I am not sure when, but I'm pretty certain somewhere along the lines my parents knew that I wasn't going to be quite the girl they tried to raise. I suspect they've never accepted it, but that's a whole other blog or book or ten years of therapy or something and far too much for this space. I guess they just wanted a little girl, and I just wanted to be me.
Sure I rocked the pigtails and loved, loved, loved when my Oma would braid my hair like Princess Leia, but that's about the size of my girly-ness. Everything else about me was less little girl, a lot more tomboy. I hated frilly dresses, purposely NOT telling my mother that it was picture day in the 2nd grade where I was forever immortalized in a messy ponytail, my favorite red and white striped shirt, and - though you couldn't see them - my favorite pair of Toughskins jeans. I OWNED my 2nd grade pictures. They were me, the true me.
The budding scientist in me would busy myself exploring the world around me. I caught frogs, tadpoles, bugs, grasshoppers, lizards (so many lizards), and blew up ant piles with firecrackers (the little biting bastards had it coming). I would watch the bees, whistle to the birds, and I had an impressive collection of pet 'rescue' turtles through the years. And surely I was not the first nor last child to test a pet hamster's flight pattern from a ceiling fan. Right? Alright, maybe I was. RIP Petey Hampster.
I went on many a quest for Bigfoot, would decide that an out of place round watering hole in the middle of the forest was King Kong's bathtub, and was convinced that strange human-like creatures lived amongst the swamps I grew up around. On any given day I was a scientist, an explorer, an Indian constructing my wigwam out of stray boards and remnant carpeting, a carpenter building my own tree-house. The world was my proverbial oyster when I was growing up and I went everywhere my imagination would take me.
Finding someone to share in my lust for adventure and knowledge was a bit harder than finding someone to play Barbies with; so, my first best friend was the boy next door. We played football, fished for catfish with crawfish nets, and formed a KISS tribute band complete with tennis racket guitars and, occasionally, the makeup. I sincerely didn't understand why my best friend could never spend the night, it just seemed unfair. Finally, my parents gave and let him stay the night on the eve of Easter one year. I'm not sure of the reasons but his family didn't celebrate the holidays we did. So it was his first Easter and the first and last sleepover we'd ever have. We slept four to a bed - me, my sister, brother, and my bff. When we all woke up, each of us had an Easter basket, and it was his first. He was delighted. I'll never forget that Easter, and I'd have to guess neither will he.
My parents were alcoholics ... are alcoholics. Though I do harbor some bitterness still, I confess that it was probably because of their alcoholism and accompanying self-absorption that I had the best childhood ever. While my siblings got into trouble with drugs, my parents were busied by their lunacy which left me alone with my imagination, a lot. I was left to explore. To discover. To be the hunter. The hunted. A rock star. A boy's best friend.
Though I have grown up, I have never grown out of these things that shaped me. I struggle with the way most of life is spent surrounded by four walls and a ceiling, with tvs, computers, video games and never a quiet moment going uninterrupted by a call or text from a mobile phone. I struggle with the apparent consensus, though not my own, that girls and boys once turned women and men cannot be friends anymore. My imagination is stifled by realism, my exploration by lack of time, money and someone who shares with me that lust for adventure and knowledge that I've never lost.
I suppose I struggle most with being the woman that no longer just my parents - but the world - expects me to be. But still, I just yearn to be me.
