Wednesday, October 29, 2003
  In My Room Today's spark - from The Spark at Diarest.net. 'Think about all the rooms in all the houses you have lived in. Describe them and reflect upon whether where you have lived may have affected how you felt at different times in your life. ' Well I've lived an awful lot of places, lets just concentrate on the earliest I can remember. From age...Oh about 5 I guess, until I was 20 or 21 we lived in a big Tudor monstrosity. It was very pretty, and a the childhood memories I have of that place are mostly good ones. I remember we had windows (made in the pretty Tudor style) in the living room that looked out into the front yard. There was a windowseat there, covering a heater. I remember on Christmas morning we used to have to wait for our parents to wake up before we could open presents, and I'd get my lil brother (who in hindsight I suspect never actually fell asleep at all) to wake me up around 5 am on Christmas morning. We'd all run down to the tree and scrounge around for our booty before the folks were up. It was so cold those winter mornings that we couldn't stand being on the floor in our pajamas for very long, so at intervals we'd go sit on the heated windowseat, warm our butts, then go right back at it. I remember how the snow looked through that strange, beautiful glass, and how ice crystals would freeze on the window. That room was HUGE and gigantic to a kid. I remember my dad had a huge bookcase (filled with huge books) with a big ole 70's hi-fi stereo in it. I can't help feeling a warm glow as I recall that house, even through the horrible things that happened there. I am at a loss to explain this, really. The good memories are not, in the least, colored by the bad ones. It's as if I made two lives for myself. I do know that I made my father into two fathers. :> Had to really. A child has no way of accepting that the sweet, caring, gentle father she loves is just another side of the cruel, malicious, drunken child-abuser that she hates. So there were two. 'Good daddy' and 'bad daddy'. So it makes sense that there were two houses. 'Before 7 pm house' was a wonderful place to grow up and explore. 'After 7 pm house' was a shadowed, scary place that I'd have done anything to escape. I don't think anyone but another child of functioning alcoholics can understand this dichotomy. When I tell people who know the story that I had a wonderful childhood they look at me funny and shake their heads. Yes, It was a screwed up childhood, but when It was good, it was very, very good. When it was bad, of course, it was horrid. :> Anne let this go at 10/29/2003 09:27:00 AM

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