The View from the Top, A childhood story

February 5, 2007

I grew up in a family of five kids. It was pretty chaotic to put it simply. I had three older brothers and a sister. My parents say I wasn’t an accident. My mom says, ‘No, I secretly planned for you.” My mother is Irish Catholic and thus nothing is an ‘accident.’ But let’s just say I was the bonus baby. Raising that many kids can be kind of tricky. I mean especially with three boys. Once they hit middle school they wouldn’t stop eating. My mom would cook us one of her five token meals and twenty minutes after dinner they’d be poking their heads in the fridge looking for more food. One night my mom got so annoyed, that she went out to the garage and got a big thing of black duct tape and duct taped the fridge shut. I come strolling in for some cookies&cream ice cream and our fridge looked like it was held hostage. My mom sat there with a smirk on her face and the tape dangling on her wrist.

During my childhood, I rode the same blue bike every other sibling rode. I had no idea what cable was until college. I got my sister’s hand me downs and until I was late into my high school years, I never knew the satisfaction of having a second slice of pizza. My sister and I spent our years trying to kick each other out of the bedroom we shared. We marked our territory with tape, we threw each other’s stuff out in the hall, I tried to build a wall with blankets. Once I moved into the basement for three days. Then I realized cobwebs and no heat turned out to be more obnoxious than living with her. But it was entertaining and memorable.

Despite the chaos, my family valued family road trips. We had this blue station wagon. The night before a trip he would load the car with food coolers and snacks. My dad drove the speed limit and when he said we were getting on the road at five am he wasn’t kidding. So this one year we decided we were going to drive from Chicago to California for my aunt’s wedding. It was a long drive, so my parents planned we’d take over two weeks to get there and back. My dad made us stop at every national park along the way. Most of my childhood pictures are made up of me and my sister or brother standing in front of a historic monument, museum, or national park welcome sign. We stayed at motels with swimming pools that sat right up against the highway, we camped in the middle of the desert, we ate soggy sandwiches for days on end and I learned to sleep with my feet pressed against my sister’s cheek. As the days went on we started to realize seven people in one car was a bit much. I’m shocked my mom let my dad put her through this hell. Once the snacks ran out and you’ve visited a few dozen museums you start to get grumpy. I was starting to think California didn’t exist. I mean my dad showed me the map, but I was skeptical that he knew how to get there. I mean as a seven, and I wondered, how do parents just ‘know’ which roads to take? It was far too amazing and complex for me to understand. So as the trip went on we started fighting. My brothers wouldn’t stop pushing me around and taking up my space. It’s was really hot, and I was sick of that wind blowing my hair in my face. One afternoon, everyone was complaining and this whole wedding thing was starting to seem like a really bad idea. My mom was digging around and suddenly she pops in the soundtrack tape to Good morning Vietnam. Suddenly everyone is belting out the music. My mom loves to sing loud-you should see her in church, and my dad is just happy everyone isn’t jumping out the window. We spent the last few days listening to that soundtrack on repeat. It was one of the only things my entire family would ever agree upon. We eventually made it to my aunts wedding. My brother and I accidentally spilled grape juice on her white bedspread. That’s all I really remember. Trying to hide the bedspread in her closet and running out back to stuff our faces with the free buffet. That’s the thing about being a kid. You remember these glimpses of your childhood. It’s those insignificant small moments that you take into adulthood. I still can sing the lyrics to those songs. We lost that tape for years. One Christmas I found it in an old box. We cranked it up and everyone busted out laughing. I remember on the way home from California, my dad brought us to the Grand Canyon. I was only about seven years old at the time, but I remember it distinctly. All seven of us stood on the edge looking over at this massive hole in the earth. We stood there side by side in silence. Then I looked up at my mom and said, “Mom is this where God lives?” She started laughing and said, “No, why?” “Because it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.” My brother hit me on the back of the head and we all piled back in the car. We started to pull away and as we turned back onto the road I caught my dad looking at me in the rear view mirror. It was this look- like I was his most purposeful decision in his life. I dug into the cooler for a cherry coke and climbed over to the front seat. I squeezed between my mom and dad and as the dust swept up behind us, we drove home.