Just a Small Town Girl...
I was born in the Fall of 1977, and grew up on Fraggle Rock and the Bee Gees. We started off in a small southwest Missouri town, until 1983, when we moved to a larger town closer to St. Louis because my dad (a teacher, at the time) got a job opportunity.
Prior to my sister coming along when I was almost 5, I have a few memories of going to the driving range with my dad, riding my trike in his shop at school, singing in the kitchen with my mom, and roller skating down the sidewalk all the way to the funeral home down the street. When my mom was about to have my sister, I recall my jealousy with vivid clarity - Mom sitting on the edge of my twin bed, pregnant and crying, because I had just screamed at her, "You're going to love this baby more than you love me!" When she was born, she was non-threatening enough, but I did get to hear frequently, "She's such a good baby - she never cries! Nothing like Christi was as a baby." In their defense, I was a colicky baby. Having had 2 babies of my own now, it was a reasonable comparison to make, but I can still hear it in my head pretty clearly.
We moved when I was getting ready to start the first grade and my sister was a year old. I made a few new friends in the neighborhood, and we quickly found a church home. That part wasn't hard - it was a Catholic town, and we were Baptists. In a town with 7 Catholic churches, and 1 Baptist church, the choice was pretty much made for us.
I remember when we first began to attend church there, meeting in the basement for Sunday morning services until the "big" church was built (we Baptists love to build), standing in between my alto mom and my baritone dad - not realizing that I was learning to hear harmony in every song I'd ever listen to, because I heard it from my parents every Sunday morning, singing from the hymnal. (Yes, 'wall music' is still difficult for me and I have not made the transition from reading actual music in a hymnal to just reading lyrics on a powerpoint without much consternation.)
When I was in the third grade, one Sunday during the Invitation, "with every head bowed and every eye closed" and likely during the tenth refrain of "Just As I Am", I felt a tug. In our church, we called this "getting the call," meaning that the Holy Spirit was calling me to accept Christ. However, because very few kids my age had "gone forward," (what you do after you get the call - when you literally walk forward to the front of the church and announce that you'd accepted Christ, to a round of applause from the congregation), I told my mom about the feeling after church. We sat in our living room and I told her that I thought I'd been called. She responded, "I've been hoping this would happen soon!"
The following Sunday, when the organ started playing "Have Thine Own Way," Mom and I walked forward to the front of the church and talked to Brother Monte about what I had felt. He excitedly announced my decision to the congregation, and asked my mom to come from the front pew to stand with me so that my new brothers and sisters could come by to shake my hand. "Those are tears of joy," Monte described as my mom came to stand by my side. I am sure that my dad was there also, but I don't remember him in the front pew. I'll have to ask my mom about that, because some things just stand out better than others.
Growing up in the mid-80's was a far cry from how my own kids have it these days. Then, the rules were "be back home by the time the street lights come on," and "stay away from those boys on 4-wheelers. They're dangerous." I wasn't sure whether my parents meant that the 4-wheelers were dangerous or the boys on them were, so I stayed away from both...forming my first vision of what a Rebel Guy would look like. He'd be on wheels unfit for street use.
I remember 'playing school' and 'playing house,' sometimes with one of my 2 neighborhood girlfriends, sometimes by myself. My dad had a golf shop in half of our basement, and my 'house' and 'school room' were set up in the other half. I would arrange my Cabbage Patch Kids in their respective desks or swings (depending on what I was playing) and lecture them on manners and paying attention. Looking back, I wonder how much of this my dad overheard and had to keep from laughing at what would clearly have been early signs of my control issues.
The same year that I became a Christian, over Easter break, my mother's father died unexpectedly. In hindsight, this was the beginning of a slow decline for our family. My mother's best friend drove us the hour from our house to my grandparent's, me clutching my Paw Paw Bunny in the backseat and quietly crying.
My mom was unabashedly a Daddy's Girl, and my sister and I loved him as a force larger than life. Funny, warm and generous, he was what a grandpa should be. His nickname for my toddling sister was "Paw Paw's Sweetie Pie," but because she struggled to talk with a pacifier in her mouth, she referred to herself as "Paw Paw's Peetie Pie." While my grandmother was (and still is) punctual, clean, articulate and structured, Grandpa was the one who would throw us in the pool, tell stories about his adventures as a small plane pilot, and play the piano by ear.
My mom is a combination of the two of them - exceptionally creative, musically talented, silly, structured, driven, organized, and crazy smart.
