister again. I “offered” to sleep downstairs on the other couch, where my brother would take up residence, to avoid the snoring and general irritation that she caused. But my parents wouldn’t hear of it, it was only nine days… but it would be a long nine days.
That night, as always, Klarchen kept me up for longer than I care to remember, asking me questions. She always liked to pull this when we were camping, since we hadn’t shared a room in a few years and I was her captive audience. She was just lucky that I never went to find the duct tape when she started asking why the sun rose in the east, or some other equally open ended question just as I was nearly asleep.
We dressed quickly in the morning, despite sharing one tiny bathroom on the main floor that had inadequate ventilation for its size. All of us were excited to be so close to the ocean and the treasures it could possibly hold. Our parents took us down to the shore and around town that day, acclimating us to the town, in the coming week we would be sent out on our own. Being the oldest I was put in charge and given an allotted $30 a day to be divided equally between the three of us; my brother and I with instructions not to ditch our sister. As we wandered from shop to shop, the promenade radiating warmth beneath our flip flops, gathering gag gifts, candy and and toys we could quietly smack each other with when no one was looking. Sand Dollar Square was a maze of sidewalk stands boasting cheezy tee shirts and trinkets. The smell fresh popcorn and carmelized sugar, serpentines of shiny homemade salt water taffy filling our day.
I believe it was at the Seaside Aquarium that I found a tide tracker. Later that night we gathered empty Tupperware containers from under the kitchen sink and the few kiddie buckets that were on the sun porch of the house and headed down to the water with our father at 10:30. Just as the calendar had instructed, we arrived just as the tide was at its lowest point, and we had the best chance of stumbling upon some swag of the shore. The Doc Marten knockoff sandals that I wore soaked up the seawater like a sponge as we eased into the shallow water’s edge. They became so heavy and cumbersome, tunneling into the sand and subsequendtly being drawn away by the waves. I grew tired of chasing them down in the moonlight, and slipped them off and tucked them in the pail with my treasures.
All in all, we found a dozen whole, live sand dollars, though many more broken pieces, lots of mussel and conch - like shells and a fish that had been trapped in a tide pool (he looked like a palm size purple-ish shark, but he wasn’t). We lugged it all back to the bungalow that night, with the understanding that we were to release the fish the next day. Before meeting up with our parents the next day before lunch, us kids did one better and stopped by the aquarium to help identify our found fish, which they decided to add to their collection.
The next evening, after returning from our adventures in town, my younger brother started to feel a bit queasy. My father joined us shortly after with a big bucket from KFC, one whiff of that chicken and we didn’t see much of my brother for the next twelve hours. By morning my brother had earned the nickname “Sir Pukes-A-Lot”, which still lives on in our family legend. Luckily, none of the rest of us developed any symptoms of his mysterious stomach flu, probably due to the fact that my mother quarentined us girls upstairs, away from the sickly one… and the only television.
Despite the fact that I moved here to be closer to this spot that I enjoyed so much as a child, I have yet to make it back to Seaside. I almost want to wait for summer, when the arcades will open and be swarming with sticky-fingered, unsupervised children like we were, when I can find a worthy opponent to reclaim my title as skeetball champion. I still have many of the knicknacks that I picked up on this trip, including the black Oregon Coast coffee mug that I found in a grab bag at the Seaside Aquarium and has followed me to every house I’ve lived in since, and the Dennis the Menace lunchbox which holds my hand sewing supplies and buttons.
As we piled into “The Loser Cruiser”, an aquamarine Chevy Lumina slightly reminiscent of the Jetson-mobile, my family of six was already slightly uncomfortable. It was early July, and from my spot in the backseat, tucked in between the padded Eddie Bauer cooler and a stack of sleeping bags in the back row, the cool air never reached me. I was fifteen that summer and it would be a long six hour drive, where in I would block out my siblings very existence by playing the same mid-nineties rock tapes on loop via my walkman and nearly finish reading a Patricia Cornwell novel.
Most of the drive down is a blur to me, if it weren’t for the videotape and photos of the trip, I don’t know if we would remember the best parts. Like when we crossed the fresh rumble strips along I- 82 in order for all of us kids to trudge through a wheat field to pose next to the lonely tree that made up the Connell National Forest (which, as far as I know, no longer exists). The soundtrack : Bruce Springsteen – Born in the U.S.A., The Beach Boys – Greatest Hits, and Boston- Boston. We would tease our parents about this mercilessly, and beg them to put on something else, anything else. But this was many years ago, when there was no such thing as 5 disc changers, or iPods. I think my parents only packed ten cds, but these were the only ones that made it to film.
