Progenitors: Friendships

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Friendship, getting along with others, person to person contact is a basic human need.

My parents had several siblings. Most of my dad’s family lived in southwestern Idaho, farmers and ranchers. We visited them and our grandparents on vacations, my dad seeming to enjoy their company. Some of the  epic discussions I mention in this post occurred on these visits. The first time I heard Nixon’s name was as a 7 or 8-year-old playing in a small irrigation ditch while dad and Uncle Joe went at it during a backyard potluck.

fishing with cousins

My mom’s oldest siblings, all brothers, lived near us but their families didn’t mesh well with ours. There is much to be mined from that fact, but on another day, for another blog.

Instead, mom’s three older sisters were close by, her closest sister in age living next door. These were the people who were primarily my parent’s friends. Holidays, birthdays, anniversary parties spent at one of the family houses, adults having the usual conversations, cousins playing. We took vacations together, usually to my aunt and uncle’s cabin in the mountains, or to my dad’s family farm. People from church constituted any other friendships my parents had; a church that we and two of mom’s sisters attended, as well as my grandparents, and the extended family of a contemporary of my granddad. A small town church filled with the progeny of two families: the making of a situational primetime drama.

family entertaining out-of-town family at the zoo

This inbreeding of friendship gave the impression that you don’t make friends, you are born with them. Whether you like them or not, your relatives are your friends. A given by birth, skills to attain or maintain friendships were seemingly unnecessary to learn or hone. A fact interesting to me is my uncle next door had only two siblings, and as an adult child of an alcoholic, he was very good at making people feel warm and welcome. He and my aunt had many non-family friends over the years, some of whom became our friends as well. It was rare, however, if these out-of-family friendships originated with my parents. Providing me with an adulthood of skill-learning, my parents also took some really great pictures.

one of many birthday parties

Progenitors: Part I

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To get a few things sorted, I will state that I was not actually raised by any sort of actual wolf. Like Carolyn, who Buddy the Elf meets in the pediatrician’s waiting room, I’m a human, raised by humans. I will also state: I’m completely aware that my parents did the best they could, with who they were at the time.

My parents were both 2nd to last children, in families bearing 9 and 10 kids respectively. They were born less than a month apart, during the same year, some time between the market crash of 1929 and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. They both had older brothers who fought in WWII. My dad grew up in a farming community, my mom in, what was then, a very small town just north of Seattle. Both my granddads did what ever they could to provide food, clothes, and shelter for their families. My grandmothers were both gentle and kind, loved their partners, and worked hard to run the families, raise the kids, keep the vegetables growing, assisting their spouses when the kids were still too young to help out. They were undoubtedly stretched very thin in the amount of direct attention and love they could lavish on any one particular child.

My parents met each other in college. My mom was studying nursing, my dad studying languages, primarily spanish, and teaching. They married and became parents 3 years later. Before my sister was born, my folks moved into my maternal grandparents house to save money while building their own house on property purchased from my granddad. They moved in shortly after their first child arrived. Three years later, I arrived at the house, and after another 2 1/2 years, my younger sister showed up as well.

3, 1, 6

My memories of young childhood are mostly warm, softly lit pictures: playing store on the sunny front porch; hanging on to my dad’s ankles as he made his way to the door each morning, dragging squirming lumps across the floor, delighted at being loved so much; my mom ironing in the kitchen, the floor made very slippery by the overshot ironing spray; the enormous television set with doors from which we weren’t allowed to watch Adam West as Batman; the coir matting carpet that could skin a knee almost as efficiently as the gravel driveway; snuggling on the armless sofa as my mom read us stories; and the beautiful Christmas trees we cut from our own 5 acres-gangly, wide-gapped branches, allowing plenty of room to hold our extensive collection of handmade ornaments and tinsel.

My parents seemed pretty happy. My dad loved being a dad to us 3 young ones.

Birthday

Birthday

Post-its of Me

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The First Post is awkward. You don’t know me. I don’t know where the hell to begin. Not an autobiography, this blog will serve more as random yellow sticky notes attached to my name, giving insights, and perhaps definition to my person. Maybe it will become a verbal collage of glossy bits, cut-outs, rubber stamped images, and watercolors. My friend Susan is a collage artist. I’d like my life to look like one of her works. We’ll see.

a page in my art journal