Colorado Springs Part 2

I had a long conversation with Joe (my husband) about these blogs. He thinks they are so good for me, and I do as well. What I struggle with is the honesty of some events. I don't want anyone to feel like I'm trying to do any harm to anyone. I am very proud (now) of who I am and who my family is and I think it's taken me, well 36 years now to learn to love my story. So as I write, it's all out of healing, owning the story of events, what has led us to where we are now, and truly becoming our own self. 

I know the year was 1999 - and my Great Grandpa Joe passed away. His funeral was in Gibbon, MN. I will never forget walking into this tiny little catholic church, unprepared, to see him in the casket, open, not breathing. I remember I walked into the church and when I saw him I screamed. It was the first dead body I had ever seen. Everyone looked at me and my bonus mom took me outside and held me while I cried and I didn't understand. I ended up making it back in but I wouldn't eat or touch anything because I was scared everything was "tainted" by death. I watched as my Grandma fixed his hair and kissed his head and could not understand how they could do that. It was now my second experience with death at the age of 10 and still I was so unsure about it.

So now are moved into base housing on Peterson AFB. We weren't in our "fancy" home anymore, but I remember feeling a lot more at ease and happy in this home. Just right around the corner from me was a girl, who would become one of my best friends. I wish I could find her now. When we first started 6th grade, we thought we were so grown up. We found this pond by the golf course (we rode our bikes everywhere) and the pond was dirty. So, we decided to clean up the pond and make it our "homework" spot. A place we could go and it was so calm and serene and focus on schoolwork. I don't think we EVER went there more than once or twice and we certainly didn't do any schoolwork from what I remember. 

Backing it up so 4th grade I started at Monroe Elementary. I had a hard time adjusting in 4th grade. I don't remember much about it; I wasn't a fan of my teacher, and I vaguely remember friends. 

5th grade is when things become clearer. Mrs. Murphy was my teacher, and I was obsessed with her. If you volunteered to read in her class, she'd throw you a tootsie roll for reading and possibly that's where my love for tootsie rolls came in. I started to babysit kids around our neighborhood. I would be at these random military houses until 1-2AM babysitting and then walk home. Now again, we were living on base but still! I won't even let my oldest (6th grade) walk a mile to school in broad daylight! To my defense she would have to cross a pretty big road and people drive like jerks around here.

5th grade, I had a solid group of friends. I was happy, I loved going to school. There was a girl who was blind, and I casually befriended her and became the kid who helped her around. I wish now I could remember her name as well. I wonder if she would remember me because I think about her from time to time and little did I know, she had a major impact on my life. She was blind, in 5th grade, and probably one of the happiest kids I knew. 

I made another new bestie and I can't remember if we met in 4th grade or 5th but I believe 5th was when we got closer. She also lived on base housing but in a different neighborhood. You bet your butt though, our biked or our roller blades took us to each other's houses all the time.  In 5th grade still, her and I both got "boyfriends". We were besties and they were besties. Well, we ended up liking the others boyfriend, so we switched. LOL. OH the innocence. OK if my Dad reads this, don't be mad! SOMEHOW, me and her convinced/ lied to our parents. I don't know HOW we did it. We told them we were going to a sleepover. We said we were going to meet our friends at the mall and their parents would pick us up. It wasn't all a lie - we did meet them at the mall and their grandpa did pick us up. What we failed to mention was it was our "boyfriends" and one of their sisters. So we are what... 10? MAYBE 11 - spending the night at our "boyfriends" house with just their sister and grandpa chaperoning us.  Now, don't get it twisted I was a pretty innocent kid. We did play spin the bottle though, and I was supposed to kiss my "BF" (I keep using quotes because, what's a boyfriend that young, right??), well I didn't know how to kiss. So, his sister who was maybe 5 years or so older, grabbed me and kissed me to "teach" me. So... my first kiss was a girl......  Other than innocent spin the bottle that was the excitement of the evening. I still can't believe we did that and got away with it : bringing my music memories in that was also that night for the first time I heard Dr. Dre's The Next Episode.

Home life began to get rocky. The relationship with my bonus mom and me, and especially one of my brothers became pretty unstable. I remember my parents arguing a lot more. Specifically, one time they got into an argument and my dad threw a whole Tupperware or bowl full of spaghetti at the wall and then laughed and said, "well that was stupid, now I have to clean it up". He didn't throw it at her, she had already left the room. I remember thinking too, yeah pretty dumb! ha-ha. Now as an adult, I look back at everything they went through very early in their marriage and how learning how to parent three teenage boys and a preteen girl, that couldn't have been very easy. 

