Family is a funny thing. Not amusing funny, but strange funny for me. I have very happy and content early childhood memories of my family. Typically nuclear, mom, dad, brother, dog. Very quintessential, 4 seasons of memories, swimming, boating, sledding in the wintertime, apple picking, travelling, riding tricycle on my driveway, climbing rocks, dancing around in the rain in the summertime, vacations with cousins...then my parent's split when I was seven, and I can remember after that just feeling sad a lot. I missed my dad, who moved about a half hour away, and I couldn't reconcile the whole thing. I turned inward a lot. I remember liking to play by myself a lot, I would go off in the woods alone (this was the 1970's when kids could still do that, nobody thought we would get raped, killed or stolen) and pretend I was living off the land by myself. Very "My Side of the Mountain"-esque. My brother and I still saw my father every other weekend, when he would buy us junky cereal and take us bowling or to the movies. He had a hide-a-bed we would sleep on and he had girlfriends sometimes that we would have to visit (I hated that). They always had kids and the kids were always annoying, as we were thrown together and everyone just assumed that we would get along because we were kids. (insert rolling eyes here).

But overall I remember feeling loved, I was loved by my mom and I was loved by my dad. I got hugged a lot. I cried when I was sad, laughed when I was happy. It was sad that my parents weren't together but it was o.k. My dad and mom both remarried, it was tough to get used to that, but then my dad moved from Connecticut to Arizona and I didn't get to see him except during long vacations (summer, christmas and easter). And I didn't get along with my mom's new husband at all. He was possessive of her and jealous of us and wanted my mom all to himself. That sucked. My dad's wife was great, she was crazy in some ways (good ways) and over the top emotionally but other than that we really liked her. She took us to waterslide parks and mini golf and played everywhere with us. She was like the cruise director!

My dad took a job in Florida when I was 12 turning 13 and by then I was living with him, so we moved to Miami between 8th and 9th grade. That was the beginning of a very dark time in my life. This was the early 80's and I didn't wear the styles well at all! The collared polo shirts and designer jeans and Member's Only jackets didn't fit me right. I was not popular, I was the new kid and kind of dorky and I was very insecure. 9th grade is the wrong time to enter middle school (7-8-9). I got teased a lot. My dad was less and less accessible to me emotionally, later I figured out that this had a lot to do with me "becoming a woman" and him feeling really uncomfortable about that, not knowing how to deal with me. I just remember feeling rejected. My step mother saved me, we connected pretty deeply and still do.

My dad was a workaholic, left the house by 7:30 am and didn't get home till after 8pm, when he would start drinking scotch. He almost always carried it to bed with him and during dinner it would nestle itself in the ice tray in the freezer to maintain optimum temperature. Hmmmm. I never even gave this behavior a second thought at the time. Everyone around me drank, the adults anyway. It never seemed to be a problem for anyone. I digress...