The Way We Were

 When I was very young, dad would bring me gifts from Europe during his time overseas with the Navy. Gifts like Droste chocolates and a tiny, embroidered, leather purse from Spain that I wore sideways over my small torso. In our early years, he loved to take us on Sunday drives to museums and on tours of gothic revival-style castles and mansions, where I would get scolded for trying to swing on the burgundy, velvet-roped, crowd-control stanchions.  Dad would stop our station wagon at every garage sale and historical site, including old battlefields. We were a family of five on a very low budget, but we were explorers. Happy memories from when we used to drive to Rhode Island to Misquamicut State Beach or to the apple orchard to pick apples with a long pole.  During one of our many trips to the beach our dog, Prince, a black Lab, hiked his leg and peed on my mother. It would be something we teased her about for the entire ride home.  I nearly drowned while swimming in the Atlantic. The waves kept crashing into me as I would surface to get a breath of air and my tiny frame would get sucked under the tow. I swallowed a lot of sea water that day and never told my parents of my near-death experience (fearing that I wouldn’t be allowed to go into the water again if mom found out). Mom was a habitual worrier and we called her a ‘worry wart’ behind her back. I know...ten Hail Mary's.  My father only made 4K per year as a Naval officer during my early years, yet housing was also included.  At one gift shop, he bought me a lucky rabbit’s foot, which gave me allergies. Not so lucky for the rabbit either. My brothers would play with their tiny green army men in the back seat of our station wagon. My oldest brother Rick was very imaginative and really liked strategy games that I could not win, so I preferred riding in the fold-up seat that faced the back window, where I would wave at strangers and pull my imaginary rope to get the friendly truckers to honk at us.


A picture of me and my father visiting my grandparent's in Tulsa with my pony Silver.