Chapter 1- Recollections

What’s the first thing you remember? My Grandmother swears she can remember looking at her hands while being inside the womb, but I think that was most likely a dream she had. Who’d be able to see anything inside the womb? There’s no light and our eyes aren’t developed enough. Sure the saying “where the sun don’t shine” refers the butt, but I think that the saying could apply to inside a woman’s uterus too.

She’d sometimes say with that beautiful sweetness in her voice, the kind that only comes from Grandmas, “I remember thinking to myself, what are these hands for.”

“Really Grandma? Wow, that’s pretty cool.” When I was a child the words would come out with an intonation of both belief and astonishment, but as I grew older I’d be sure not to have a condescending tone while saying it. Of course I know now that there isn’t anyway anyone could see inside the womb.

I couldn’t ever criticize my Grandma. She’s the best Grandma anyone could ever have and to question her conviction in her belief that she remembers that particular instance would be in my opinion, extremely rude and disrespectful. After all this particular woman used to pick me up from school when I was sick, take me to the doctor and afterwards give me anything I’d ask for to make me feel better. I loved being sick as a child, it meant being able to be at Grandma’s house and spend the day with Grandma. I am the second Grandchild that she had with my brother Ricky being the first. Now she has tons, but I’m the second oldest of the cousins.

Between treating us to horseback riding lessons, buying us our own ponies, giving us surprise parties for no reason except her extreme love for us; Grandma is the best Grandma in the world and she shares my love for a maternal figure with my own mother. Well, mom wins by a fraction but there’s no other woman in this world as huge hearted as my Grandma.

One of my first memories is a car accident we were in when I was around two years old. I don’t remember extreme details or sequences of events, just a series of images as if from a slide show. The jolting impact as that UPS truck ran the red light, my mother and aunty screaming. I was in my car seat directly behind my mother with my cousin next to me and my brother Ricky behind my aunty. Although I know that my mom broke her leg in that accident, I don’t remember it. I do remember the yellow Crown Victoria that we had but I think the pictures we have somewhere in our photo albums helps water the memory.

Another memory I have is when I needed stitches in my forehead. Again not sequences of events yet I can see both the doctor and nurse holding me down through all my screaming while giving me those stitches. I was about the same age as the accident, somewhere around 1982. Since the story was told to me many times I sometimes can’t recall which part is memory and which part is my imagination helping out my memory. One of our neighbors, a pretty brunette named Mary that lived across the street and to me was ancient at 13 or 14 was playing with me. A little game where she’d push me on my butt with the cushion of my diaper there to prevent me getting hurt, I’d laugh get up and go running to her so that, Boom! I’d be pushed back on my butt. I’d laugh again get up and boom, down again. While playing this little game I got very close to the step that went into the playroom that my dad had made for us.

By saying made, I’d be accurate in using that descriptive term. He didn’t decorate or embellish, no he actually made it. He took the garage and put up a faux wall dividing it in half, leaving no space for a car in the garage side and cut the concrete wall connecting to the inside living room. He used red brick to pad out the cut and made a delightful arch out of the brick. Since there was a step down into the now playroom he used the same red brick to make a single step down into the playroom. There was no door so that the passage was directly from the living room into the playroom, and the step was easy to miss even for an adult.

The little game, push down giggle and get up got the endless energy pumping in my toddler veins and the little step; miscalculated by my newly gotten balance and doll like legs caused me to fall head first into corner of the brick step. I don’t remember any of this game, and the only reason I can describe everything else is because we owned that house, and I lived in it periodically until I was 10, and the story has been told to me dozens of times. The only thing I remember from that day is the bright lights inside the hospital and screaming from the stitches being sewn into my head. I still have the scar reminding me of that day and occasionally pop zits right next to it.

Around 1981 and 1982 there were several events traumatizing enough to leave flash memories in my head. Another provocative one was while on a family vacation to El Salvador, my dad’s home country, my big brother Ricky was bitten in the face by a German Sheppard, leaving a permanent scar under his eye and chin. I recall his screams while getting both stitches and anti rabies shots in his belly button. I can almost see the smile on the nurse’s face as she held me and bribed me with a lollipop to stop crying. My big bro was screaming his head off though, and I couldn’t help but be terrified. Mom and dad were in the room with Ricky and I was in the care of a stranger.

I can vividly remember my dad on his knees, with the shag bright red carpet under him, begging my mother while Ricky and I watched from the playroom as he begged my mother to reconsider divorcing him. I remember when he came over to try and see us as we watched through the window next to the door; and mom wouldn’t let him in. That was the day mom called the cops on him, told them that he was going to kidnap us and nothing will ever let me forget the string of cop cars that lined our block that day or the amount of cops inside my house. I even remember thinking it was like watching TV and starred right at one cop’s gun.

Around the age of three or four we were at a skating rink with friends from the congregation when mommy broke her leg. I remember as they took her out on a gurney; I screamed like there was no tomorrow that I wanted to go with her while Robin, a friend of the family held me and wouldn’t let me go. Robin was a larger lady with dark red hair, and I always thought it was funny because she was round as a beach ball, and her husband Joe was skinny as freshly sharpened pencil. I screamed for so long, and cried with such emotion that I drover her two sons Tom and Billy crazy. Someone even decided that spanking me would shut me up, and as they spanked me I clearly remember that it wasn’t hard at all. In fact I remember not feeling it and shortly stopping my crying anyways. I do remember how they were good people, and as I recall them I think to myself how I haven’t seen them in 25 years. That statement is significant coming from a 30 year old.