We made it to Seaside at sunset with little issue. This is a lot to ask when you have two teenagers, one child on the brink of adolescence, and a toddler in your keep. My younger sister’s pubescent horns were just starting to show, mostly she just whined a lot, but that was to be expected. We stopped by the manager’s cottage a few blocks away and picked up the keys for the tiny house that would be our residence for the next nine days. Our rented abode was a block and a half from the promenade that runs along the beach in Seaside. And though the sun would only make an appearance the day we left, none the less, it was our sanctuary.
As we carried our bags into the house, I remember being very annoyed; I had to share a room with my eleven year old sister again. I “offered” to sleep downstairs on the other couch, where my brother would take up residence, to avoid the snoring and general irritation that she caused. But my parents wouldn’t hear of it, it was only nine days… but it would be a long nine days.
That night, as always, Klarchen kept me up for longer than I care to remember, asking me questions. She always liked to pull this when we were camping, since we hadn’t shared a room in a few years and I was her captive audience. She was just lucky that I never went to find the duct tape when she started asking why the sun rose in the east, or some other equally open ended question just as I was nearly asleep.
We dressed quickly in the morning, despite sharing one tiny bathroom on the main floor that had inadequate ventilation for its size. All of us were excited to be so close to the ocean and the treasures it could possibly hold. Our parents took us down to the shore and around town that day, acclimating us to the town, in the coming week we would be sent out on our own. Being the oldest I was put in charge and given an allotted $30 a day to be divided equally between the three of us; my brother and I with instructions not to ditch our sister. As we wandered from shop to shop, the promenade radiating warmth beneath our flip flops, gathering gag gifts, candy and and toys we could quietly smack each other with when no one was looking. Sand Dollar Square was a maze of sidewalk stands boasting cheezy tee shirts and trinkets. The smell fresh popcorn and carmelized sugar, serpentines of shiny homemade salt water taffy filling our day.
I believe it was at the Seaside Aquarium that I found a tide tracker. Later that night we gathered empty Tupperware containers from under the kitchen sink and the few kiddie buckets that were on the sun porch of the house and headed down to the water with our father at 10:30. Just as the calendar had instructed, we arrived just as the tide was at its lowest point, and we had the best chance of stumbling upon some swag of the shore. The Doc Marten knockoff sandals that I wore soaked up the seawater like a sponge as we eased into the shallow water’s edge. They became so heavy and cumbersome, tunneling into the sand and subsequendtly being drawn away by the waves. I grew tired of chasing them down in the moonlight, and slipped them off and tucked them in the pail with my treasures.
All in all, we found a dozen whole, live sand dollars, though many more broken pieces, lots of mussel and conch - like shells and a fish that had been trapped in a tide pool (he looked like a palm size purple-ish shark, but he wasn’t). We lugged it all back to the bungalow that night, with the understanding that we were to release the fish the next day. Before meeting up with our parents the next day before lunch, us kids did one better and stopped by the aquarium to help identify our found fish, which they decided to add to their collection.
The next evening, after returning from our adventures in town, my younger brother started to feel a bit queasy. My father joined us shortly after with a big bucket from KFC, one whiff of that chicken and we didn’t see much of my brother for the next twelve hours. By morning my brother had earned the nickname “Sir Pukes-A-Lot”, which still lives on in our family legend. Luckily, none of the rest of us developed any symptoms of his mysterious stomach flu, probably due to the fact that my mother quarentined us girls upstairs, away from the sickly one… and the only television.
Despite the fact that I moved here to be closer to this spot that I enjoyed so much as a child, I have yet to make it back to Seaside. I almost want to wait for summer, when the arcades will open and be swarming with sticky-fingered, unsupervised children like we were, when I can find a worthy opponent to reclaim my title as skeetball champion. I still have many of the knicknacks that I picked up on this trip, including the black Oregon Coast coffee mug that I found in a grab bag at the Seaside Aquarium and has followed me to every house I’ve lived in since, and the Dennis the Menace lunchbox which holds my hand sewing supplies and buttons.
The Un-Stepford Reality
As part of our final in my human relations class we had to write a five year plan for what we hoped to accomplish. I remember fantasising of owning my own restaurant, living in some far off place and starting a family. Newsflash,this was nearly seven years ago, and none of those things have really happened.
Coincidently, two weeks before I would have to register for classes for spring quarter, my parents informed me that I wouldneed to pay half my tuiton. I don't even have a clear memory of the exact situation, but I did know that I had beenliving on * "Broke Food" for months, and didn't have that kind of scratch lying around. I must have informed my mother of my situation because she took pity on me, and even let me move home for a while to pay off the credit card thatI had been using to purchase the youth bus passes and supplement my meager wages at the restaurant to make rent.
