I’ve lived in 29 places in my lifetime. That’s a lot of places to remember. The reason I’m thinking about this is because some days I wonder if the home we have now will be my last one. That is, will we ever move again? I would assume that at SOME POINT, if we stay in this house, which I grow to love more each day, the kids will move out and it will be too big for just the two of us, and we’ll consider moving to an apartment or a place that is, at least, lower maintenance. We talk occasionally about moving somewhere ELSE, not in Sweden and not in the U.S., where Anders and I can BOTH be the foreigners together for once. I don’t know if it will ever happen. I don’t know if we’re stuck now and just don’t know it. Right now, all I know is that I don’t want to move.
I would need to pick my mom’s brain in order to find out things about many of the places we lived before I was school-age. We lived in 3 different places in Great Falls, Montana, for example, when I was very small, and I remember nothing. My sister and brother were both born there. We got our (only) dog, Heidi, and Tish, our first of many cats. I know there was a LOT of snow because I have pictures, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been told that during one winter in Montana, the snow was so high that we built tunnels into it, but sometimes I think that’s something I read in a Little House book and not something that actually happened to ME.
From Montana, we moved to Knob Noster, Missouri, the place with the best name of all the places I’ve lived. I don’t remember a lot about Missouri either. I had my stomach pumped after eating something in the woods across the street that I thought was grapes and turned out to be undissolved pesticide. I learned to ride a bike, my sparkly metallic green machine with a matching banana seat and a basket with flowers on it. I played captured princess with friends and my sister and her friend David Peacock touched tongues which grossed me out so thoroughly that I STILL remember it. 😀 I remember taking my Madame Alexander India doll to school for show-and-tell and losing her pretty gold coin earring and her little snake bracelet with the ruby red eyes. My sister and I were slowly acquiring the Madame Alexander country dolls, each one dressed nattily in the traditional costume of the country she represented, and even though they were supposed to be look-at-only dolls, we played with them, thus destroying any value they might have had today. 🙂
Missouri was where my sister and I explored Baby Face Creek and where we had a huge basement, one corner of which was our playroom. I remember a party that my parents had, where they covered the basement walls with brown butcher-block paper and my mom drew huge copies of comic strips: B.C. and The Wizard of Id and Beetle Bailey, all over them and the guests drew and wrote on the walls, and my sister and brother and I snuck downstairs and ate the black olives set out as appetizers. Our playroom had a full play kitchen and my mom saved food packages and boxes and washed out tin cans to give us authentic food to use in it. Missouri was where my sister tied a couple of pillows around her middle and threw herself down the basement stairs to “see what it felt like.” Karin takes after HER, you see. 🙂
I went to Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade in Missouri. We were close enough to walk to school, as it was only about 7-8 blocks away. One day after I had left for school, my mother left the house quite some time later and driving away down the street, found me only halfway to school, walking v-e-r-y-s-l-o-w-l-y along the sidewalk. I wonder if I ran when I saw her. 😀 Missouri was where my sister and I had mumps together and then gave it to my brother. It’s funny, other than the basement, I can’t remember a thing about the layout of the house or yard.
Next stop: Nebraska
****
Things I Sometimes Miss Being Able to Do: cartwheels, headfirst diving, skipping class, shopping on State Street
A Blogger’s Fear: I actually began to worry (in an abstract and entirely brainless way) that the number of thoughts one person can entertain in a lifetime is firmly finite and that after thirty-plus years of caffeinated munkie brain, where my mind whirls at fourteen times the pace of other animals in the jungle, simultaneously teasing the water buffalo, perfecting banana cream pie recipes, mining the mites off of my neighbours, reading Kafka and comic books, and jeering at the various organ grinders that pass my way…I have chewed through all my jaunty, worthwhile thoughts and will spend the rest of my life rocking slightly on my heels with a bubble of drool in the corner of my mouth, staring slack jawed at my feet, mumbling dully “um, what was I gonna do now?” swiped from Wee Me & The Wolf