Every summer, I would spend one week with each set of grandparents. While they lived about 20 minutes apart from each other, my experiences at their respective homes were very different. At my maternal grandparents', I'd swim, play on the swing set, watch "Somewhere in Time" and read. At my paternal grandparents', Grandma would teach me how to crochet, buy me cassette tapes, bake chocolate waffles, and garage sale until Grandpa came home from work. Grandma was a great teacher and very creative - sewing constantly and a very good artist. She also had what I see now as an anxiety around my grandfather. Dinner was always ready when he walked in the door, and when he would get angry at the cows in his sleep (he was a part-time farmer...and a sleep talker), she would calmly say, "Now, now, Curtie..." until he would quiet down. But Grandpa was the affectionate one, really. He's the one who would insist on a kiss on the cheek before I went to bed or left their house, and he was the one I saw cry years later when I went to spend time with them and my dad after my parents separated. While I noticed his Busch beer can at every dinner, I didn't think much of it, as a kid. I did not have a need to think much of it - alcohol was never in my own home. As I grew up in the Baptist church, I assumed we didn't have alcohol because it was a sin. Now I know the absence of alcohol in our home was a bit more complicated than that.
A few years after we moved into town, Mom took a job teaching at a nearby high school, and Dad took a job as a welder for a power company. I went to elementary school in the town where we lived, while my mom taught in the next town over. After I went through the first quarter of 5th grade with barely passing grades, I turned it around and got nearly all A's on my second quarter report card - the beginning of my academic perfectionism. But in the middle of my 5th grade year, after a semester of anxiety from school that caused health problems for me (I was diagnosed with "nerves" and even had disgusting medicine that Mom would mix into soda for me to take when my "nerves" acted up), my parents pulled me from our district and sent me to school in the district where my mom taught.
I remember my last day in that classroom very clearly. I had undergone a medical procedure and had missed a day of school for it. Prior to going into the hospital, I had asked my teacher if I could do my classwork in pen, because I preferred it to pencil (still do). Although she told me I could, when I returned and we traded papers in class to grade, my classmate ratted on me to the class. "Christi has done her work in PEN, Mrs. Aston!" To my horror, my teacher smirked and replied, "Christi thinks she's special." When I went home that night and told my parents, the rage in my father exploded. He grabbed a trash bag and announced, "Get in the car. We're going to go clean out your locker! You're going with your mom to school tomorrow." We did, and I did.
Some things in my memory are shades of gray and Swiss-cheesy. Other things are etched in stone and painted with florescent colors.
To deal with the stress of being the new kid in a school where the students had been together since preschool, I began writing short stories. They usually involved a smart, non-nonsense girl (me - clearly) who, despite being the class nerd, somehow manages to land the rebellious captain of the football team.
Boy, if I'd only know how life would imitate art.
Prior to my sister coming along when I was almost 5, I have a few memories of going to the driving range with my dad, riding my trike in his shop at school, singing in the kitchen with my mom, and roller skating down the sidewalk all the way to the funeral home down the street. When my mom was about to have my sister, I recall my jealousy with vivid clarity - Mom sitting on the edge of my twin bed, pregnant and crying, because I had just screamed at her, "You're going to love this baby more than you love me!" When she was born, she was non-threatening enough, but I did get to hear frequently, "She's such a good baby - she never cries! Nothing like Christi was as a baby." In their defense, I was a colicky baby. Having had 2 babies of my own now, it was a reasonable comparison to make, but I can still hear it in my head pretty clearly.
We moved when I was getting ready to start the first grade and my sister was a year old. I made a few new friends in the neighborhood, and we quickly found a church home. That part wasn't hard - it was a Catholic town, and we were Baptists. In a town with 7 Catholic churches, and 1 Baptist church, the choice was pretty much made for us.
I remember when we first began to attend church there, meeting in the basement for Sunday morning services until the "big" church was built (we Baptists love to build), standing in between my alto mom and my baritone dad - not realizing that I was learning to hear harmony in every song I'd ever listen to, because I heard it from my parents every Sunday morning, singing from the hymnal. (Yes, 'wall music' is still difficult for me and I have not made the transition from reading actual music in a hymnal to just reading lyrics on a powerpoint without much consternation.)
When I was in the third grade, one Sunday during the Invitation, "with every head bowed and every eye closed" and likely during the tenth refrain of "Just As I Am", I felt a tug. In our church, we called this "getting the call," meaning that the Holy Spirit was calling me to accept Christ. However, because very few kids my age had "gone forward," (what you do after you get the call - when you literally walk forward to the front of the church and announce that you'd accepted Christ, to a round of applause from the congregation), I told my mom about the feeling after church. We sat in our living room and I told her that I thought I'd been called. She responded, "I've been hoping this would happen soon!"
The following Sunday, when the organ started playing "Have Thine Own Way," Mom and I walked forward to the front of the church and talked to Brother Monte about what I had felt. He excitedly announced my decision to the congregation, and asked my mom to come from the front pew to stand with me so that my new brothers and sisters could come by to shake my hand. "Those are tears of joy," Monte described as my mom came to stand by my side. I am sure that my dad was there also, but I don't remember him in the front pew. I'll have to ask my mom about that, because some things just stand out better than others.
