Earliest Memory

Weirdly the earliest are political. I remember the end of the Vietnam war. My mom saying, “we lost” meaning the U.S. My very young mind thought that this meant that a king from Vietnam was now going to take over the U.S. I was not worried about it though. I also kind of sort of remember Nixon resigning. I remember very clearly Ford losing re-election. I think I have a fuzzy memory of being in a crib. I remember watching Tarzan movies on our boiling hot TV in the living room — splayed out on the avocado green shag rug. I remember watching Star Trek on that same TV “This is Tranja, I hope you will relish it as much as I do.” Watching 60 Minutes Heroin Epidemic. Expose of Mental Hospitals: The Snake Pit. War. Astronauts. The Crawling Hand. The Partridge Family (Why can’t I have hair like Keith?)

I remember winter in Oklahoma. Making snowmen with my sister. Spring blooms on the trees — my dad taking me to a darkroom at Phillips Petroleum where he worked — to develop photos of those spring blooms. I remember the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Price Tower, dominating the Bartlesville skyline — how that loan beacon of modernism spoke to me at a child. I want to be there. I want that. Seeing the Nutcracker downtown every Christmas. How every time I acted too effeminate my mother threatened to enroll me in ballet lessons — a socially toxic punishment I knew I had to avoid at all costs. I remember the tee-pee in my bedroom. The Disney memorabilia in my closet from a trip to Disney World I was too young to remember. The death of my grandmother — my dad purchasing a Triumph TR7 2 seat convertible shortly thereafter. I vaguely, vaguely remember when my dad was sick and we stayed with a rotating group of family friends. I did not know he suffered a series of anxiety attacks — at 36 that made him reevaluate his life. He was in a marriage with a woman he did not love. He had kids he didn’t want to have. A job he felt did not challenge him. He was having a midlife crisis.

I remember the screaming fights that seemed to happen every night. Mom and dad in the family room — screaming accusations at each other. Things breaking. Oh if only they would have gotten a divorce then instead of hanging on another 9 years. Nine years of nightly screaming. Dad swilling scotch, mom overtaken by insecurity transformed to a nag, a shrew. My poor mom — born in the depression in the South. A farmhouse without electricity. Not a single skill in her toolkit to prepare her for the emotional task of ending a marriage. No way of imagining something else for herself. The lie told to generations of women — you need a man to be whole. My mom did not need this man — I remember dating an alcoholic “I can save him.” No, you can’t.

I remember being a terrible student. Taken aside for being unable to learn the alphabet, unable to learn to read, unable to add, subtract. A constant struggle that went on and on. Tutors, special classes, barely graduating from high school. D’s and F’s in math — even after I mastered languages and developed a love for the written word. Such a bad student I became a writer and a teacher.

I remember ironing crayon shavings between two sheets of wax paper to make stained glass.