I guess my childhood was as normal as I knew anyone else's to be. I was born at 5:00 am on a hot June morning having survived seven months (I was a premie) of my mothers irritation at my father. The day my mother went into labor my father decided to take the car apart. Things must have spiraled from that point. My mother decided to smoke her first joint right then and there, with me hanging between coming out and staying in the only place I had known thus far. I'm thinking I came into this world high on pot and extremely irritable which doesn't make for a good start. To make matters worse, when the doctor smacked my little butt I didn't scream, not because I was too high to feel it, but because my throat and probably lungs were to filled with mucus. I was told the doctor had to stick his fingers in my mouth and pull the mucus out. After that I let out a giant yell announcing my arrival.
I grew up in the sixties in a small suburb outside of Detroit. Periodically we moved to Detroit only to find our way back to Ferndale eventually( we moved back after a year or less). I spent the summers of my early childhood stripping naked and walking our block talking to all our neighbors like the main character in the storybook, The Emperor's New Clothes. What I remember most about those days were how bright the sun shined, and the tall blades of grass with the occasional yellow of the dandelion.
The Anderson girl were three teenage sister that doted on me and loved combing my hair, which was a chore for my mother. By the time I was two years old my hair was a mop of fuzzy tangled curls that flowed down my back. The woman in my mothers family had soft shiny natural waves a reminder of their mixed heritage. My first memory of being different was during one the aunts visit. She looked at me and stated in a matter of fact manner that I favored my mother except for my "nappy hair". There it was, my first taste of discrimination happen in my home with my own kine. In the early sixties black community was divide into two class of blacks, the lighter complexion with the "good" hair were the most acceptable. My hair never made the cut.
There was always great affection from my father and grandfather. I was beyond a shadow of a doubt their little princess. The year after I was born my sister Gina came along( I already had an older sister and brother), by the time she could talk she, talked and play excessively with her invisible friend Jesus. I was no longer everyone's darling I had been replaced by a smaller, prettier, and apparently more spiritual model, not to mention her soft shiny wavy hair. I didn't like her even if Jesus did and every time I expressed the fact that she was a lying, crazy snot-nosed brat, the grown people would spell out the word j-e-a-l-o-u-s as if spelling it would somehow disguised it's meaning. It probably would have if I didn't know what it spelled.
I have always been a strange mix of paradoxes, quiet and shy most days, but then there was the days I would talk so much my mother would start what was known around our house as the quiet game. The person or persons who could stay quiet the longest won a shiny quarter, I never once won that quarter, my sibling and I would make faces at each other to try and get the other to laugh so that we could win. Once or twice a month we had family confession. My sibling and I would all gather around our parents and confess our sins. Our sin pretty much consisted of eating the jellybeans off the big coconut Easter cake, breaking someone else toy, breaking eggs or drinking out of the milk carton. We never got in trouble nor angry after confession even if someone else got a spanking for your sin, it was a way of cleaning our conscious without the reality of consequences.
My father was an artist and like many artist he would suffer with bouts of depression. He drank gin, shot heroin and smoked pot. In spite of his problems he was loving, funny and handsome, but not a good provider. My mother had an exotic beauty that made ,to my horror, strange men stare and whistle. She wore micro mini skirts, maxi dresses, loud powered blue eye shadow and smoked pot when not pregnant(which was rare, she had eight children by the age of twenty eight). I can't count the number of times in my life that I wished for a more matriarchal mother; chubby, slight mustache with silver hair like some of my friends mothers. My parents were pot smoking hippies and sideline flower children.
My parents believe in pure expression especially artistic. Our home was always filled with paint, brushes, crayons, pencils, stencils and diaries. We were always taught to express ourselves whether it was joy, anger, disappointment, pain heartache in words or art. We were a loud, rambunctiousness artistic bunch without traditional rules.
I was number three of nine and before long a middle child, and the carrier of the disease middle child syndrome. It manifested itself as a attention getting brat, who was prone to temper tantrums that made the Tasmanian Devil look like Mini Mouse. I was a happy but emotionally expressive child.
More later
I grew up in the sixties in a small suburb outside of Detroit. Periodically we moved to Detroit only to find our way back to Ferndale eventually( we moved back after a year or less). I spent the summers of my early childhood stripping naked and walking our block talking to all our neighbors like the main character in the storybook, The Emperor's New Clothes. What I remember most about those days were how bright the sun shined, and the tall blades of grass with the occasional yellow of the dandelion.
The Anderson girl were three teenage sister that doted on me and loved combing my hair, which was a chore for my mother. By the time I was two years old my hair was a mop of fuzzy tangled curls that flowed down my back. The woman in my mothers family had soft shiny natural waves a reminder of their mixed heritage. My first memory of being different was during one the aunts visit. She looked at me and stated in a matter of fact manner that I favored my mother except for my "nappy hair". There it was, my first taste of discrimination happen in my home with my own kine. In the early sixties black community was divide into two class of blacks, the lighter complexion with the "good" hair were the most acceptable. My hair never made the cut.
There was always great affection from my father and grandfather. I was beyond a shadow of a doubt their little princess. The year after I was born my sister Gina came along( I already had an older sister and brother), by the time she could talk she, talked and play excessively with her invisible friend Jesus. I was no longer everyone's darling I had been replaced by a smaller, prettier, and apparently more spiritual model, not to mention her soft shiny wavy hair. I didn't like her even if Jesus did and every time I expressed the fact that she was a lying, crazy snot-nosed brat, the grown people would spell out the word j-e-a-l-o-u-s as if spelling it would somehow disguised it's meaning. It probably would have if I didn't know what it spelled.
I have always been a strange mix of paradoxes, quiet and shy most days, but then there was the days I would talk so much my mother would start what was known around our house as the quiet game. The person or persons who could stay quiet the longest won a shiny quarter, I never once won that quarter, my sibling and I would make faces at each other to try and get the other to laugh so that we could win. Once or twice a month we had family confession. My sibling and I would all gather around our parents and confess our sins. Our sin pretty much consisted of eating the jellybeans off the big coconut Easter cake, breaking someone else toy, breaking eggs or drinking out of the milk carton. We never got in trouble nor angry after confession even if someone else got a spanking for your sin, it was a way of cleaning our conscious without the reality of consequences.
My father was an artist and like many artist he would suffer with bouts of depression. He drank gin, shot heroin and smoked pot. In spite of his problems he was loving, funny and handsome, but not a good provider. My mother had an exotic beauty that made ,to my horror, strange men stare and whistle. She wore micro mini skirts, maxi dresses, loud powered blue eye shadow and smoked pot when not pregnant(which was rare, she had eight children by the age of twenty eight). I can't count the number of times in my life that I wished for a more matriarchal mother; chubby, slight mustache with silver hair like some of my friends mothers. My parents were pot smoking hippies and sideline flower children.
My parents believe in pure expression especially artistic. Our home was always filled with paint, brushes, crayons, pencils, stencils and diaries. We were always taught to express ourselves whether it was joy, anger, disappointment, pain heartache in words or art. We were a loud, rambunctiousness artistic bunch without traditional rules.
I was number three of nine and before long a middle child, and the carrier of the disease middle child syndrome. It manifested itself as a attention getting brat, who was prone to temper tantrums that made the Tasmanian Devil look like Mini Mouse. I was a happy but emotionally expressive child.
More later
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