I was five years old. I was five years old when I first realized that me and my mother were nothing alike, and that I could love someone but not like them. I was born in Tucson Arizona on October 23rd 1990, almost a week from Halloween, my favorite holiday still. Those first five years are filled of fuzzy images that look more like pictures than actual events. We moved to Portland When I was four and a half, in the summer time. I remember that because the summers in Oregon are nothing like the summers in Arizona. In Arizona the heat is unbearable yet enjoyable at the same time. The sun beats down on you and you sweat. You don’t sweat because you just ran four miles, you sweat because it is hot and you are sitting in the shade. Oregon on the other hand is a worse kind of heat, not because it is hotter, it’s not. It’s worse because you do not sweat. It is hot enough to feel absolutely miserable, but not hot enough to feel the cool relief of sweat evaporating off you. I could write for hours on just the differences of weather between my two states, but that’s not what this story is about. This story is about a mother and her daughter.
The sun was blinding as I stepped out of our car. I stepped out of the car onto that small patch of grass between the street and the sidewalk, and I saw something I had never seen before, a tree. I know that it seems inconceivable, but its true, cacti were trees to me, but here was something that had no thorns, and real big leaves, the biggest leaves I had ever seen. I stared at the tree for what seemed to be hours, truly only seconds went by, but I remember that tree and not much else. I also remember first steeping into that house, that wonderful house. A house that had hard wood floors, a foundation, and absolutely no wheels. All of the homes I had lived in up to that point had been mobile homes. There is something about mobile homes that don’t make them feel like a home. Maybe it’s the fact that they can move at any point you want them too, Maybe its all of the bugs that can crawl into them, or the feeling that you get as you walk up a staircase that could fall down in a second. Maybe none of those reasons, but I do know the reason I loved that home is it felt stable, Perhaps one of the only things that were to be stable in my life.
I walked up those real stable cement steps up to that big wooden door and opened it to my new life. I tell you I ran I ran from each room squealing like any little girl. I ran to the back yard, back inside, and outside again. I ran until I collapsed in the middle of those dark wooden floors in the living room and I closed my eyes and breathed. I breathed for what seemed to be the first time. I breathed in the smell of a home. I opened my eyes and I looked straight up at the ceiling. I felt alone but not lonely. Than I heard my sister squealing just as I had done. The house seemed to shake awake at that point. Like a dormant volcano it became active. Not just active it became invigorated by my sister and my laughs. This was my home.
This was the home that was to see me weep for the next 14 years. The first time was when my mother hit me. I have very think blonde curly hair that needs to be brushed at least once a day not to develop huge rat nests in it. I was five years old sitting on a stool. My mother had been in a bad mood all day long for reason I still don’t know. So she was not being gentle with me, but ripping the hair form my scalp. I was crying and begging her to stop. I started to squirm hoping to get away from that brush. When I saw that brush high up above my head. I closed my eyes and felt the pain and the sting of that brush come full force at my face. I don’t know if my tears were from the physical pain, or the pain of the love for my mother, leaving me. I ran at that point. I ran past my father in the kitchen cooking tacos to the downstairs apartment where my grandmother lived, I climbed into her lap wanting to be consoled and all I heard was her saying “hush” don’t talk about it. If my family had a saying it would be that. If it had a motto it would be to push everything under the rug, not just to never talk about it, but also to never remember it. That’s what my mother did best.
