The older I get and the more people I meet I am grateful for having had, by and large, an extraordinarily ordinary life. Especially my childhood.
I was blessed to have been raised with loving parents who always told me I could be whatever I wanted to be. I have olders brother and younger sisters. We aren't a family that is so close we're in each other's pockets, but we are close and everyone can be relied on to step up when the need arises.
This ordinary childhood had me growing up in a safe little town in North Idaho. And while as a teenager all I could think of was getting out, I grew up unafraid of the world. During the summer, we ran wild; fell and got scraped up, bug-bit, and sunburned. In the winter, we had great slopes for sledding and a brother who knew how to bank the runs to go even faster and crash harder. We climbed trees and swung on tire swings. We camped for vacations and fished for dinner (the BEST dinner!). We slept out in the back yard and took midnight walks around town... always knowing we were safe.
During this ordinary childhood, I went to school with the same kids year after year. While today, perhaps not close, their names are part of the fabric of my childhood/youth. The adults from my youth are constant... and when I think of the "grown ups" I knew I could trust they are the faces I see. I learned how to be kind and take care of others from my parent's and these people. My mother's Visiting Teachers (ladies from church) were the same two little older ladies for many years... sweet as the day is long, their love for my mother and my family was genuine; My mother driving into the hills to visit families in our church that were in need, or simply needing visiting. My father moving people, fixing things, driving folks to Spokane to go to the Bishop's Storehouse. The adults in my memory did the same things. And none of the efforts ever seemed Herculean or particularly heroic, it was simply what you did, who you were. You took care of each other. The end.
During this ordinary childhood, we made trips to CDA and Spokane for shopping. We went to Mr. Mack's farm and picked apples. We went to the Spokane mall and came home with carmel corn. We made numerous rips to Sears. We made trips to the dump... many, many, many smelly trips. And the funny thing is - and this is proof to the good father that he was - we would FIGHT over who got to go! It wasn't glamorous... you had to WORK when you got to the dump that was in the hills and up a winding road. And then he made you help him unload the back of the blue 55 Chevy. That truck is the first vehicle I ever knew by year. My mom would pile us and assorted babysitting kids and friends into the car and we'd go for picnics and berry picking expeditions. And if we were lucky, we got to play in a lake! We had a city pool and with a summer membership parents could let the kids go off to the pool and we'd be gone for what seemed like all day. The pool was also at the city park, so when you got tired of swimming, you'd play at the park or walk to the circle K or run around the HS football stadium (Go Wildcats!). And then we'd drag our exhausted sunburnt bodies home and collapse from sun stroke.
... The public library was a favorite place for me. As soon as I was old enough, I begged for a library card of my own and there was nothing like signing that card when I checked out a book. Funny, the books I always checked out were always read first by a girl who signed her name simply as "Alice". Alice was a girl/woman in my church with Down's Syndrome. I didn't realize she was practically an adult when I was a child of course, she was just Alice and we all loved her.
...I never considered Alice to be different because my mother had volunteered at the Opportunity School - a school for the mentally disabled (aka retarded - not everything else we lump into that category today). And some of my earliest memories are of playing with the kids there and standing in line for lunch with them. So, Alice was just... Alice. My mother's affinity for this population came from having had a severly mentally retarded brother - my Uncle Mike. I only saw him a couple of times that I can remember as he was in a facility. But I know my mother loved him and she shared that love for this special group of people with us.
During this ordinary childhood, I had grandparents, aunts and uncles, and many cousins, even though we lived far enough away that we only saw them once a year. On the farm of "grandma with the cows" we swam in canals, rode horse, played with innumberable dogs and cats, caught nightscrawlers (at night, with flashilights in flooded yards), fed the cows, stepped in cow pies, stepped in ant hills and on barbed wire, and thought the 80 acres of her farm were SO big!
During this ordinary childhood, the "grandma with a grandpa" lived in a completely different world. They had the ocean. They had a city. We couldn't run wild since their home was on a busy street, but we thought we were SO grown up when we walked from their home to the little strip mall and went shopping. We went to drive-ins and the Star Wars opening! And minature golf'd. This grandma had lemon and orange trees!
During this ordinary childhood had Christmases that created traditions for future generations. My mother has a nativity that, oddly enough, has survived unscathed. It was always placed on the mantle of our huge, non-functioning fireplace. We frequently had a couch pushed up against the fireplace since it didn't work anyway and it allowed us to stand on the couch and just.... look... at the figures. We loved each figure, especially Gloria the angel. It has a little music box that we would play over and over. One of my favorite Christmas memories was the year I found a sheep that MATCHED the manger! She still has that sheep...
... Santa came early up north... we thought it was because we loved so far north that he hit us first on his way...lol And it wasn't unusual for Santa to come while we were out looking at Christmas lights... my father would get a phone call that he had to go into work for some emergency or another (not an odd occurance, it happened for real a lot). He'd go stomping out of the house muttering. My mother would pile us all in to the station wagon and we'd drive around town and the surrounding towns looking at everyone's light displays. And then, when we had looked our fill, she'd take us home. As we came up the road, my dad would fall in behind us (coincidental, yes?) or he'd already be home, and when we walked in... SANTA HAD COME!
Originally my parents said it was because my father was a farm boy and they always did Santa like that because it was just mean to make kids do their chores Christmas morning before seeing what Santa brought... I think it was just easier on them... they go to sleep in Christmas morning. lol
... My extraordinarily ordinary childhood... more to come. Time for bed...