The plan changed...drastically. I had been fighting tooth and nail for hours at two, sometimes three restaurants at a time trying to make rent and keep my bosses happy, and I had just had enough. Years pass and I still hadn't gone back to school,I finally give in to the fact that I'm never going to make much more than minimum wage and possibly some tips in a restaurant. My younger sister tells us she's pregnant, then a year later my brother. That was it, I knew that I didn't want to end up with a bunch of kids and some flaky guy - which desribed most of the 20 something year old males I was surrounded by at the time.
Genetically predisposed to be a collector, I tried to fight my urges and gave away most of the belongings I aquired. Kitchen appliances to friends and my siblings, art supplies to the children's art museum downtown, the rest to goodwill. The guy at the donation center asked me more than once if I wasgetting rid of a bad roommate, I was tempted to tell him yes. I kept four plastic tubs, all I believed my parents would tolerate/ not notice in their crawl space : one with some nice clothing, one full of books, another with cds and a few movies and the last with yarn and the expensive watercolors that I had aquired slowly over the years as I could afford them. For years my mother had been trying to talk me into joining the military. She said that it would do wonders for me, make me less shy. It was very much like stepping off the diving board and just hoping there was still a pool of water to catch you.
I packed one little bag and boarded one plane after another, bouncing around the country and finally arriving in Columbia, South Carolina. I had only heardof this place in books and movies, but I was stationed there for basic training. I had expected something differant, something more foregin I guess. Really, Ft Jackson didn't look that differant from where I grew up, the major differance that I noticed was the beach grass that seemed very out of place that far inland, and the beach sand that surrounded the cookie cutter buildings we were hurried between. Very concrete, and very seventies style.The next couple of months were a blur of sorts, the day to day events documented for posterity in the drawn out handwritten letters that I sent almost daily to my family back in Washington. We had never been seperated by much more than a couple hours drive when us kids would go on school trips.
Though communication got easier once basic training was over and I was stationed in Texas for medic training, I still felt very disconnected from my family; I missed holidays, barbeques and the birth of my nephew, I shipped presents home, so at least they wouldn't think I had forgotten about them.
Although I missed my family terribly, I knew that I couldn't go back to living in my hometown. Assigned to a unit in Seattle, I knew that left a prettybig chunk of land along the west coast that I could concievably commute to for our monthly drills. After scouring the internet and comparing rent pricesand local activities, I decided on Portland. Seaside, where my family used to vacation and I had always enjoyed, was about an hour away, and it was a very pedestrian friendly town. Oh, and studios were $900 in Seattle and I hate driving in the hills there, aka most of the downtown area.
I spent four days in Spokane after I flew in from San Antonio after our AIT graduation. In my experience that is about the limit of time I can spendat my parents house before they start assigning me chores and asking where I am or why I've been out all night (I just forgot to bring housekeys and didn't want to wake them at 3am to let me in, so I crashed at a friend's house. No need to call be four times between six and eight-thirty, ya know). Loading up the pickup truck that I borrowed from my father to transprort my few belongings south to Oregon, I didn't even consider that I should have stayed a bit longer, visited my nieces and nephews that I hadn't seen since Christmas. I had an exciting life waiting six hours south, and a few snowflurries weren't going to deter me.
It's been about eight months since I moved now. Ditched the roommate that I was convinced would make it cheaper to live here (it didn't). Found a walkup apartment to stow the my treasures but I still find something lacking. I really should have waited longer to go back to my job, I was on military leave. It really isn't as fun, or even tolerable as I remember. I don't have the freedom to go visit my family when school or monthly drills aren't limiting me. I want to go visit my old teachers at the alternative/ arty high school that I graduated from, but can't stomach the fact that I would have to admit to my state in life. I really thought that I would have accomplished more. They have this formyou have to fill out when you stop by the school; they take your picture, then it asks about your job I would rather put student than admit that I work there, it almost feels like I've failed. It's hard to even look check facebook, nine out of ten people I graduated with are married and most of them have kids. The most I can really lay claim to is that I escaped the black hole that is our hometown and have never recieved welfare benefits (oh, and no baby daddy with five kids in tow.)
