Looking Back

I've struggled with the notion of discussing my childhood. I wondered, "Is this something that I really want to go into? Would it be too much information? Would anyone even care? Or would I even have anything worth talking about?" Truth is, I don't know the answer to any of these questions. Sometimes I think, though, that we need to look back on our lives and our pasts. Yes, even our childhoods. It's good to reflect on the good times and yeah, I think it's even healthy to remember the bad times if for no other reason than to purge them from your psyche so that those things no longer have a grip on you. Kind of like, if you acknowledge it, it might just go away or at the very least, not seem quite so bad.

Over the next little while (however long it takes) I'm going to try and write at least one post a week reflecting some aspect of my past. Painful, happy, sad, whatever. If the feeling and the memory are there, I'll do my best to share it. Hope ya'll don't mind.

Starting Point

I was an accident. A sweet lie Daddy told my mother to avoid using a condom. I wasn't supposed to be. This is how I started my life. A story I've been told since before I remember. I don't even truly know when it was the first time I ever heard it but I'm forever being reminded of it.

My middle sister, Sis2, was a mere eight-months-old. Understandably, my mother wasn't too anxious to get knocked up again. With a three-year-old and an eight-month-old, I'm sure Mama wasn't terribly anxious to even do the deed that would get her knocked up. But Daddy, ever persuasive and I'm sure (though I don't really like to think about it) a very seductive man, talked her into it with the old wives tale that one couldn't get pregnant while breastfeeding thus eliminating the need for a condom. Mama, a preacher's daughter who by all rites was probably a little too gullible, fell for it. Nine months later I appeared. All nine pounds, three ounces of me. A girl.

Another thing that wasn't supposed to be. Even though I'm not even certain that back then ultrasounds and sonograms even existed, by some reasoning my parents and everyone else were convinced that I was to be a boy. Maybe it was the way she carried me. Perhaps it was the sheer size of me or the fact that Mama said I kicked like a football player. Heck, it could've even been that everyone figured Daddy was due a son after having been relegated daughters twice before. Who knows? For whatever reason, I was dubbed Jared Andrew throughout my mother's pregnancy. My baby book is littered with boy names and the like that people felt compelled to pass on to my parents.

Imagine my parent's shock (disappointment?) when out came a dark haired, slant eyed baby girl who all the nurses were just convinced was a little Japanese baby. (I looked like a mini-sumo wrestler. What can I say?)

Daddy has never said for certain that he was disappointed with another girl. He wouldn't be much of a parent if he had and I likely wouldn't love him nearly as much. I can only imagine the initial, "Another girl?" in a voice laced with dread and disappointment that must have escaped his lips at some point shortly after my arrival. Daddy was meant for sons. He's a man's man with a wealth of manly knowledge in the art of hunting, fishing, shooting, building, etc. with no one to pass it on to. I certainly wasn't going to fill the bill, little girly girl that I was.

Fortunately for him, while my mother was busy nursing me he bonded with Sis2. She became his little tomboy. We have numerous pictures of them together. Her first camo outfit. Her first pellet gun. Her first shotgun. Her first deer. Her first fish. She and Daddy in the old aluminum boat. She and Daddy on the back of his beat up three wheeler. She and Daddy snuggling in his chair. Well, you get the idea. Wherever Daddy was, Sis2 was sure to follow. It was drilled into my heart long before I could even speak that Sis2 was the favored one. The adored one. Daddy's little girl. I was the accident. The sweet lie Daddy told my mother to avoid using a condom.