Childhood Memories

It's a bright and sunny, crisp, cool, Fall day. It is just a lovely day outside, perfect for taking a slow peaceful stroll down and around the way. But instead I'm stating inside with a nice cup of hot apple cider with a cinnamon stick in it, just sipping it slowly as I sit back in my favorite resting chair nestled comfortably in the corner of my living room where I have a bay window that is in just the right spot that with the curtains open the sunlight brightens and warms the whole room, I have my feet up and I'm just leaning back and I'm off in la la land and I'm reminiscing about my earlier years as a child, my most memorable and happiest years of my life. My story begins in 1979 the year I was born. To say the least I had quite a rough start to life but little did I know one special family was going to turn that all around for me. See as I was born I was immediately taken by the state and placed in foster care with a family that had 5 biological children of their own when they got me. Now some might want to praise that family for taking me in but just hear me out before you do. See when they took me in that was when my rough start began, I was just an extra income to them as the male figure was a dietician for the local hospital and the lady stayed home with us kids. I was the least of their concern, I was placed in a baby crib and left there to I guess just decorate the place as this family only had me for 7 months when I was then adopted and placed with the family that was going to change this tragedy that was my life. When I was old enough to understand and comprehend what being adopted was and what it meant I was then 10 years old and my mom was now telling me that I was adopted. And as my mom is telling me how her, my dad and my big brother became my now family and how I was so special to them because they got to choose me out of a long list of other babies who needed homes and I was the one, I was the baby that when they saw me for the first time they instantly knew I was the one they wanted to complete their family. But my mom said my story did not stop there, she goes on to tell me that when the day came that they finally was able to pick me up and take me home they were almost scared to touch me in fear they might hurt me, she tells me that I was so tiny for 7 months, so malnourished and sickly, just skin and bones, and my poor little girl area and legs and inner thighs were just riddled with sores and diaper rash, apparently when this foster family took me in and left me in my crib they rarely changed my diaper and rarely fed me, it is a miracle that I survived. But by the grace of God I was spared and given to a family who just thought more than the world of me and to this day as I'm now an adult at the ripe old age of 41 still thinks the world of me and loves me like no other, as do I for them as well. I really could not have been given or even asked for any better family. As I was raised and grown up with a mom and dad and an older brother, what a blessing. But this is where the memories that fill my mind today come in. As a little girl my most fondest memories take place in Mid Western Kansas in a quaint little town called Hays Kansas, boy did I have some of the best times of my life there. I remember in the winter when the whole town would be covered in a foot or two of snow and school would be canceled there was a park not too far from my house that had this huge and extremely tall hill that at the top of this hill was a chain link fence so you would not fall down the hill. Now to a little girl at the age of 3 maybe 4 this hill was the scariest looking hill but thanks to my big brother we will call him bubba, he showed me that that hill was not as scary as it looked, me and bubba would grab our snow sleds and take off to the park with the giant hill. Upon getting to the park we would drag our sled all the way up to the very top of the hill, bubba got in the sled first then put me in front between his legs, wrap his arms around me so I would not fly off the sled, and then bubba would say to me, Amy Jo are you ready for this, scared but excited I looked at bubba and with a smile I replied yeah bubba I'm ready, holding on to bubba as tight as I could he pushes the sled over the top of the hill and with a big and fast swoosh we were flying down this hill. Laughing all the way to the bottom the sled comes to a stop and I look at bubba with a big grin on my face saying again, again bubba again! So we would make our way back to the top of the hill and down we go again, it was a blast. Now when I got a little bit older and it was now the summer time and I had learned to ride my bike and without my training wheels bubba and I would take our bikes and go to that very park with the same huge hill and we would walk our bikes at the way to the top and at the count of three we hop on our bikes and fast as lightning we rode our bikes down the hill. Up and down, up and down we rode our bikes and had the time of our lives. Now as the years went by and bubba was now old enough to drive he got his first car. Bubba loved this car as it was not the traditional car that most kids would pick as their first car, no bubba had a car that no other