NaBloWriMo Day 9

Wednesday, November 9, 2011
When was the first time that you realized that your home was not like other people’s homes?

Hmmm. House-wise? I don't have a clear recollection of noticing differences, because really, I just didn't.

I spent the first part of my childhood in a mill town in Eastern Oregon. Most of the houses in our neighborhood were about the same price range (I think, anyway). There were a couple of nicer neighborhoods (read: wealthier) in town, but their houses looked very similar to ours.

When I am thinking about it all, I don't know that I ever made that judgment call until much later in my life. Things were what they were. Not necessarily bad or good, just what they were.

For instance, one of my best friends in high school lived in a house with a full-sized pool, a sauna, a intercom system throughout the house, and a big circular drive. Her family was defintely well-off, but her house was her house. Our house could have probably fit in the part of her house with the swimming pool and sauna and some bedrooms with some room left over.
Another of my best friends lived in a big old farmhouse out in the middle of the country. Her family's house was bigger than ours, but again, it was her family's home.

If we're talking "people who lived in said home", my answer would be different. Sort of. Everyone else's parents seemed waaaay more normal than mine would ever be, and I realized that sometime in grade school.

My Dad worked for the US Forest Service, and transferred every couple of years to a new place while we stayed in that small mill town. Other kids with parents who worked for the USFS usually moved with their parents every couple of years (that's how promotions worked). My parents decided that wasn't fair to me to be uprooted every couple of years again and again, so Dad went, we stayed put. I liken it to a 'reverse divorce' situation: instead of me going to my Dad's every weekend, he'd come home from wherever he was at the time. It was very odd.

He was also severely crippled by Rheumatoid Arthritis, so he looked different from everyone else's dad. When I say "severely crippled", I'm not joking. He was a strapping, strong young man who spent his summers jumping out of perfectly good airplanes to go fight forest fires--he was a smokejumper from the time he was 18 until he was almost 30. But by the time he died, Mom said he looked like a survivor from Auschwitz (seriously).

Then there was my Mom, who God love that woman, was the epitome of weird. And yes, I frequently told her so when she was still alive. All my friends thought she was the neatest person EVAR, but I think a (so-called) normal Mom would've been nice sometimes as well. She was interested in things like hypnotism, past-life regressions, reading Tarot cards, palm-reading, wearing and working with crystals, and alternative healing and energy work (like Jin Shin, and clearing chakras). It was not unusual for me to come home from school and being shushed as I walked through the door because she had someone doing a past-life regression in the living room. I can safely say that NONE of my friends had Moms like her. It wasn't until I was much older that I really appreciated who she was, and admired her for her interests (which I also made sure to tell her plenty of times).

So, I don't know in which manner this question was to be answered...but there it is.