Our childhood moments that stand out now, the good, the bad, the funny

So naturally I've got a story. It's a T* (T for traumatic but just one asterisk). 

@unkp told a true story on the Rooftop Lounge about a bunch of badly behaving people in a motor boat who encircled and taunted the people in another boat who were waving Pride flags. This was doubly disrespectful both to LBGTQ people and because it is National Pride Month. But they didn't care. They just wanted to heckle the heck out of the Pride people. Then the hecklers' boat spontaneously burst into flames and they had to jump ship and be rescued by their victims. 

It reminded me that I once  wondered if  fiery energy can literally create sparks and start a fire. It sounds nuts, but there are energy medicine people who believe it happens. And ancients believed that earth, air, fire, and water energy are part of the fabric of reality, not just the physical world, but the conscious universe as well. But does anyone actually believe that the fire energy in a person can manifest into real fires? 

Well, when I was eight, this happened:

My mother had a fiery personality that caused drama and sparks to fly in our house.  She wasn't mean, just excitable, sometimes frantic, and when stressed, she could throw sparks, which is understandable considering what she endured as a child. But she and my older siblings were often yelling at each other and there would be fireworks. Okay, I could yell too.

During the first five years of my life, it was calm, however, because we had a human angel, named Rosalie Johnson, who came everyday to help my mother until we moved north to CT. Then when I was eight, we moved again to Boston and without Rosalie around, the histrionics increased.  

That's where energetic fire turned into real fire. 

I was just eight and it was our first Christmas in Boston when a bedroom on the second floor of our new house burst into flame and the fire spread throughout the whole floor while my mom and I were cluelessly writing Christmas cards and listening to carols on the  floor below.My brother and sister were in attic bedrooms  at the time with their doors closed so they too did not notice the smoke until the fire was full blown.  

By the time they realized it, their escape route was nearly impassible. I heard my brother hollering, "The house is on fire!" So I ran up the stairs, shocked to see all the smoke inside our house. My mother went full metal jacket into action.  You might say she burst into flames herself but she handled the situation in her own way. She started screaming for us to get outside, scooped up the entire front hall coat closet and flung all the coats out the front door, then she rushed to the phone to call the Fire Department. I still hear her crazed voice today on that phone. My house is on fire! My house is on fire! Then she started spelling the name of the road over and over again.

 I was speechless through it all. When I first heard my brother yelling from ran down the stairs and found my toddler brother in the t.v. room, and led him out the front door and across the street to the neighbors. Then I went back and just stared up at our second floor windows ablaze with fire.

Years later I listened to a Japanese macrobiotic teacher tell us that fiery people will attract fires. I thought about my mother and that fire. My easy-going dad had been away for a month on a business trip when it happened and he actually walked in the door in the middle of the pandemonium.  At that moment my mother was screaming our address into the phone to the fire department. As if he was answering her call, he instantly understood the situation, walked upstairs to the fire, and closed a door to the blazing rooms. 

At the moment he did that I was standing outside transfixed by the bright red bedroom windows and while the fire trucks wailed in the distance, the red windows went suddenly black and the whole fire went out. My dad had put out the fire by just closing a door. There must be some meaning in his arriving just at that moment after being away a whole month, and putting it out by simply shutting a door. I remember he had brought a business associate with him, a client he was nurturing, but I don't know who that was or what happened to that guy that night. 

But here is the strangest part of all. We had moved from a house in Connecticut just six months earlier and I have always noticed similar energies among people who have occupied the same houses. I never knew the family that bought our CT house but I learned years later that they also had a house fire soon after ours. But theirs was much worse as two people died. 

The ancients believed the four elements - earth, air, water, and fire, were not just physical but energetic. So did they also believe that fiery behavior can burn  down a house?  Or a boat?

Epilogue:  I stayed in touch with Rosalie my whole life, even to her death in 1990.   During her final days, I met many adults she had tended as babies, as she had tended me. They all loved her all their lives, as I have.  

I bet there are people here with some amazing stories. 

@jeanne-mayell 

This is a great topic Jeanne!  Thank you for starting it for us.  

I am tagging @vestralux because I just know she will have something fascinating to say about your question of whether negative fiery energy can literally create sparks and start a fire.

You had presence of mind to save your brother.  That is pretty powerful.

I would assume, whether or not there is a true connection to fiery personalities and fire, you have made that connection  so when you are around someone who is upset or out of control, it may trigger the fire episode and for you.  It certainly would allow you to better relate to those who are living with fiery people.  

