Earliest Memory

Blond Hair and Need

The evenings before school began were always my favorite when I was a young girl. On these evenings my single mother would make her famous beef stroganoff with homemade French rolls for dinner. I vaguely remember "helping" by pulling down the three or four cans of cream of mushroom soup. Being that I was little less than four years old, mother would pull a chair out from under the table so I could reach the rustic Oak cabinets that my father put in ten years prior. I remember watching my mother wash, chop and baste fresh chunks of beef. She would then boil about two pounds of the cheapest egg noodles that had been taken out of the box one of the nearby churches puts together for the needy.

My family was very needy when I was a young girl, scraping together to make ends meet. Our house was ancient; as for the structure and mechanics of the house, well, they were old too. My mother never complained, even during the roughest of times. She listened to her young children complain on a daily basis, because we did not have the cool new shoes that everyone else wore on the first day of school. There were times I feared it hurt her to hear us ask for things she knew she couldn't provide, she only grinned and beared it. There were days I could not find a snack in the cupboards to take to my kindergarten classroom, I would call my mother at work early in the morning and complain. Not once did she raise her voice or her hand for that matter. It was almost as though she knew living in poverty and experiencing these hard times would benefit all of s in the long run. Children don't realize why mail is a fearful subject or why the name-brand cereal was always replaced with a cheaper version after we had placed it in the cart. Some would call it povery, but we called it home.

Back to dinner: the five of us living at 3085 Latch Rd. would squeeze into the four-person table set up in the kitchen. Either I would sit on my mother's lap, being that I was the youngest, or a fifth chair would be brought in from some miscellaneous place in the house. I remember all of us joining the dinner table together...and I being the only one remaining at the table when dinner was finished. This was because I failed to finish my plate; we didn't exactly have food to waste but I remember stirring the noodles and beef all around so that it appeared that I had eaten, because only then could I be dismissed from the table.

After leaving the table, I would gather my things for a bath. Mother always had a way to get me into the bathtub in spite of the fact that I percieved it as being the most wretched thing on planet Earth. On this night, we had bubble bath. It was a strawberry scented, artificially pink colored bath soap. The container had the five most famous princesses of all time- Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Pocahontas and Cinderella. This is what encouraged me to hop into the tub and wash up. After my bath, mother would come into the bathroom and clean my ears; she would also ensure that I had brushed my teeth. She would then grab the hairbrush and the two of us would go off to her bedroom located directly next to the bathroom.

I remember her queen-size bed. She had this thing all to herself which at the time amazed me. I suppose it adds up considering my mother and father slept together in that same bed only a few years before. I could only dream of having a bed that large all to myself. Either way, it belonged to her and there was plenty of space for me, ultimately, that is all that mattered then. First, she would run the brush through my hair, shorter and darker than her own, then I would run the brush through hers. I would have a plastic cup filledto the brim with tap-water for dipping the comb.. I remember my mother's golden hair likethe corn that surrounded our house, long and soft. I remember running my small hands through it to chekc that I had gotten all of the knots. I remember the length of her golden hair, almost past her hips so that when she sat and I knelt, I could not reach the few inches at the bottom.

After both of our air was brushed, mother would grab a bage of Gardettos from the stand to the left of her bed. This was for her and I solely which was not a problem because the rest of the household was sure to leave us alone. The entire day was spent working and running errands, tending to four children, but now she wasn't tending to anyone but myself and I reacted as a flower might to the sun. My mother and I would watch T.V. together from the middle of the bed. I would roll myself into the lush comforter and my mother would tuck in the ends, or tickle my feet if they stuck out. In the light of the screen we would ease into the evening, sometimes I would fall asleep, but I made an effort to stay awake as long as she could. After Fraiser, it was Will and Grace and after that, the ten o'clock news. We lived in a suburb of Toledo, Ohio but the news spoke predominately of the crime and chaos in the city. I didn't pay much attention to the news; just my mothers long, golden hair.