August 31, 2005

• My Hometown, the Real Story

  
  

  I woke up this morning and read last night’s post, amazed at what an idyllic childhood I’d made it out to be.  I was perfectly happy in that little house when I was seven.  My best friend, Becky, lived next door, and the “bad boys” my brother wasn’t supposed to play with lived behind us.  There were kids everywhere.  Everything you’d need was down the street.  I was the oldest and once I got to walk to the store for my mother when she ran out of something.

  
  

   

  
  

  I thought the reason we moved was because she hated it over there.  And it was true, she couldn’t wait to get to the west side.  But the real reason we moved was because my dad was doin’ Becky’s mom.  No wonder I wasn’t allowed to call or write her.  My mom said when you moved you left your old friends behind.  It sounds funny to use “mom” here because we all use her first name.  There was nothing motherly about her.  Once my boyfriend referred to her as Hitler.

  
  

   

  
  

  Everything went pretty well on the west side those first few years.  I loved my new best friend and all the fun we had in the woods.  But once I hit middle school – In those days it was 1 through 8 – my mother and I declared war on each other.  My life was a living hell at home and I’m sure hers was, too.  By the time I was a junior I was well aware that the kids in my high school, with a few exceptions, were not people I would ever have anything in common with.  After I started dating outside my school I had nothing but contempt for the jocks who were in my social circle.  In fact the whole social circle became a farce.  My life was a lie.

  
  

   

  
  

  That’s when I met my first love.  He sat behind me in my senior English class.  He’d come over from England when he was 11 and HE WAS HOT.  I was dating someone much older at the time and our dates were boring.  I never had any interesting stories when he asked me what I did over the weekend.  He, on the other hand, had gotten drunk and gone for a joyride in his mother’s car.  In those days kids didn’t have cars.  The next thing I know, he’s tried pot.  The teacher had to move me across the room.  We were studying poetry and he wrote the most beautiful, powerful stuff.

  
  

   

  
  

  He changed my life.  It got a little dicey and we don’t need to go into that here because by then I’d left home and this is about our hometowns.  I never went back unless I had to attend Christmas or Thanksgiving, and this went on for 33 years.  I never belonged there.

  
  

   

  
  

  After I got divorced I bought a house in Lake Oswego, that place I thought was so off-limits.  Actually it was barely in L.O.  It was on an unassuming, very rural street.  That’s when I met my last boyfriend who introduced me to the neighborhood I was born in.  And here I am, back home.

  
  

   

  
  

   

  • 12:09 am
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