The Family to Which I Belong: A childhood story

A Childhood Story

I grew up in a family of five. I had this friend who lived across the street. She grew up in a family of four. They were a lot like us and very different from my family. We ran around our neighborhood with bare feet, our moms let us stay out late to play night games in the summer, we had good Catholic values, and we both had boy hair cuts as little kids. There were some things that were a little different. Molly had air conditioning and I didn’t. Molly had cupboards of snacks. Especially fruit roll-ups. And her mom baked with her. It wasn’t that my mom didn’t bake with me; it was that she had a lot of other stuff going on. I was the youngest in my family and my mom was rushing everyone to and from every which way. There were a lot of moms like Molly’s in my neighborhood. They baked and puffy painted their kids names on sweatshirts. They were the ones who came on all the field trips and organized the book fairs. In ways I think I wanted that. I was young and unaware that my mother was not a mould and now looking back I loved that she didn’t conform to all the expectations of my hometown. She was a journalist, a mother, an activist for the Catholic Church; she was many things other than just my mother. Of course this is hard to understand as a little kid. Until you are an adult and respect the importance of trying to hold onto yourself.

This one day I went across the street to see if Molly could play. I rang her bell and she came sliding down the hall in her slippery soccer socks. “Do you want to play dolls?” I asked.
“I can’t today,” she replied effortlessly. “My mom and I are baking a double chocolate cake.”
I could feel the cold air spilling through the screen door. Oh how I longed to go inside her house! At least for the cold air if for nothing else! I sighed and shrugged, “OK,” and I skipped away. I sat down on my back step and thought about how mad I was at Molly whipping up batter with her mom. My mom was probably working her part time job. My eye lids flapped furiously like a pair of angry birds. Then and there I decided I would make my own cake!

I was no more than nine and had no clue how to embark on such a task. I got out a big zip block bag and opened our cabinet. I grabbed some flour, sugar, baking soda, a few eggs, a splash of milk, and some chocolate chips. I poured it all in the bag. I dug my hand in our utensil draw and got out a big wooden spoon. Then I collapsed on the back step, the big bag pulling at my arms, and began stirring the glop together. I could feel the tears resting in the back of my eyes, but I quickly pushed them away in anger. I didn’t need a mom to bake cakes and puffy paint bows for my hair, I thought. I poured the mystery soup into a pan and put it in the oven.

Turning the dial, the oven began heating up. I knelt and stared at it. The kitchen began filling with a strange aroma-not burnt, but not flavorful. Suddenly, my older sister came through the door and saw me staring at the oven door. “What are you doing?!” she screamed. She flipped open the oven door quickly pushing me out of the way. Ellen grabbed oven mitts and whipped the pan onto the stove top. “What were you thinking baking all by yourself??!” I began crying then and said, “I just wanted to bake a cake too…like Molly.” She looked at me, her skinny brown boy hair cutted sister with wide blue eyes staring at her; glop all over the front of my rainbow sleeveless shirt. “Just because her mom bakes a cake with her doesn’t mean she is a better mom. If you want to bake a cake just ask next time.” She sighed and a smirk rolled onto her face. She handed me a fork and we took a bite of the half baked creation on the back step. It was disgusting. We spit it out in the grass and began laughing.

My mom then burst through the door with groceries and Little Ceaser’s pizza. We screamed with excitement and tore the pizza lid off. She looked at the destroyed kitchen, looked at me, then my sister. “I won’t even ask what happened here!” We burst out laughing then, my tears dried, and burned our tongues as we bit into a piece of pizza. Childhood is like that. We want our neighbor’s lives, until later, we look back and see how much we truly were destined to be born into the very family that is our own.