At Sixes and Sevens
Feb. 20th, 2006 11:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
butterflydreamingSomeone asked me about how my childhood was. I wrote this long answer, and then I thought about how I don't know that I've ever told you all this in one place. So here you go, if you want.
I'm the little sister. The youngest girl, the sixth out of seven children, so I can be the artistic one but I'm supposed to be sweet.
My dad built the house I grew up in. He's an architect. With so many kids, we lived well but frugally. My dad bought the land for cheap because it was a hillside, and lucky for us, he can design for hillsides and do his own contracting. Plus, the neighborhood was bordering the "barrio", Echo Park, where the latino gangs were. Now that area is becoming gentrified. We moved when I was 8, to a house in a desireable neighborhood but with a roof full of holes, what the real estate agent called "a charming cottage".
You can live well if you know how to fix and finish things yourself. We soon had an enviable house; my mom, the green thumb, hired some day workers and landscaped the gardens into a gorgeous jungle with a little brick bridge and a rock lined "stream" that was actually the wash for the gutter. And those were the Reagan Years, strangely good to my family. My mom opened a bakery (my dad's whim) and it was very successful.
I went to public school after we moved, but before that, it was Catholic school... and I'm still recovering! Little red plaid pleated skirts, pressed white shirts. I was popular, but not a very good student. Then we moved and I hit puberty. As the new girl at my school, I was shy and fat, and a know-it-all teacher's pet. I had always been a reader (I can't remember learning to read), but now reading a book was my #1 past time. Stayed that way pretty much all the way through senior year of high school. Then I started dressing in black and wearing lipstick. I was very much a vamp goth, but only at school or with my friends. When I was 17 I was really starting to understand duality and how to put on a fake smile. I had lots of friends. I fell in love, my first love, heartbreakingly, two at once, and unrequitedly... for the most part. And that's where the worst day of my life is kept.
But that's not growing up; that's not being a kid. When I was a kid, we had an empty lot next door that we had permission to play in because my mother kept the weeds in control for the property owner. I loved the swings! And with all my older sibs, we would play all kinds of make-believe games. My mom *made* us go out and play for at least an hour every day, no sitting inside watching TV. We had a beautiful garden full of fruit trees bordering a square of grass that we were NOT allowed to play on. {laughs} I have the best older brothers. They made games for us littles, instead of shunning us. I think that is why I respect and trust men, in general -- the men in my family are good men.
When I was five, we almost moved back to El Salvador (Central America) but then my parents returned to sanity. I remember mango jam and Salvadorean rice pudding, lots of cinnamon, a whole stick in the hot arroz con leche. The candy store down the block. The turtle that lived at the house, eating the big cockroaches that the orange tabby cat killed.
In L.A., everything is "twenty minutes" away. Except the beach. We didn't go often enough because it was "far". I loved to build sandcastles, and I still want to any time I'm on sand. A lot of times, I will. I've built a sandcastle on Maui. Twenty four years old and digging like a toddler. The truth about the beach is that my mom can't swim, so she was always scared for us. My dad swims well & loves the water. Also, he was a bodybuilder before he married my mom.
I had a great childhood. I promised myself not to grow up, and I think I've kept to that well. I don't know why things went oval shaped in my teenaged years, except that suicide is in the family (my mother's cousin, the closest that I know of), but I got through that alive. I try always to hold on to the ability to see shapes in the clouds, even if it means that I'm still a little scared about the monster under the bed.
I'm the little sister. The youngest girl, the sixth out of seven children, so I can be the artistic one but I'm supposed to be sweet.
My dad built the house I grew up in. He's an architect. With so many kids, we lived well but frugally. My dad bought the land for cheap because it was a hillside, and lucky for us, he can design for hillsides and do his own contracting. Plus, the neighborhood was bordering the "barrio", Echo Park, where the latino gangs were. Now that area is becoming gentrified. We moved when I was 8, to a house in a desireable neighborhood but with a roof full of holes, what the real estate agent called "a charming cottage".
You can live well if you know how to fix and finish things yourself. We soon had an enviable house; my mom, the green thumb, hired some day workers and landscaped the gardens into a gorgeous jungle with a little brick bridge and a rock lined "stream" that was actually the wash for the gutter. And those were the Reagan Years, strangely good to my family. My mom opened a bakery (my dad's whim) and it was very successful.
I went to public school after we moved, but before that, it was Catholic school... and I'm still recovering! Little red plaid pleated skirts, pressed white shirts. I was popular, but not a very good student. Then we moved and I hit puberty. As the new girl at my school, I was shy and fat, and a know-it-all teacher's pet. I had always been a reader (I can't remember learning to read), but now reading a book was my #1 past time. Stayed that way pretty much all the way through senior year of high school. Then I started dressing in black and wearing lipstick. I was very much a vamp goth, but only at school or with my friends. When I was 17 I was really starting to understand duality and how to put on a fake smile. I had lots of friends. I fell in love, my first love, heartbreakingly, two at once, and unrequitedly... for the most part. And that's where the worst day of my life is kept.
But that's not growing up; that's not being a kid. When I was a kid, we had an empty lot next door that we had permission to play in because my mother kept the weeds in control for the property owner. I loved the swings! And with all my older sibs, we would play all kinds of make-believe games. My mom *made* us go out and play for at least an hour every day, no sitting inside watching TV. We had a beautiful garden full of fruit trees bordering a square of grass that we were NOT allowed to play on. {laughs} I have the best older brothers. They made games for us littles, instead of shunning us. I think that is why I respect and trust men, in general -- the men in my family are good men.
When I was five, we almost moved back to El Salvador (Central America) but then my parents returned to sanity. I remember mango jam and Salvadorean rice pudding, lots of cinnamon, a whole stick in the hot arroz con leche. The candy store down the block. The turtle that lived at the house, eating the big cockroaches that the orange tabby cat killed.
In L.A., everything is "twenty minutes" away. Except the beach. We didn't go often enough because it was "far". I loved to build sandcastles, and I still want to any time I'm on sand. A lot of times, I will. I've built a sandcastle on Maui. Twenty four years old and digging like a toddler. The truth about the beach is that my mom can't swim, so she was always scared for us. My dad swims well & loves the water. Also, he was a bodybuilder before he married my mom.
I had a great childhood. I promised myself not to grow up, and I think I've kept to that well. I don't know why things went oval shaped in my teenaged years, except that suicide is in the family (my mother's cousin, the closest that I know of), but I got through that alive. I try always to hold on to the ability to see shapes in the clouds, even if it means that I'm still a little scared about the monster under the bed.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-21 02:13 am (UTC):)
While geographically, things are similar, geez... was my life different.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-21 05:49 am (UTC)