Childhood is the Foundation

My childhood began like most others, with my birth on July 11th. Yes, that's right. 7-11. I've heard it before. I was a "convenient" baby. Some have said that the power of the numbers 7 and 11 have set me up for a charmed life. Well, that depends upon your perspective. Personally, I believe life is what you make it. And mine has had some charmed moments and some not so charmed moments.

I was born to two people who, at the time, were struggling to find themselves. Now that I think about it, they probably still are. I have an older brother as well, who had 3 years with my parents before me. And when I came along, I remember my brother being very excited to have a baby sister.

My parents brought me home to a cute little yellow two bedroom house with a dirt backyard. It must have been a newly built home or the previous owners had done nothing to the yard. I have lots of snapshot memories, living in that little house. Like, my dad having put planks of wood on two of the living room walls as decorative paneling. Must have been the style back then. I remember having a dog, named Bruno, who ate the neighbor's chickens, so we had to give him away. I remember the hill behind our house, grew lots of anise, or licorice plants is what we called them. The smell of the anise was strong and fun to use in pretend soup.

I vaguely remember an incident when someone my parents knew broke into our house and stole some money. But for some reason I remember it as if I were there watching him steal. Although I've been told I wasn't there at the time. Maybe I created the images in my mind after I heard about it. It's just odd how I can see the dark room with the moon shining in the sliding glass door, and a man rummaging through my parents dresser as if I were standing in their closet looking out. I'm sure I was there. My parents say I was not.

I remember riding my Big Wheel up and down the driveway, while my brother rode his "big" green bicycle all around the neighborhood. I would go across the street to a neighbor's house where my friend, Dove, lived. She had a huge backyard with avocado trees that we would climb and there were lots of fun old broken-down cars & trucks, rusty refrigerators, old couches, tires, and a small garden that we would play in and around. And there was another friend who lived right next to us, named Lance, who we would play with, too. Life was good then. Or so I thought.

Some time during my fourth year, my parents decided to buy a new three bedroom house. It was much bigger and it had another dirt backyard. A friend of my parents bought our little yellow house and became our babysitter. So we still got to play with Dove and Lance.

The first two weeks in our new house were pretty scary for a 4 year old, but apparently not for my big 7 year old brother, Scott. On the second night of sleeping in the house, I was laying in my room all by myself, looking at the reflection of the town lights shining through my curtain-less windows onto my bedroom wall. When all of a sudden, the shape of a head broke the light and stood looking into my room. I froze with the covers pulled up over me, leaving just a small hole to look out and see when the coast was clear. The second The Head went away, I scrambled down the long hall to my brother's room. First I peaked in to see if The Head was there. When I saw it wasn't, I hurried and scrambled under my brother's covers and snuggled in tight. He awoke and asked what was wrong. I told him about The Head. He got up and looked out his window. Nothing. But he saw how scared I was, so he let me sleep with him for the rest of the night.

The next morning Scott and I went out back to look for evidence of The Head. We found footprints under my window and his. I knew it! We made a pact. If The Head came back again, we would tell Mom and Dad. We didn't want to worry them. That night I lay in my bed and watched for The Head. An hour had passed. Nothing. Two hours and I was still awake, watching. And then it appeared. The Head. I froze, waiting for it to leave. And when it did, I scrambled down the long hall into my brother's room. But before I entered, I checked his wall. And there it was! The Head was on my brother's wall! I heard my brother whisper, "Stay there. I see it." Neither one of us could bare to look at the window to see if The Head had a face. When The Head moved on, I scurried into my brother's bed. He was mad. Mad that The Head came back.

The next morning we told our parents about The Head. They assured us that there would be no more sightings of The Head because that afternoon the curtains would be installed on our bedroom windows. That only partly calmed our nerves. Scott and I came up with a plan. He invited a couple of his friends to spend the night. They all went to bed with baseball bats beside them. And as I had the past two nights, I went to bed, watching for The Head. But this night was different. The curtains blocked much of the light. So, I had positioned myself right under the window where I could look up the bottom of the curtain and watch. After about an hour of waiting, movement caught my eye. I looked up the curtain as best as I could, and there it was. But this time it wasn't The Head as I had come to know it. It was White Hair! Feeling brave by the anonymity that the curtains gave me. I hurried into Scott's room. He and his friends grabbed their bats and charged out the front door. Two went around the left side and one went around the right. I bravely guarded the front door. When suddenly, White Hair came running past the front door and up the street with three bat-wielding 7 year-olds chasing after him, screaming all the way. At some point, White Hair lost his white hair wig and the three boys came back to the house, shouting and waving the wig as if they made their first kill. We never saw The Head or White Hair again. And from that time on, my big brother has always been my hero.