Our Mom was still in the picture. We always spoke and saw her every summer. I think at this time she was still in Illinois... our relationship with her caused a lot of tension at home. She left my dad, with 4 kids, and she received a lot of love and forgiveness from us kids, except we didn't understand, well at least I didn't, all the emotions involved in relationships. To me, it was just my mom. What about having a close relationship with my mom was so bad? Now, again, as an adult with a husband who's a bonus dad, it wasn't about the relationship with our mom. It was more about how she seemed to get all the good sides of us, and my dad and bonus mom got the shit side (the real parenting side). I shouldn't say shit side - because it's part of growing and learning, but you know what I mean. 

For some reason, my bonus mom ended up taking away the cordless phone and we had to talk and a corded, snoopy phone, in the kitchen so that we didn't have privacy talking to our mom. I assume now it's because we were talking about her to our mom, but I still never quite could make any more sense of that. 

(Again, none of these stories are any attacks or to betray someone in a particular way, rather they are prominent memories in my mind that brought me to today).

I still was pretty young, so I didn't understand much I just knew there was a lot of tension and a lot of arguing. 

The youth center was pretty close to the house, maybe 2 blocks away, and we spent a ton of time there. It was open for kids to go play - they had pool tables/ TVs/ gaming consoles/ a whole gym to play in. It was SO nice for us to have that. It was run by employees so we weren't left alone but we all felt a sense of independence going somewhere, riding our bikes there, and hanging out with our friends. The military community is one that's hard to explain, but it's just a weird family even if you don't know the person, there's a connection and an understanding at all ages. 

I feel like this blog is getting long....

I got busted with a cigarette butt in my pocket. My bonus mom sat me down and told me if I was going to smoke then smoke and handed me a pack of cigarettes. Well, I wasn't smoking. My friends and I thought it was cool to find the butts and "pretend" smoke. DISGUSTING - I know. One SO many levels. We were kids, kids are gross!! HAHA. She was convinced though that I was smoking.... I wasn't.

There was another time - and to this day I have NO idea how our bonus mom discovered this, but a kitchen bowl - like a cereal bowl - was found in the trash by the park or the bus stop. Was she following us? Which as a parent, totally fine, but how else would someone find a bowl thrown in the trash?
Me and all three of my brothers literally got our asses handed to us. We were all grounded until someone fessed up that it was them. All my brothers kept coming in and telling me to confess... (OK, I'm finally confessing at 36 years old it was me) BUT I couldn't then. Everyone was SO angry and SO mad there was absolutely no way I was going to confess to that happening. Sorry guys...!!!! 

I felt like we "owned" that base. We could ride our bikes or walk to just about anywhere. My two oldest brothers were driving so I don't remember them being around a whole lot except to ask me to get money for them from my Dad. 
They were teenagers, living their life. They were still in high school in Widefield. I think because they could drive and they were older so moving them high schools didn't make sense.

My middle brother and I were still so close, but he had discovered marijuana and was in a really awful high school at this point (a school in the district of where we lived). I just looked it up actually and it's ranked 245th out of 334 within the state of Colorado. 72% of students are economically disadvantaged, the schools test scores are much lower than state standards but even lower than district scores. Graduation rate is only 63%. Walker, who really wasn't a school kid to begin with, had two older twin brothers who truly are the opposite of him, and a younger sister that wanted to be his best friend - he really was at a disadvantage. So he was trying to find his place and started getting in trouble with drugs, shoplifting, house tattoos.....

I felt like I was home alone a lot at this time. My bus got me to home before anyone else. I would BLAST music videos and dance on top of the coffee table. Which I got in trouble for later because my footprints were all over the table. We had this tiny TV in the dining room and I would make a snack and sit there and watch TRL every single day.  Although, I remember always wanting my parents to be happy when they got home. I cleaned, a lot, and often. Dishes, dusting, vacuuming. I am sure since I felt so much tension, I was internally trying to control others' emotions or reactions by doing what I could to "make them happy". 

The end of my 5th grade year was sad. I was going to go to a different middle school than most of my friends, and one of my closest friends was moving out of state. My little heart was really learning sadness at this point. My anxiety was there but subsided more. 

While again, timelines at this point of my life are still hard for me I remember:

1. Moving to the base
2. Learning every day at 5PM you stop and listen to the national anthem 
3. Had my first kiss 
4. We drove into the mountains a lot. My dad and my brothers more but a lot. 
5. We camped, a lot. 
6. We spent time with my bonus moms family in Montrose, CO a lot (they were / are great people). 
7. I competed in my first talent show... 
8. Driving up to Pikes Peak with my grandparents and great grandma
   
9. My Dad getting his black ford ranger and him treating it like his baby
10. My bonus moms niece - so my cousin who was a toddler came and lived with us

 

6th grade year was ahead - it must have been the year 2000 - it was coming upon us and things start to get even tougher. 

XO