(no subject)
I was born in castro valley at eden hospital. I dont remember living there but we lived in castro valley for a few months after i was born. My mom had always had some flowers outside of her apartment and they hadnt bloomed for the 3 years since they had been planted. the day she brought me home they bloomed. And you sometimes wonder how i know i'm different?
A little later in life when my dad would drive me to his girlfriends house in San Fran, we would pass the hill with the 3 crosses and he would point off of the freeway to the hospital and say "thats where you were born!" and i never got the idea that there was a hospital there. i thought the hospital was where the 3 crosses were. its a church.
After a few months in the castro valley apartment my parents moved to Washington and got married. We got a dog: scruffy: from the pound and he was the same age as me. In washington we lived next to a private raquet ball court. it had huge mirrors in it, and i remember being afraid of the cavernous, lonely, building. We had a wolfskin rug that i always liked to lay on. lol... In the winters it would snow and i would dress up like the little brother on the christmas story and go out in the snow. scruffy would always come and push me down, cause he wanted to have attention too. lol. silly dog...
When i was 2 my parents got divorced and me and my mom moved to winton into a house that my grandmother had owned and rented out. It was a small house but very comfortable for the two of us and scruffy. it had a big backyard and i had neighbors to play with. I'll share with you only one of two specific memories i have of that house; oneday my mom had taken away one of my toys. she put it on top of the washing machine (which at the time was about a foot taller than me) and i had wanted it back. i reached my hand up there and felt around for the toy. i succeeded in knocking a glass jar over and shattering it on the concrete... the thought of that makes the scar on the bottom of my foot tingle... just one of many scars i would gain through out the years.
My dad had moved in with a lady named Roberta. She was a nice jewish lady who lived in San Francisco. She had 2 dogs. she was a bit eccentric.. lol... but i remember waking up on saturday mornings at about 6:30 or 7. and sneaking into my dads room to ask him if i could watch cartoons. lol... i would always ask. it was polite... I still have the animal sheets i would sleep on in that house...
After a few years in my grandmothers house in winton my mom got re-married to a man named Brian Ratzlaff. He had a truck and lived about 3 blocks away from where we lived. it was there that i met one of my oldest friends: Blake Wolcott. I see him every once in a while. he had had a burn out on weed. his brother was giving him $80 worth a night and he would smoke it. He's doing a little better now but he still has the jitters as well as a bad case of social anxiety and paranoia.
Brian was the one who taught me how to ride a bike without training wheels. He took them off and i started riding. he just wanted to see me fall. I rhode all the way down the street. I didnt fall.
A few years later my mom and him got divorced. Me and my mom moved out into what she called a little "mother-in-law cottage" 3 miles out of town. it was surrounded by almond orchards. on warm summer nights me and my mom would walk through the seemingly endless orchards till we reached the end. behind them were acres and acres of parsley fields. we would walk along the tractor trails for about a mile or so just watching the peaceful painted sunset. once the sun was down we would have to rush home though, if we didnt we would get eaten alive by mosquitoes.
Our property had most any kind of fruit tree you could think of. In the front we had an orange tree that would give off the biggest oranges around. and it was a seedless orange tree. i would never climb it because it had thorns. I would however climb the olive tree. and when they were in season you could never get me down from either of the two cherry trees. We also had a percimmon tree right outside of our back door. i would never eat them because they were gross looking and felt funny under bare feet. The apricotts were the best, and peaches werent far behind. If i asked Don nicely he would give us some lemons (he was a really nice guy, he owned the antique shop in town. his house was like a museum. and it was always fun when his grandkids would come to town. Some nights when he was bbq'ing he would invite us over for burgers or whatever he had cooked. The summer nights there were the best.
But we were 3 miles out of town. and other than Don who lived right next door, our only neighbors were about a mile and a half away. So there werent too many kids for me to play with. lol... when i got bored i would just play with my toys, like playing army men in the front yard, camoflauging them under clods of grass, or i'd hunt for geods with a hammer. Or i'd be playing "junkyard" with my hotwheels cars. and when i felt like changing it up i'd dig holes to china. one time i got soo deep i could hardly get out. i took the tape measurer and measured 5'3". pretty good for an eight year old.
Those days my mom was dating Buzz Gordon. Jeff Gordon's Uncle. His house was practically a shrine to Jeff. He gave me my first gun. A bb gun. i still have it and shoot it every once in a while. i would take it in our back yard and shoot at the owl house to see if any would come out. they never would.
This is getting pretty long so i think i'll end it with this: My mom was taking night classes at the college so that she could someday get a college diploma. My aunt or grandma would come over and baby sit me. They would put me to bed at my bed time, and i would go into my room and lay down on my bed. i would always come back out about 10-15 min. later and tell them that i couldnt sleep. lol... i never was much for curfews... and i would stay up with them watching tv or a movie until my mom got home. she would be exhausted and i would make her tuck me in.
that was a long time ago.... and i was a lot different than i am now...
i miss those days. But it wouldnt be the same to do those things now.
-E