I wonder if your thought would transfer to those who relate to water (floods)  earth  (earthquakes) wind/air (tornadoes) and so forth or if fire is unique unto itself.

T*

Some days when I look back at my life and at my childhood, I think “how did I survive all that?”  My dad was a charmer, quick witted, smart and accomplished.  He was also an alcoholic. My dad’s drinking was epic.  He would disappear for days and show up fully loaded with booze and terrorize all of us.  My mother was a small woman and I have vivid memories of my dad lifting her up in a chair and refusing to let her down.  I remember lots of screaming when he was around and it was traumatic to witness his behavior.  Eventually, he left for good (took off with his secretary and eventually adopted her children).  At that point, it was just a relief to have peace in the house again, but there was no money.  In fact, my dad never paid alimony or child support.  So while we were giddy with relief, we still needed to eat and have shelter.

Of course, the reason we survived those years was because of my Mom.  She was calm, loving and smart and did everything in her power to protect us.  Plus, she had an excellent sense of humor and after my dad left, we found fun in everything.  We had laughter and we had joy, even if our lives were uncertain.  We eventually moved back to my mother’s home town and we moved in with our grandparents.

When I was fifteen years old, one of my mother’s friends invited her over for dinner.  Little did she know it was actually going to be blind date with a widower.  It was love at first sight and truly one of the most life affirming, beautiful experiences to watch unfold as a teenager.  Those two were head over heels in love.  When they were married two years later, we blended two families because that widower had four children and my mother had three.  Five of the seven of us were teenagers when we all moved into a new home together.  My mother cooked breakfast for us every morning and every evening, we sat down to dinner together and shared the events of our day.  My mother would have made a great quartermaster general.  She could organize anything.  She posted our chores on the bathroom mirror every week.  Everyone had work to do.  In the summers, we canned and froze vegetables from the garden and everyone pitched in.  In the summers, we learned to cook and Mom assigned us each a day of the week to fix dinner.  We submitted our menus in advance and my Mom would have all the ingredients on hand.  

Eventually, these two lovebirds shared 47 years of marriage together and that wonderful man was the love of my mother’s life.  

@bluebelle omg, what a beautiful and inspiring story. You have made setting up this thread all worthwhile with your story.  I had no idea you'd been through all that.  I always thought you must have had an amazing mother because she shines through you every time I see you or read your posts. I think this is a Hall of Famer.

@bluebelle 

That is a beautiful heart warming story....hard start but loving in the end.

Growing up I was an only child until I gained a step family as a teen.  My parents were also only children so I had no aunts or uncles or cousins.

I was 7 when I woke up one weekend morning to find neither of my parents home. I spent a lot of time looking around the house and in the back yard for them but they were not home. I know I was worried and afraid .  This was before the age of cell phones, just land lines.  I was in their bedroom when the phone rang and my grandfather who lived about 3 hours away called to tell me my father had taken my mom to the hospital in the middle of the night and that she was sick.  That my dad would call me soon and in the meantime my grandparents would be driving up to stay with me.  It would just take some time to get to me.  I remember crying on the phone but at least I knew what had happened to them.  We were not very close to our neighbors and I am sure my father didn’t have the number of the family down the street whose daughter I played with to ask if I come stay with them for a few hours.  So I vaguely remember making myself some breakfast.  I also remember speaking to my dad on the phone shortly after my grandfather called.  I remember crying asking why he didn’t tell me they were leaving.  ( I can’t imagine the difficult choice he had to make that early morning .  We lived at the top of canyon on a mountain and were 20 minutes to a hospital  and a 40 minute round trip for an ambulance to get up to the house and get my mom to a hospital , I am sure it seemed best in that moment to leave me sleeping) 

I don’t remember the arrival of my grandparents or my dad.  I do remember my mom didn’t come home for many days.  She had had a near deadly allergic reaction to some medicine she had taken at home for an infection and then continued to react in the hospital to quite a few foods and medicines.

I saw her briefly before they transferred her to a research hospital near my grandparents who then left to take turns at the hospital with my mom.  I then stayed with a family friend during the week to attend school and my dad would take me home on weekends between being with my mom and running his business.  I remember packing my suitcase each week and taking it home on the weekend.  As I write this memory, I realize it was probably my 7 year old self who packed her clothes each week though perhaps my father helped .  This took place for close to a month until my mom was finally well enough to return home and recover.

I can’t say how much of an impact this event had on me as a child but it certainly shook a whole bunch of things up for the entire family.  
Can you imagine how differently that day would have gone if we all had cell phones back then?