teenage boy had. Bubba picked an old retired mail truck for his first car, now I know what you're thinking. A mail truck? Who would want a mail truck as a first car? Well let me tell you, my bubba did and he loved that car like no other. He took that old mail truck, and a can of dusty blue exterior house paint and painted that mail truck blue. In the back of this mail truck as you can imagine were these two metal bench seats, one on each side. Bubba had got two long padded camouflage cushions which he used to line the benches so people could ride in the back. I was to scared to ride up front as the passenger side of the mail truck did not have a door, so I took pleasure of riding in the back. I had so much fun riding in that mail truck because every time bubba would hit a bump I would bounce and hit my head on the roof of the mail truck. I would just laugh and laugh and not feel a thing as I was just happy to be riding with my bubba. Now as you can imagine as with any teenage boy as he gets older he gets less and less bothered by hanging out with his baby sister, because now he's on to new adventures as he's now interested in girls and dating and going out on the weekends and hanging with his guy pals, you know the normal average things that teen boys do, bubba got himself a girlfriend which gave me the opportunity to get on my brothers last nerve. See I was always the ornery one, some might say up to no good, I would say just being a typical baby sister and trying to annoy my big brother, to which I did so well. Bubbas girlfriend would always call in the evenings and bubba would be on the phone for hours or so it seemed like, bubba had his own phone in his bedroom down in the basement, mom and dad had another phone upstairs in their bedroom, and every night when bubba's girlfriend would call I would sneak upstairs to my parents room quietly pick up the phone, trying my hardest not to laugh and give myself away I would sit for a few minutes and just listen, then all the sudden out of nowhere I would scream into the phone saying " lovers lovers kiss kiss kiss kiss!" and then bubba would scream " Amy Jo hang up the damn phone!" I would hear him tell his girlfriend " let me call you right back, I'm gonna kill my little sister!" Then I would drop the phone and take off running through the house like a half crazed maniac because I knew if bubba caught up to me I was in for some trouble, I would go running into the kitchen where mom would be cooking and I would hide behind mom, and as mom is telling me " stop running in the house!" She was also telling bubba " leave your sister alone!' Now you know I could not let it stop with that. Right? So I would peek around mom cackling like a hyena and pointing at bubba saying " ha ha ha ha you got in trouble!" Then mom would look at me and say " and you little missy will be in trouble too if you do not stop antagonizing your brother!" Boy looking back now those were the days, such wonderful memories. Now to top that the holidays around our home were just as special too. When Halloween would come around my bubba and I would be busy coming up with our costumes and naturally I was into the ballerina and princess type stuff and bubba, well bubba was into the vampire and scary things like that with the fake fang teeth and the fake blood on his face he would come sneaking up from downstairs and try to scare the bejesus out of me and succeeded at it every darn time, not so funny then but quite comical now looking back at it. Now Summer has come back around and in North Western Kansas it seemed like every year when tornado season would rear it's ugly head that part of the region would always get hit the most and the worst so you can imagine the damage done to all the homes and roofs and whatnot, well our house got hit pretty hard that year and we needed a new roof and instead of doing what most families would have done and just called a roofer to come fix the roof dad enlists the help from bubba and they do it themselves. Well in the mix of all of this bubba climbs down from the roof to grab dad another bundle of shingles and on his way back up to the roof bubba steps on a nail, it goes all the way through the bottom of his shoe and we are now taking bubba to the ER to get the nail taken out and get him a tetanus shot. What a day that was. I could go on and on forever with all the fond and happy memories that I was blessed with throughout my entire life, but just thinking of those few has filled my heart with so much joy and comfort, and to think had my story began and went in the opposite direction I may not have even made it to this point to have the opportunity to write and share all this with you. God bless the families who have the capacity to love someone outside of their family so much so that they take babies like me in and raise us as their own and provide us with such great lives that we have such wonderful things to share and talk about later. And adding to that I would like to take my last moment to say Mom, Dad and Bubba thank you for loving me so much you took me in, loved me and made me into the person I am today! I couldn't love another person any more than I love you guys! Thanks again, your daughter and sister, Amy Jo.