Maybe there was just too much "Stepford", not enough reality in my expectation of what my life would be like at twenty-six. My aunts and uncles had married fairly young and had at least one child, my mother the youngest of five - I never expected to be this close to thirty with a yarn collection and not so much as a goldfish as a housemate. Each of my closest siblings (both younger) have a pair of kids, and I'm starting to wonder what the family saysabout me when I'm not there. About three years ago, shortly after my niece was born, I was at a baby shower with my mother and a bunch of her friends. Over mimosas on a Saturday afternoon, they were talking about their children. I just happened to be within ear shot when one of them motioned toward me,coincidently holding said niece, and they asked my mother when I was going to have kids already. I don't remember the exact quote, but her response wassomething to the effect of, I had some time, but my parents were going to start badgering me about it before too long. I guess the appearance of three othergrandkids and my joining the military has stuffed the proverbeal sock in it for now. I have yet to hear a peep from them.
Queen of casseroles that my mother is, there were some things that she didn't have time for raising us rambuncious four.From her I learned the basics : how to sew on a button, iron a dress shirt and calm a screaming infant, but I expanded on this knowledge as I grew older. Though occasionally I sew a button onto something I have hand knit, I never iron(I don't even own an iron, that is what ten minutes in the dryer with a wet sock is for: strangely something Mom taught me during high school), and the only babies I'm calming aren't my own. Yes, I am the baby whisperer, a beer in one hand and a formula bottle in the other, I know my place. Occasionally it seems strange that my two younger siblingshave children and I do not, but I have so much more freedom (and no baby mama drama to boot). I travel too often to keep a more than a fern, let alone a toddler. For now, I occupy a tidy little walk-up apartment filled with handmade items and treasures from my travels. It is kind of nice to have the option to stay up to make jam at night and knit a fewrows on a hat, without worrying of waking anyone. I can sleep in and go for a run in the morning. It may be three orfour hours into my day before I speak to another human (until I can learn to order coffee by sign language that is). Someday I will have that place with canned fruit and veggies filling the cupboards, wool spilling from the closet waves lapping at the shore, but until then, this place will do.
*"Broke Food" - a ratatouille of sorts with lots of garlic, mushrooms and corn, that can be served with pasta or watered down for soup. One big pot usually lasts far longer that I can stand to eat the same meal for, usually about a week or so. Costs about $7-10 to make, including a $2.50 five pound bag of pasta and/or top ramen to mix it up a bit.I've always been far too proud to apply for food stamps, instead I make the sacrifice and live very modestly from time to time.
Coincidently, two weeks before I would have to register for classes for spring quarter, my parents informed me that I wouldneed to pay half my tuiton. I don't even have a clear memory of the exact situation, but I did know that I had beenliving on * "Broke Food" for months, and didn't have that kind of scratch lying around. I must have informed my mother of my situation because she took pity on me, and even let me move home for a while to pay off the credit card thatI had been using to purchase the youth bus passes and supplement my meager wages at the restaurant to make rent.
The plan changed...drastically. I had been fighting tooth and nail for hours at two, sometimes three restaurants at a time trying to make rent and keep my bosses happy, and I had just had enough. Years pass and I still hadn't gone back to school,I finally give in to the fact that I'm never going to make much more than minimum wage and possibly some tips in a restaurant. My younger sister tells us she's pregnant, then a year later my brother. That was it, I knew that I didn't want to end up with a bunch of kids and some flaky guy - which desribed most of the 20 something year old males I was surrounded by at the time.
Genetically predisposed to be a collector, I tried to fight my urges and gave away most of the belongings I aquired. Kitchen appliances to friends and my siblings, art supplies to the children's art museum downtown, the rest to goodwill. The guy at the donation center asked me more than once if I wasgetting rid of a bad roommate, I was tempted to tell him yes. I kept four plastic tubs, all I believed my parents would tolerate/ not notice in their crawl space : one with some nice clothing, one full of books, another with cds and a few movies and the last with yarn and the expensive watercolors that I had aquired slowly over the years as I could afford them. For years my mother had been trying to talk me into joining the military. She said that it would do wonders for me, make me less shy. It was very much like stepping off the diving board and just hoping there was still a pool of water to catch you.
I packed one little bag and boarded one plane after another, bouncing around the country and finally arriving in Columbia, South Carolina. I had only heardof this place in books and movies, but I was stationed there for basic training. I had expected something differant, something more foregin I guess. Really, Ft Jackson didn't look that differant from where I grew up, the major differance that I noticed was the beach grass that seemed very out of place that far inland, and the beach sand that surrounded the cookie cutter buildings we were hurried between. Very concrete, and very seventies style.The next couple of months were a blur of sorts, the day to day events documented for posterity in the drawn out handwritten letters that I sent almost daily to my family back in Washington. We had never been seperated by much more than a couple hours drive when us kids would go on school trips.
Though communication got easier once basic training was over and I was stationed in Texas for medic training, I still felt very disconnected from my family; I missed holidays, barbeques and the birth of my nephew, I shipped presents home, so at least they wouldn't think I had forgotten about them.
