What Made Me "Me": The Blue House

In the first 10 years of my life, my family moved six times. And, from age 10 to age 20, I moved four times. During my high school years, I attended three different high schools. So, forgive me if the story I’m about to unpack is a bit incomplete. The related memories are probably stored in another box in the attic of my brain somewhere. It doesn’t help that my memory, as a whole, is not great. When I share pieces of my life, others have told me it’s probably best that I can’t remember more. To me, it feels disabling. The last few years, I’ve wanted to remember. I’ve told my brain it’s safe to remember. We won’t die. We will be okay. But, my memories remain locked away and I can’t find the key.

We’ll start with what I remember more clearly: The Blue House.

The Blue House was exactly that: a pale blue. Perhaps with all the moving my four-year-old mind categorized it as the blue house and didn’t think to call it what it could have been named: Home. It was another house. I’d seen enough houses and the blue was enough to make it distinct.

I remember it best from standing next to the neighbors house across the street. In their yard, on a sidewalk that turned into their plot, the concreate ended with a stoop. I would sit on the stoop next to the tiny spruce they planted. My mom said I would sit their often, a tiny girl, sitting quietly next to a tree. I guess the neighbors didn’t mind. Sometimes, the neighbors gave us tiny presents for Christmas, like the metal Airplane Pencil Sharpener. I wonder what they saw, when they looked at my house. One girl, neighbors across the street, staring at a Blue House.

It is two stories. Facing the house you can see a front porch, a gravel driveway on the right. Daffodils line the right side of the house in spring. Bright blue hydrangeas line the left in summer. For years I called the hydrangeas “snowballs”. I didn’t know their actual name for years. This was normal - me naming what I didn’t know, either because I wouldn’t be corrected, or because no one told me. There was a lot I didn’t know.

The mailbox was on the left wall inside the open front porch. If I sat on the living room couch, I could see the mailman walk up and drop our mail in. I loved getting mail and that was probably the first career I considered. I wanted to make other people as happy as I did when getting mail.

From the porch, opening the screen door, we step into the living room, and from there, you can see most of the house. Two bedrooms are connected to the living room on the left. The kitchen is on the far end and on the left after you’ve walked through the “hallway”. Across from the kitchen is the bathroom on the right. Back in the living room, you can see the stairs that lead to the top floor. Go up the stairs and you see two bedrooms straight ahead, with an attic space on the right. I LOVED the attic space. This was my hiding place. At one point, the upstairs went through some renovation and someone had placed extra plywood in the attic. I moved the boards around, brought a flashlight, and made my home there. I’d listen to my cassette taps, record myself on my “radio station” and read “Choose Your Own Adventure”. It was a space I could control and create and choose what happened. I was surrounded by insulation, plywood, and darkness. But, there, all I remember is light, freedom, and rainbows.

Let’s go back downstairs.

In the house, there wasn’t much décor. Nothing matched. In the living room, I remember a small American flag taped to the living room wall. Our tv stood on a tv cart. A couch sits opposite. A metal bookshelf held the books that we read and the records that we listened to. Our living room had a large vent where I would prop my feet and I’d hold them there until I could barely stand the heat. The house was cold so I would play in front of the vent often. Above the vent hung an Einstein poster with the quote

Next to that was a bit of scripture on a plague,

Lying on the floor, feet propped on the vent, I read both quotes over and over.

Next, the backyard. Walk through the house, and out the kitchen door on your right, and you’ll see it. Yellow roses grew along the back. A tire swing hung from the one oak tree in our yard. To the left of the yard was a concrete slab - possibly the remains of an old garage. I remember my mom spending hours cleaning the concrete, sweeping it, pulling weeds, never allowing it to get overgrown. But that space was never made purposeful.

This is where the strange neglect comes in, affecting the house, and affecting me. You could see evidence of the mindsets my parents had when it came to home ownership.

In the first bedroom on the left, at one point, my mom painted it but after painting it did not like the color. Through this experience, she felt she’d learned some type of lesson and left a written note for herself taped to the wall in the bedroom. But, the lesson had a tone of shame and in the note she explained why she wouldn’t repaint the room because of the lesson she’d learned.

This was a theme in my family. If you screwed up, you were shamed, and if you were shamed, you’d better repent. Even if the screw up was just a paint color.

There was our couch, which had ever growing rips in the seats. Good thing we had bedsheets to cover that.

But, the bedsheets were old, thin, faded. Bath towels were frayed. We didn’t have washcloths, we had washrags. Broken things stayed broken. Clothes were bought only when absolutely necessary. We lived off of a Preacher’s salary and I get that. But, after learning that my dad sent money to Jim Bakker’s ministry, instead of, oh, maybe keeping that money to feed his family, you can imagine why I would be a tad upset. But, I can’t put full blame there. Jim Bakker was a force and he sold some serious promises. And, my family was not the only one that bought into those promises.

I made the connection this past year that my Susie Moppet Doll was a Jim Bakker product. I’m working through what to do with these relics from my past. We’ll see what happens here.

And, food. Let’s talk about food. First, I must say that my mom was and is an imaginative and creative cook. There would be nothing left in the cupboards and she would always find a way to make a meal. There would be comfort foods like beef and noodles and chicken and dumplings. Then there were the absolute weird and wild meals that had no names but would take up space on our plate. It was our opportunity to eat and you didn’t have another choice. To this day, I think more clearly when the cabinets are almost empty and I can see everything that we have. Stocked cabinets, freezers and refrigerators feel disabling and confusing. Decision fatigue at its best.

Snacks consisted of ramen noodles, frozen meals, and Vienna sausages. In desperate times, melted butter and sugar made for a quick pick-me-up. It was the Midwest mixed with the ‘80s with a dash of poverty. This too could explain my poor memory. Malnutrition.

Back to the house.

Over the years, as my parents marriage grew more and more in tatters, so did the house. Eventually, my mom, after gaining some independence and chutzpah started a job as a waitress and bought a new fridge, and a new kitchen table. She’d had enough. But the house itself continued to decay. One of my last memories of it are the mushrooms that grew in the bathroom next to the tub. Nature finally deciding to take on the job no one else was willing to do: transformation.

Years later, I would find myself in the pages of the book “Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect” by Jonice Weber. It was the first time I could begin to name why my childhood so weird. In my mind, we were Christians, we were doing what other Christians were doing, buying the same books, being homeschooled, listening to ONLY Christian music. We were being good. So, why was our family not working? Why did life feel so hard? Why did love feel allusive?

Learning the why’s would take time. And, years to unpack.

This was just the beginning.