What wonderful stories that are also love letters to our moms. I have one that I keep in my "hall of fame" of memories, because it describes my own mother, who's been on my mind a lot lately. Here is is: 

I was a young child in the 1960's and I was a little dreamer. At the time we lived in Chicago and I remember my life being so happy. I loved everything and everyone. Still, I had a sense that I didn't belong with my human companions, but I don't remember feeling bad about it, just out of place. One day I was watching TV. I must have been about 5 years old. I don't remember if it was at night or a daytime re-run. My older brother and I went to bed when the adults did (everyone went to bed at the same time) so it's possible it was nighttime viewing. That day for the first time I saw Samantha from Bewitched. Wow. I was thunderstruck! I knew there had to be an easier way to navigate life in the dense, physical reality I found myself stuck in. I KNEW IT! And there it was, in the image of Samantha, the person who could snap her fingers and make things happen. Well, there wasn't time to spare! I had to get in on that, but how? Well, in my child's mind I figured there must be a book I could buy that would teach me how I could do what Samantha did and free me from my reality, which was a happy one but sooooooo time-consuming! Even though I couldn't actually read yet (details!), I knew that books held all the answers so surely there must be a Samantha book that would have all the answers, but where? Well, Woolworth's of course, cause that's where you went to get everything good, including club sandwiches, which were part of dense reality but in the best way. 

In any event, I don't actually remember approaching my mother, but my next memory is of us going "downtown" in search of the book. "Downtown" was a magical place but we had to take a scary train to get there. It was actually only scary in the dark tunnel, but after a few minutes we'd emerge into the light and that part I really liked. 

Once we got to "downtown" and Woolworth's my mom did all the talking. We headed to a section of the store by the restaurant counter where either books or just paperbacks were sold. Once there my mom approached the sales lady and asked her for the Samantha book. I was totally in on being a witch but I was too shy to ask. The sales lady delivered the bad news: the book was sold out! Oh no! She suggested we check back in after a few weeks, which we did, several times, until I either forgot about it or figured I'd never get that book because of course too many people wanted it. Who wouldn't?

That was my mom. She could be infuriating and exasperating, but she bonkers loved my brother and me, and she nurtured our dreams and cheered on even our most half-baked plans. She also could have run the world if she'd been born later. All my love and interest in all things other-worldy (al least after the Samantha thing) is because of her. She was a seer years ahead of her time. She was the one who believed we could manifest things, maybe not exactly like Samantha, but close. I think she would have paid plenty for that book I imagined existed. 

Thank you Jeanne for creating this thread and some of us can tell our mom tales and keep them alive.

Happy Friday everyone! 

@lovendures Thank you for sharing your story. It's overwhelming to imagine your seven year old self trying to grapple with being alone like that with no siblings or anyone, not even a neighbor, to be with at that moment. I know you cherish and nourish your family and I see how you help all of us.  Everyone you touch feels loved. Perhaps those moments of utter aloneness and vulnerability at such a tender age that happened before your grandfather called showed you both your need for others, that one can only truly understand when left alone, and your strength that you can survive even when utterly vulnerable. Mostly I could feel spirit guides there with you taking you through it.  

Finally, I noticed how kindly you empathized with your parents' choices.  

@lynnventura I love your story. I love thinking about you as a passionate little girl with dreams and a mother who would move heaven and earth to help you realize them. She must have loved you so much and been so proud of the woman you have become.  

What an amazing thread!

I have one that was almost Traumatic, but mainly just odd.

  We lived on an island, and there was a tropical storm moving in.  My Pops drove me, my teenage sister, and her boyfriend out onto a pier, to look at the wild waves that the storm was stirring up.  I was three years old.  The pier was made of granite boulders, with a long narrow asphalt roadway on top.   We drove out to the end and they all got out.  The wind was rocking the car, and they could barely stand up. I was laughing at my sisters boyfriend- his enormous blonde afro was flopping all around in the funniest way. Pops ordered me to stay in the car, and keep all the windows up.  

  But you know me.

As soon as he turned his back, i opened the windows.  The wind felt so cool and moist.  It felt so nice, as it caressed me, and gently lifted me off of the back seat and right out of the window.  I guess i was too young to be as terrified as i should have been.  I floated over the car, over the heads of my family.  Before i could say "hey look at me!", my sister saw me, and started screaming like Veronica Lake in The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  Pops leapt into the air and caught me by my ankle.  A few more seconds, and i would have been out to sea. He was yelling at me the whole way home, as i pouted.  "We almost lost you!  How the hell would I explain *that* to your Mother?!?"  I told him he could "just tell her i flew away" .

