Determinatly looking into your past doesn't always have to be a bad thing. Living in the past is never good, but it IS good to ruminate about the things that have happened in your life and apply them to the present. Learning from your mistakes, gaining experience; it's all about reminding yourself of who you are and how you got there.
Living in the country as a little girl, I remember being so free. Maybe, it was the fact that I lived with three men (my uncle, grandfather, and dad) and could choose when to brush my hair or when not to.Or perhaps it was never being told to go and take a bath. I just kind of did it...when I wanted. Don't misunderstand me, I was well cared for at this point in my life. These men had never had a little girl around, they hadn't the slightest indicative idea on how to raise one. Call it neglect, or bad parenting, or what-have-you. I know, these were some of the best days of my life.
Never being a 'miss-priss', I regaled in being raised by these three men. They were all highly intelligent; scholars, dexterous learners, men of science and history! Boheimeians!
Teaching me everything they new about Art, Literature, and Science was second nature.
My first bedtime stories were 'The Raven', and 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. Twain, Dickens, Kipling, Burton, Shakespeare-these were the writers that filled my playroom library. What I learned gave me the foundation I have to be a free-thinker, to be a dreamer and, to sometimes, be a realist as well. I fell in love with the Arts. One by one these men changed my way of thinking and I've always been grateful.
Uncle Tracy was very young when I lived with him in that house in the country, with the two mile drive way, the deep green grass, the acres and acres of land. Not being long out of college, there was a sort of immaturity about him that I related to. I would knock on his door when he got home and he'd answer, knees on the floor, shoes on his knees, and I would swear he was a midget. I'd swear he had some sort of shrinking machine locked away in his closet. He'd let me in and we would idle away playing nintendo, listening to classical music. He'd teach me Italian, how to play piano and how to shuffle cards. In that room, I learned who painted 'Waterlilies', who sang 'InchWorm', who played Mitridate, re di Ponto. I learned a love of Art.
With PawPaw, the lessons were somewhat more domestic in nature. I have never in my life tasted such a dish as his beef pot roast or his spaghetti. I would get a kitchen chair, pull it up to the stove, and sneak sips of that wonderful sauce. Days when we had crab legs were my favorite. It'd be dim in the kitchen and we'd have newpaper covering the table. There were bowls of sweet, salty butter and tangy cocktail sauce lining the table. I felt like a fisherman ( weird, I know) out to sea, wind-burned and salt-scrubbed, going to the galley to have dinner after a long day. Dehydrating meat was another little 'take-away' for domestic life I acquired from my PawPaw. After buying a select cut of meat, he'd marinade it in a special, secret marinade. I would help him to put it in the dehydrator only because I wanted to be a part of this magical (or what I thought of as 'magical') process. I'd wait for hours and hours for it to come out. To this day, as bad as it may seem, I love beef jerky but it doesn't hold a candle to my PawPaws'! PawPaw was also an 'artist'. The garage was filled with canvas and oil paints, model planes and paint brushes. I'd sit and watch him apply the paint to the canvas and wish I could be as effortlessly talented as he. Mountains, trees, ducks, everything he painted came to life on that canvas. He'd let me sit back and watch, explaining to me the different mediums, different brush strokes to use. From that period on, I wanted to be a real artist. One who took a blank canvas and created something astonishing out of it. My grandfather was, among other things, a master story teller as well. My first sleepover, I called him at two o'clock in the morning. I was scared to death to be sleeping in this unfamiliar house. He talked to me, told me stories rather, until the daylight broke through the windows and I felt it safe enough in the world to sleep. Some of those stories were unimaginable! The day he fell into the lake for instance, I thought he was making it up!! Ice skating on a froen ( yeah, yeah, one of the keys on my keyboard doesn't work, can you guess which one??) lake, miles from home and he falls in!! Or the more believable, like the first time he chewed tobacco and vomited everywhere.All in all, he taught me to be a chef, an artist, and a storyteller.
My father, on the other hand, was not around as much as the other two important men in my life. He worked non-stop and was also trying to finish college. When he got a spare moment though , he would take us on adventures. We'd go down to Mrs. Deal's where we could get penny bags of candy and 'blue' Doritos. Taking our sought after treats, we'd go fishing on the river. Dad always brought enough stuff to make us think we were camping. He made the best baked beans you ever put in your mouth! I mean, smack your granny good! He'd pull out the little can of gas, the portable stove-top burner and a camping pot and create magic! I don't know what he put in those beans but I cannot for the life of me recreate them. Dad also liked to take us on random adventures, when we had no idea where we were going and he wouldn't tell us. We'd drive for hours and end up in the most arbitrary places...The peanut fest, the secret beach, an art show, a concert, cook-outs. These are memories I cherish and will never get back. Writing them down, or typing them out, helps to remind me how I felt back then, and how much I miss that life.
Okay, looking back on what I have written.....Haha! I see a lot of things that maybe a child shouldn't have been doing....Like not taking baths, listening to Edgar Allen Poe before bed, putting a chair next to the stove- My Oh My....It may not have been safe, or sanitary, or butterflies and rainbows, but I adored it., every minute and I wouldn't trade those few, simple years for anything. It helped to mold the person I am today.
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