A Life in the Making

Before the Badge

An excerpt from A Life in the Making

The sun is warm on my bronze skin. The Gulf of Mexico may have gentle waves, but the roar of them reminds me these waters are powerful. I am digging in the soft sand and collecting rainbow colored periwinkles and the occasional sand dollar. My bucket is half full, so we’ve been here awhile. I check the beach to make sure John and I haven’t moved too far down the beach from mom. She waves. We’re good. My sun bleached hair tickles my shoulders as I shake the hair from my eyes. Squinting in the sun I see my sister, Jill, approach. She scoops up a handful of wet sand and begins making one of her masterpiece drip sand castles. I smile and marvel at her patience and skill.

When I am four, we trade sandy beaches and roaring oceans for old growth forests and endless rain. My father got a job in a paper mill in Albany, Oregon. The kitchen in this new house is shades of yellow and orange. From the counter I can feel the warm sun shining on my face. My father grabs my forearm and softly hits my face with my own hand and says “Why are you hitting yourself?” I laugh and smile at him, so he continues. I put my face down because I’m no longer having fun, and he continues. My mom says “Steve, she isn’t having fun anymore”

Not long after we arrive in Oregon my parents divorce. I am in the back of my moms station wagon going through a donut drive thru while it’s still dark. She drops my brother and me off at pre-school and takes herself to another day of nursing school. We return to our little apartment where my siblings and I are sharing one room. An older boy in the complex teased me and told me the middle finger meant “Merry Christmas”. My sister picked up a baseball bat and had a conversation with him and his friends. I don’t remember ever seeing them again.

My mom became a Registered Nurse and worked overnight taking care of a boy about my age who was paralyzed and on a ventilator full time. She took care of him mostly overnight. Occasionally she would bring me and I would sleep on the couch listening to his vent softly whoosh. When she worked day shift with him, she would push him in his wheelchair up and down a grassy field so he could play football with the other kids. He had football posters all over his open room in the main living area of his house.

During this time, after mom graduated, we rented a house on 13th street in Corvallis Or. I had one birthday in that house and beyond that, I have only a few vague memories of my mother ever being in that home. Mostly I remember sitting with my older sister and younger brother on the couch watching MTV late at night. Sometimes I would stand by the TV for long stretches pushing the white buttons on the cable box that sat on top of the TV. It was exciting to stay up late watching music videos with my sister. She would quiz me on whose video was on the screen. On the occasion I got the answer right I felt so cool. Def Leppard was my favorite. “Can I go to bed now?” I would ask as the night wore on. “No, I don’t want you waking me up in the morning.” Even if I promised to be quiet in the morning, she wouldn’t let me go to bed and would poke me to keep me awake.

I thought my mom just worked every night, but later Jill would tell me mom and her new boyfriend, Craig, were at the bars all night. Jill cooked us dinner, and normally I loved her food. Once, she made a circular piece of meat that turned my stomach. I can still smell it if I let my mind go there. Jill insisted I eat it and I wasn’t getting up until I did. I picked my fork up from the green table cloth and poked at it. “Just eat it. Its good”. I put one bite in my mouth and it immediately fell back on the plate. Eventually, I pushed the plate to the center of the table and laid my head on that table cloth and fell asleep. I tucked my feet under myself and the wicker seat of the wooden chair held me in place.

The next morning I woke, in my bed, thinking my sister hated me. I could hear her talking on the phone, probably to her best friend Amy. “And she has this perfect skin, tan without even trying. And her cheek bones are high, her hair thick and straight. Its just not fair”. Me. She was talking about me, and I felt a warmth in my chest that was completely new. My sister, who I looked up to more than anyone else, loved me. Or at least thought I was pretty. She also talked to Amy about hating Oregon and wanting to go back to the south. As the sound of the rain threatened to drown out the conversation I was engrossed with, I wanted nothing more than to be sitting in the warm sand with waves gently lapping against my legs. This daydream and the sound of rain brings back the memory of sitting by the ocean and seeing clouds form. I grabbed John’s hand just as I heard my mother scream “Get out of the water!!” A thunder storm was upon us.

When I was a teenager I remember my mom telling me she had a dream of me running toward water. She was up high where she couldn’t get to me. Her dream felt so real even I could see it in my mind. My whole life I have been trying to get back to water. I now live a twenty minute drive from the beach.