Growing up in the mid-80's was a far cry from how my own kids have it these days. Then, the rules were "be back home by the time the street lights come on," and "stay away from those boys on 4-wheelers. They're dangerous." I wasn't sure whether my parents meant that the 4-wheelers were dangerous or the boys on them were, so I stayed away from both...forming my first vision of what a Rebel Guy would look like. He'd be on wheels unfit for street use.
I remember 'playing school' and 'playing house,' sometimes with one of my 2 neighborhood girlfriends, sometimes by myself. My dad had a golf shop in half of our basement, and my 'house' and 'school room' were set up in the other half. I would arrange my Cabbage Patch Kids in their respective desks or swings (depending on what I was playing) and lecture them on manners and paying attention. Looking back, I wonder how much of this my dad overheard and had to keep from laughing at what would clearly have been early signs of my control issues.
The same year that I became a Christian, over Easter break, my mother's father died unexpectedly. In hindsight, this was the beginning of a slow decline for our family. My mother's best friend drove us the hour from our house to my grandparent's, me clutching my Paw Paw Bunny in the backseat and quietly crying.
My mom was unabashedly a Daddy's Girl, and my sister and I loved him as a force larger than life. Funny, warm and generous, he was what a grandpa should be. His nickname for my toddling sister was "Paw Paw's Sweetie Pie," but because she struggled to talk with a pacifier in her mouth, she referred to herself as "Paw Paw's Peetie Pie." While my grandmother was (and still is) punctual, clean, articulate and structured, Grandpa was the one who would throw us in the pool, tell stories about his adventures as a small plane pilot, and play the piano by ear.
My mom is a combination of the two of them - exceptionally creative, musically talented, silly, structured, driven, organized, and crazy smart.
Every summer, I would spend one week with each set of grandparents. While they lived about 20 minutes apart from each other, my experiences at their respective homes were very different. At my maternal grandparents', I'd swim, play on the swing set, watch "Somewhere in Time" and read. At my paternal grandparents', Grandma would teach me how to crochet, buy me cassette tapes, bake chocolate waffles, and garage sale until Grandpa came home from work. Grandma was a great teacher and very creative - sewing constantly and a very good artist. She also had what I see now as an anxiety around my grandfather. Dinner was always ready when he walked in the door, and when he would get angry at the cows in his sleep (he was a part-time farmer...and a sleep talker), she would calmly say, "Now, now, Curtie..." until he would quiet down. But Grandpa was the affectionate one, really. He's the one who would insist on a kiss on the cheek before I went to bed or left their house, and he was the one I saw cry years later when I went to spend time with them and my dad after my parents separated. While I noticed his Busch beer can at every dinner, I didn't think much of it, as a kid. I did not have a need to think much of it - alcohol was never in my own home. As I grew up in the Baptist church, I assumed we didn't have alcohol because it was a sin. Now I know the absence of alcohol in our home was a bit more complicated than that.
A few years after we moved into town, Mom took a job teaching at a nearby high school, and Dad took a job as a welder for a power company. I went to elementary school in the town where we lived, while my mom taught in the next town over. After I went through the first quarter of 5th grade with barely passing grades, I turned it around and got nearly all A's on my second quarter report card - the beginning of my academic perfectionism. But in the middle of my 5th grade year, after a semester of anxiety from school that caused health problems for me (I was diagnosed with "nerves" and even had disgusting medicine that Mom would mix into soda for me to take when my "nerves" acted up), my parents pulled me from our district and sent me to school in the district where my mom taught.
I remember my last day in that classroom very clearly. I had undergone a medical procedure and had missed a day of school for it. Prior to going into the hospital, I had asked my teacher if I could do my classwork in pen, because I preferred it to pencil (still do). Although she told me I could, when I returned and we traded papers in class to grade, my classmate ratted on me to the class. "Christi has done her work in PEN, Mrs. Aston!" To my horror, my teacher smirked and replied, "Christi thinks she's special." When I went home that night and told my parents, the rage in my father exploded. He grabbed a trash bag and announced, "Get in the car. We're going to go clean out your locker! You're going with your mom to school tomorrow." We did, and I did.
Some things in my memory are shades of gray and Swiss-cheesy. Other things are etched in stone and painted with florescent colors.
To deal with the stress of being the new kid in a school where the students had been together since preschool, I began writing short stories. They usually involved a smart, non-nonsense girl (me - clearly) who, despite being the class nerd, somehow manages to land the rebellious captain of the football team.
Boy, if I'd only know how life would imitate art.
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