I'm thinking about writing a book. . . about my childhood

Beginnings

I am the daughter of a lawyer and a teacher. If anything, that's where I can begin.

Daddy grew up somewhere between his father's deep Baptist Tennessee farmland and his mother's inner city Cleveland, Ohio. His life, from what bits I've come by, was never easy. Mama was from Cleveland too-- the eleventh child of a poor Catholic family that had their beliefs, if nothing else. Her family lived in the apartment above her Grandfather's grocery store.

They first met in Cleveland. She was eight, he was nine, and he had sic'd his dog on her. Later on they shared the same circle of friends, and though I'm not sure the version I've heard is entirely true, they ended up together in the end regardless.

I came along as the first lovechild of theirs, added to their shared brood of one son and one daughter. I was the law school baby. And when I came on a sunny June day they took me home, set me on the picnic table in the back yard and wondered what to do next. While they were pondering away, I had plans brewing. By the time I was one year old I had earned myself a reputation-- I would only sleep outside in the cool night air and I would eat anything I could get my hands on.

A year later I was joined by my younger sister, Krista. I let her know who was boss the very first day, sinking my three or four new teeth into her newborn arm. The competition has never ended. Kyle arrived, after much anticipation, in the fourth year of my life. They are now the most important people in my life

Summer
I recall lazy summer afternoons lying in the grass, watching the sky change from blue to pink to a darker blue and waiting for the lightning bugs to come out. Sometimes, just as it was getting to be time for bed a summer thunderstorm would roll in over the horizon and we would sit, the five of us, on the front porch and watch it coming. Counting the seconds between the loud thunderclap and the distant flash of lightning, calm and happy.

Vinegar and Honey

Life wasn't always sweet at home. Sometimes we would fight for weeks, but not without reason, without cause. There was no arguing simply for argument's sake. And in the end, the one message that I've learned is that we must love each other, before ourselves. Selfishness, spite, are the most basic forms of abuse. In the moments when we do not think of others, we can only be thinking of ourselves.