Still Looking for a Title

Intro

When I first sat down to write my story I had grand ideas about something like an autobiography- telling a sometimes unbelievable story as I remember it. It's been years since that idea, and what follows is the culmination of ideas, experiences and perceptions gained from keeping years of personal journals.

Writing was always a passion of mine, and I was introduced to that passion in many ways, as a child, the happenstance of life of course pushing the passion aside. Though I was always able to utilize a motivating platform, the norm of life, motherhood and the illusionary race for success filled my time of priority for a great chunk of my life. Seven years ago I began to suffer from what I labeled as writer's block; though in the year's since I have found it more a disconnection to my own soul and the purpose I fulfill in this lifetime.

Thank you for sharing with me the break out that reconnects the soul with it's purpose.

1- The Early Years

Like the majority of us, my memory is not the clearest about the earliest years of life, and though blessed to still have nearly a decade of journaling at my disposal, the thirty years before are mostly pulled from memory.

I was born and raised in the Panhandle of Texas. Before the boom of the ever-expanding centralized city of Amarillo, in what I have heard described many times over the years a 'very haunted downtown hospital'. The medical center has since been moved to a large tract northwest of town; the old building incorporated into the historical landscape of the expanding city.

My earliest memory, or so I've claimed for many years, was being five years old and stuck in a five-gallon bucket. The part I always remembered the most was that my parents laughed and made me wait while they took a picture before helping me get out of it. I can say, I have learned to handle five-gallon buckets in my lifetime.

I could fill this chapter describing memories, for as I write this, my mind dances with clowns and bikes and soccer and juniper trees. From the purpose of my story, I'd like to explore instead the mindset I gained in the first nine years of my life.

I was an extremely outgoing child. Our family was active in the local soccer association and when we had found a good open Christian church, my sister and I became integrated into the youth program. I skipped kindergarten, which was only a problem for my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Henderson, who wanted to put me back until halfway through the year when I was one of the top performing students in her class.

I loved to perform. Whether it be turning on a radio and singing to a living room of family members, joining the church choir which allowed me to utilize my memory and intensity to empower others, or after I was seven and began to learn the violin. My friends and I would put on full performances in our backyards, choreographing a dance to our favorite songs as we stretched our imaginations. I remember being completely free and joyful when able to express and share with others in music on the stage.

As often does in our current societies, the performer was quelled in the intensity I held as a child. Cited in school regularly for excessive talking-which more often than not was me singing or talking to myself- and being told to slow or quiet down during family performances, I began to shift the way I expressed. With dad having a public high profile service position, we were taught to act in a way that did not harm his reputation or put his work at risk. I can respect this within today's defined society, to a point. The idea that children should be reined in, and their fire expression quelled is not one that sits well with me, and I attempted to teach my own children to express themselves peacefully…more on that later.

What I learned was that you defined yourself by your family, and this limited belief became a subject for so much later in life.

I transferred my energies from performing on a stage into school, soccer and church choir as the definitions of my rearing were setting in. The influences replaced the passion for making people smile and dance with the ability to process information and remember numbers, along with finding a place to perform well within the sports I was involved in.

School came easy to me, the organization and book study with clear instruction. I don't remember much history taught in elementary school, until the Gulf War crisis in the 5th grade. Social studies, geography, writing and math swirl in memory from that first set of system integration. We moved schools halfway through my 3rd grade year, and I laugh to remember how upset I was that the new school was pushing standardized testing study instead of the regular curriculum I had been taking. Though, I was also given the opportunity to take up strings, a fair compromise looking back.

By the time I finished the 5th grade, academically I was a star. Straight A's every six weeks and the only issues being that I didn't have many friends and couldn't seem to keep quiet and still. Something they told me with my children later was ADHD and should be medicated.

I was expected to perform well, and so when I didn't, I was lectured on the importance of always doing our best and the need to fall in to where society will accept. One instance that my memory holds is there was a time my report card held more low A's than normal. My dad told me that when he was in school anything under a 93 was a B and threatened to ground me a week for every point that I brought home below that mark.

These lectures successfully put the belief in me that it did not matter how well I performed in my studies, unless it was perfect, it was not enough. For in my success, the praise was brief and minimal compared to the correction experienced when there was even a slight lull in such performances.

I had grown up in a family with a visiting sister from my dad's previous marriage. She came to live with us permanently when I was five, and then when I was six and seven, a new brother then a new sister joined the family as well. I noticed then that my older sister was not held to the same regard as I was in school expectation, and I was told that was because she simply was not as good at it as I was and so I was held to higher standards.

Sports in the early years consisted of soccer, t-ball and peewee basketball. I would watch my parents play baseball, volleyball and what they called wall-e-ball. The only sport I truly enjoyed and stuck with past nine years old was soccer. We were just beginning to be invited to championship and invitational tournaments. I had been on the same team with players and parents pretty much since I had started. And though in personality I did not connect with many of them, we made an amazing team. Us and one other team in our division would take turns at 1st, I always simply enjoyed the teamwork of the sport.

In choir, I was given the opportunity to shine. I was confidently loud and could be heard over everyone else, and so I was given parts within songs to enunciate certain harmonies. I also had a wonderful memory that allowed me large parts in choir programs. Although in the earlier years we sang for the cuteness of an early morning Sunday smile, as I grew, I came to love the stage. And with the church choir being the only place that I could embrace all of the performer, it was there that I focused my creativity. Having the set opinion before I was nine that even though the melody of a properly tuned harmonic hit the ears angelically, one's best bet for a magnificent performance was found within their own voice.

I was an avid Christian when I was young, I had never known anything else. I decided to be baptized at nine years old and went forward from these influential years striving to be a preacher.

In essence, the first nine years of my life taught me that I needed to calm down and learn to be quieter. Productivity is better suited to action than creativity. And that the only acceptable place to show that creativity was church and art class. All extremely limited material belief systems that helped define how the years after were navigated.

And thus, was set in motion the idea that I must settle down.

The performer learned to do what was expected in choir, how to excel at bookwork and studies, and how to keep a goal and take a kick, as I was not a runner on the soccer field.

I met my best friend before I was five years old, and the two of us were near inseparable until my family moved school districts. We had a third that sometimes lived next door to me, and I was engulfed in the idea of an extended family. Family and responsibility were something that set in well during these years. You never give up, and there are some people that are worth putting everything in for.

My childhood mentor was my best friend's dad. He was an artist and would spend hours in their garage painting and smoking. I remember sitting with him on many occasions, and simply getting lost in the grand amount of nostalgia he had all over the room. I was not so gifted in the draw and paint department, and I remember him giving me a drawing notebook and a pencil and telling me to write what I see. Years later, he suggested that I take the time to write a full page every day, even if it was as simple as writing 'this page is white' or 'the sky is blue'.

Life was good within the realm that could be seen at that age, and we were well taken care of. We had a very strong sense of family, and I was to learn in the coming years what that truly meant.