@unk-p Do you think it's possible you were levitating? I remember vividly jumping out of my body and soaring at an early age. No one was ever around to grab me and I'd float back down.

@lynnventura 

@jeanne-mayell @bluebelle @lovendures @unk-p

Jeanne, this topic is wonderful. I'm enjoying your story and all the other stories from folks who wrote one here. Your father's arrival and closing of the door and putting out the fire was something else! So heartwarming, inspiring and truly amazing. 

Lynn, your story made me laugh because I had such a similar feeling about Samantha too.

I also grew up in the 60s and "fell" for Superman. I thought to myself that I SHOULD BE ABLE TO FLY too! So I got my mother to take me to Woolworths and buy me a superman cape. (I believe I was probably 7 yrs old). Well one day I put on that superman cape and climbed on top of the dining room hutch.  I felt I was sure I could fly so I jumped off the hutch with my superman cape on. Well, of course things didn't go the way I planned. I hurt my ankle pretty bad and was lucky I didn't break an arm or leg or any other part of me. My mother was not happy that's why I wanted the cape, and I assured her I wouldn't be jumping off anything else thinking I could fly.

I still want to fly though lol..... ? 

@teriz 

Not levitating in a dream but in real time?

@triciact I love this! I wanted to fly too!

My Star Trek-loving brother built a phaser and was convinced he could use it to communicate. He wasn't wrong, just a few decades early, because we're all using them now.

I think we all have memories from the "home office," where we could fly and make things happen just by thought. And I think the people who created a lot of these TV shows had them too.

I love your Woolworth's story too. That place was amazing. For all you youngsters, it was Target before Target. My Cuban parents called it "El Tencen," which is an adaptation of the English "ten cents," or the "five and dime." To a lot of Spanish-speaking people, Woolworth's was always "El Tencen."

Cheers all!

@triciact Ah, what a sweet story.  And if fits the spirited Triciact I know that you'd get up there on that high place and make the leap.  I see you as someone who can and does defy gravity.

@triciact and @lynn, I love that you brought up Woolworths!

When I was eight I walked a mile from my house to the Woolworths in town and bought my mother a pink wallet with silver glitter for Mother's Day.

And my earliest Woolworth's memory was when I was five and my mom and I happened to be in a Woolworths that had a soda counter that was having a promotion for kids only for banana splits.  There were blown up balloons all along the wall behind the counter. If you picked the right balloon you could get a banana split for a penny.  My mother said we should try it.  So I stared at all these balloons - red, pink, purple, and noticed there were a few really dingy-colored green balloons.  

I thought, "I bet they think the kids will pick a red balloon, and no one will pick that green one. 

So I picked the dingy green balloon, they popped it, and inside was a ticket that said one cent.  My mother was thrilled and since I was a skinny little kid who couldn't eat more than two spoonfuls of this enormous dish, she ate the rest.

@jeanne-mayell 

Well the only way I choose to defy gravity now is by getting on an airplane (LOL), however I just remembered that Woolworths also had popcorn by the bag and candy apples, in addition to penny candy. (My mother didn't allow me to have much candy but she let me get the popcorn). There were also these toys called "color forms" which bring back a happy memory and you could buy the whole game set for only $1!

Another funny thing about Woolworths was that they sold house slippers. The kind you definitely wore in the house, but had a hard bottom, and would never go to special events in. When I got married, my Aunt Sue (my father's half sister) showed up at the wedding wearing - yikes - those house slippers from Woolworths! We were all dressed up to the nines of course, and on top of that, she insisted in being in the front line of all the pictures with those darn house slippers. We still laugh about that (she was quite the character and very cheap!).

Every time I hear "Woolworths" I want to drag out our wedding photos and laugh about dear departed Aunt Sue. LOL ? ? 

When I was 3 I got to chose my first pet.   I chose this beautiful part siamese part rag-doll kitten that had a slight kink in it's tail. He was an amazing cat.  He looked both ways when crossing the street, let me dress him in baby doll clothes and stroll him around my home and would stay with me night and day when I was sick. He lived 16 years.

He was an indoor/outdoor cat who loved to capture animals and bring them home as presents, often leaving his catch on our doorstep.  Lizards, birds, rodents and the like. Years later when we got a dog, he would actually woof back at the dog if he got cornered.  I have never seen anything like it to this day, a barking cat. 

Sometimes at night I would be sitting in the kitchen in the dark and the top cupboard door of a cabinet would swing open slowly and 2 glowing eyes would stare back at me. He loved to hide in cabinets but it could be a bit freaky sometimes.  haha.