Five

When I think of my childhood very few distinct memories come to mind. There are a few events that you would expect to stand out. My oldest brother broke his neck in a car accident when I was three. My grandmother died when I was eight. My sister telling me she was pregnant when I was seven and she was fourteen. I vaguely remember being picked on in school because I was fat and picked on at home by my siblings. I was the youngest of seven kids; "the baby". Don't get me wrong. My childhood wasn't bad by any means. I remember large noisy family gatherings on Sundays after church and on holidays. There were always friends and family around. What memories I have are remembered fondly. I just don't have very many distinct memories. Even the things I've mentioned are more like reflections of memories. Perhaps I've seen a picture or heard a story about these things. My youth, for the most part, is a bunch of hazy snapshots, except when I was five. I remember that year quite clearly.

For my fifth birthday I got a Winnie the Pooh tunnel to crawl through with my friends. The sun was out for my party and the grass was damp from the spring rains. I had my first kiss that year, under the teacher's desk. My best friend was irate because she liked the same boy so I made him kiss her too. That summer, as I played under my favorite horse chestnut tree in front of my house, two guys in a car threw a Molotov cocktail at me. I remember feeling very important when they wrote an article about what happened in the local paper. I also remember the grown-ups saying how the tree protected me from the worst of the spraying glass. That tree was hit by lightning later that same summer and had to be cut down. Then, most importantly to my five year old mind, my parents decided to have an in ground pool installed behind our house.

The crew arrived early one hot summer morning in their big trucks towing excavation equipment. In a matter of hours our nice back yard was transformed into a muddy and rutted mess of tire tracks around a big hole in the ground. I was enthralled as any five year old would be, especially with my new friend, Rusty. Rusty gave me rides back and forth in his wheel barrow. I was a mud covered beauty queen riding in her own convertible and at that point I couldn't have been happier.

Looking back I'm not sure if I understood the idea that we were getting a pool and that was a special thing that not everyone had. I didn't understand that my family and all the neighborhood kids would have a safe place to hang out. I was thrilled with the dirty, noisy and exciting process of installation but it seemed to me overnight the crew and trucks were gone and in its stead I found a glittering blue oasis surrounded by friends and family. After a week of determination I had learned to swim and was jumping into the deep waters. Every day shortly after waking I would plunge in the pool only to be coaxed out at mealtimes and bedtime. With my hair bleached white and my nose always slightly sunburnt I was a fish.

Soon my house was the place to be in my neighborhood in the summer. There always seemed to be family or friends stopping by for a dip when the sun was hot. My father cheerfully took advantage of any able bodies looking to swim and always had this project or that chore that he needed a hand with. My mother always had homemade cookies or a sandwich for any hungry mouths. This is how my childhood continued with endless summers around the pool and friends and family always near. So perhaps, in retrospect, it isn't that my childhood didn't have very many distinct memories but I was lucky enough to have so many distinct memories as to run together into one long happy childhood.