Weird enough, there are other things that I can’t remember even though I was a little older than a toddler. I remember my first step dad, Ray Ryan. He was a rough neck type that would switch between moustache and no moustache as often as he’d shower. I remember that he’d brush his teeth in less time than it took me to pee. He was the only step dad I’d ever call “Daddy.” I recall as he took me and Ricky to my first movie theater experience; Back to the Future. I was five years old and we lived in what latter on in my child hood was referred to as the dumpy apartment. My dad still lived in the house that I was born in. We had a tortoise that Ray found off the side of the road that we named Samson. I can remember the tortoise but I can’t remember a time when I was either four or five and Ray almost broke my arm.

I’ve heard from my mom what happened one day, although I guess earlier in my life I’d chosen to forget it. I was sitting in a blue rocking and swiveling chair that my mom had. She’d use it to rock me and Ricky to sleep and I still have pictures taken being in or next to that chair. Samson was between the living room wall and the chair and I was scooting from side to side rocking and swiveling in a manner you can expect from a young child. As I swiveled, Samson got stuck between the chair and the wall for as brief a second as the stride of the swivel. Stuck, loose, stuck, loose and I had no idea he was there. Ray saw it though and instead of telling me to stop, he grabbed me by the top of my arm and threw me to the other side of the room making me violently crash against the other living room wall then fall to the couch. My mom thought he’d broke my arm especially since the impact made pictures fall off the wall. I don’t remember that instance at all, but my mom tells me about it quite frequently after the name Ray is mentioned.

I know that he did but I never saw Ray hit my mom although I can remember yelling that would make both me and Ricky cry. I remember being promised to go to Disneyworld as we were moving out of the dumpy apartment, and we were in Ray’s POS truck. As Ray was inside moving or cleaning; I don’t remember which, I was playing in the truck with Ricky and let in the clutch and the truck rolled back down the driveway, but only about a foot after the roll startled me and I let the clutch out. I was so scared that I ran inside the apartment and locked myself in my room even though all the furniture and toys were already out. Ray was oblivious to what had happened and Ricky told him why I was scared. When he came to knock on the door, I didn’t open it causing Ray to break it down. I don’t remember but I think the Disneyworld trip was canceled because if that.

I know that I went to four different elementary schools although I can’t remember all of their names. I know I went to one of those four in El Salvador for the third grade called the British School. It was an English speaking school in a Spanish speaking country, and I think it’s called the British school because it is owned by British people. The only significant event I recall from that school was the two fifth graders picking on Ricky. Since I was only in the third grade I was smaller than Ricky’s peers, but I was as rambunctious as they came and Ricky was mellower and brain intensive. That’s my polite way of calling him a nerd, geek, Star Trek fan, etc. Ricky would never feed into anyone’s taunts and thought them as being idiots for trying to taunt him in the first place. I’d never met someone so happy with being himself as Ricky. I don’t know what I saw those two kids doing to Ricky, but I know that it enraged me so extremely that I ran up and immediately kicked one of them in balls and punched the other one in the throat. It was only a matter of seconds and I’d dropped two bigger fifth graders thanks to the fighting advice of one of my dad’s employees.

The fury that raged through me, that of someone hurting my most beloved and only brother blinded me to consequences and the advice given me from other adults to turn the other cheek or get help from a grown up. All I could think about was hurting and maybe killing those two preppy assholes. After my kung fu moment, the very next second I remember having one of my brother’s attackers in a choke hold, determined to kill him. I had that sucker so tight that it took the principal himself with British accent and all to pull me off of him. I was expelled from that school and I saved myself from a spanking latter on at home because my paternal grandfather saw the whole thing as he waited his line in the parking lot to pull up and get us. He saw the kids harassing Ricky al the way to me kicking their asses and was proud of me. Instead of the spanking I was sure Id get, I got ice cream and the Bon Jovi Slippery When Wet album I’d been coveting.

Around the same time, 1987 or 1988 I witnessed the voracious war going on in El Salvador. I can still hear the bomb that went off two blocks away from our house killing an army General and his family. I can see the faces of the two senators that were decapitated and placed for show off the side of the road as the guerillas guarded their political statement making everyone slow down to see on the way to the beach. I remember when a fireworks factory was blown up and everyone in panic turned off the lights thinking that it was another attack, although it was just a legitimate accident. I remember when waiting for takeout that we had gotten, hearing a loud thump as a little old lady got hit by a car. I didn’t even hear the squealing of brakes, just the peeling out afterwards to flee the scene.

Some memories are vivid and some are foggy. Some experiences aren’t remembered at all. Although I’ve been to Disneyworld close to a couple hundred times I can’t remember any specific time going. Although I’ve flown on airplanes about as much as career pilots al experiences on airplanes just jumble into one film strip memory. I can however remember each time my mom would leave us off at the airport and ball her eyes out. That was before you weren’t allowed to go to the terminal.

Traumatic thoughts are the most vivid. Bad memories and remembrances of bad feelings, times you’re sick, times you’re injured, times loved ones die; those are the thoughts that everyone can remember. Happy times with the exception of weddings and your children’s birth are the hardest to recall. I can describe in detail, second by second the time I broke my wrist while riding my bike. I can see myself almost in third person after getting the news that Ricky was dead. I can also describe everything that happened when I was 9years old, and my uncle persuaded me to perform sex acts on him.

I’d like to recall happy times and thanks to pictures I often can and do, but happy times; including times I was on drugs are hard to see as a movie in my mind. It’s hard to remember more than just a laugh. What joke was told, what prank was played and who pinned the tail on the stripper? I have no recollection at all. It’s as impossible to remember as my slip and slide exit of mom’s uterus.

Times of pivotal decisions and distraughting events are much easier to recall. I’d like to describe myself at 18 years old. I had graduated early at 17 and soon moved back to El Salvador after graduation in California. Since I didn’t want to live under my dad’s rules and I was working for both the family business, as an ESL teacher and still going to school to be and ESL teacher; I’d like to call this chapter…