Although I missed my family terribly, I knew that I couldn't go back to living in my hometown. Assigned to a unit in Seattle, I knew that left a prettybig chunk of land along the west coast that I could concievably commute to for our monthly drills. After scouring the internet and comparing rent pricesand local activities, I decided on Portland. Seaside, where my family used to vacation and I had always enjoyed, was about an hour away, and it was a very pedestrian friendly town. Oh, and studios were $900 in Seattle and I hate driving in the hills there, aka most of the downtown area.
I spent four days in Spokane after I flew in from San Antonio after our AIT graduation. In my experience that is about the limit of time I can spendat my parents house before they start assigning me chores and asking where I am or why I've been out all night (I just forgot to bring housekeys and didn't want to wake them at 3am to let me in, so I crashed at a friend's house. No need to call be four times between six and eight-thirty, ya know). Loading up the pickup truck that I borrowed from my father to transprort my few belongings south to Oregon, I didn't even consider that I should have stayed a bit longer, visited my nieces and nephews that I hadn't seen since Christmas. I had an exciting life waiting six hours south, and a few snowflurries weren't going to deter me.
It's been about eight months since I moved now. Ditched the roommate that I was convinced would make it cheaper to live here (it didn't). Found a walkup apartment to stow the my treasures but I still find something lacking. I really should have waited longer to go back to my job, I was on military leave. It really isn't as fun, or even tolerable as I remember. I don't have the freedom to go visit my family when school or monthly drills aren't limiting me. I want to go visit my old teachers at the alternative/ arty high school that I graduated from, but can't stomach the fact that I would have to admit to my state in life. I really thought that I would have accomplished more. They have this formyou have to fill out when you stop by the school; they take your picture, then it asks about your job I would rather put student than admit that I work there, it almost feels like I've failed. It's hard to even look check facebook, nine out of ten people I graduated with are married and most of them have kids. The most I can really lay claim to is that I escaped the black hole that is our hometown and have never recieved welfare benefits (oh, and no baby daddy with five kids in tow.)
Maybe there was just too much "Stepford", not enough reality in my expectation of what my life would be like at twenty-six. My aunts and uncles had married fairly young and had at least one child, my mother the youngest of five - I never expected to be this close to thirty with a yarn collection and not so much as a goldfish as a housemate. Each of my closest siblings (both younger) have a pair of kids, and I'm starting to wonder what the family saysabout me when I'm not there. About three years ago, shortly after my niece was born, I was at a baby shower with my mother and a bunch of her friends. Over mimosas on a Saturday afternoon, they were talking about their children. I just happened to be within ear shot when one of them motioned toward me,coincidently holding said niece, and they asked my mother when I was going to have kids already. I don't remember the exact quote, but her response wassomething to the effect of, I had some time, but my parents were going to start badgering me about it before too long. I guess the appearance of three othergrandkids and my joining the military has stuffed the proverbeal sock in it for now. I have yet to hear a peep from them.
Queen of casseroles that my mother is, there were some things that she didn't have time for raising us rambuncious four.From her I learned the basics : how to sew on a button, iron a dress shirt and calm a screaming infant, but I expanded on this knowledge as I grew older. Though occasionally I sew a button onto something I have hand knit, I never iron(I don't even own an iron, that is what ten minutes in the dryer with a wet sock is for: strangely something Mom taught me during high school), and the only babies I'm calming aren't my own. Yes, I am the baby whisperer, a beer in one hand and a formula bottle in the other, I know my place. Occasionally it seems strange that my two younger siblingshave children and I do not, but I have so much more freedom (and no baby mama drama to boot). I travel too often to keep a more than a fern, let alone a toddler. For now, I occupy a tidy little walk-up apartment filled with handmade items and treasures from my travels. It is kind of nice to have the option to stay up to make jam at night and knit a fewrows on a hat, without worrying of waking anyone. I can sleep in and go for a run in the morning. It may be three orfour hours into my day before I speak to another human (until I can learn to order coffee by sign language that is). Someday I will have that place with canned fruit and veggies filling the cupboards, wool spilling from the closet waves lapping at the shore, but until then, this place will do.
*"Broke Food" - a ratatouille of sorts with lots of garlic, mushrooms and corn, that can be served with pasta or watered down for soup. One big pot usually lasts far longer that I can stand to eat the same meal for, usually about a week or so. Costs about $7-10 to make, including a $2.50 five pound bag of pasta and/or top ramen to mix it up a bit.I've always been far too proud to apply for food stamps, instead I make the sacrifice and live very modestly from time to time.
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