A Visit to Normalcy

The trip to Aunt Amy and Uncle Ed's house in central Washington state was a spur of the moment thing.  Mom somehow convinced the airline  ticket seller that Tabatha was too young to need a ticket, so I had to carry her the whole time and keep her on my lap on the plane.  It was a long travel day, flying from San Diego to Spokane, with a change of planes somewhere in between. Then we had to finish the air travel in a little putt-putt plane.  Jeff and Tabatha were never good travelers.  They always threw up in the car, and they threw up on the Putt Putt plane ride too.  It was always my job to hold what we called the"blek bags" for them.

We arrived at a tiny regional airport late at night, and it was freezing cold.  All we brought to keep us warm were knit sweaters, which are fine in San Diego but useless in real weather.  Aunt Amy and little Amy, her granddaughter, met us with hooded down jackets to put on, and soon we were piled in her big station wagon on a short road trip to her house in Ephrata.

I am really not sure how long we were there, but I know I was not at school for picture day and we spent Halloween trick-or-treating in the snow, so we were probably gone for a month.  That month was the best month of my childhood.

Aunt Amy had custody of her two young grandchildren from daughter Phyllis.  She ran a structured household.  We had breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we sat at a table and ate together. The food was home-cooked.  This is the first time I ever had butternut squash, and I loved it.  There were no TV dinners, no O-O Spaghetti Ohs, no sugary cereals, no soda pop, no going to furniture stores to have cookies and punch for dinner. Jeff and Tabatha were no longer acting out with temper tantrums. And we didn't get screamed at and hit every day like we were used to at home.  I was allowed to play outside with the other kids and didn't have to stay indoors being a best friend and confidante to Mom.  No seances, no fortune cards, no crazy family stories.  It was a nice break.

Aunt Amy's backyard had a playhouse, a huge tree with a swing, and several fruit trees.  I spent lots of time climbing those fruit trees, picking  and eating the high-hanging peaches and apricots, which by October were dried and chewy. Getting up in those trees, away from everyone, was great medicine for me.

Tabatha and Little Amy

Aunt Amy, who had previously worked as a childhood educator, had lots of really great books for kids of all ages.  She assigned us books to read, and my favorite one was Charlotte's Web. I kept up my piano practice on her little spinet in the living room.  And while we were there, Aunt Amy spent lots of time in her basement sewing room making all of us beautiful new clothes.

Little Amy, Tabatha, Tammy, Jeff

It snowed just before Halloween, only a tiny bit, but we went nuts over it.  Aunt Amy carved a jack-o-lantern, something we didn't do at home because Mom thought it was a waste of money. After seeing an ad for free Colonel Sanders masks at Kentucky Fried Chicken, they drove over and picked up a bunch of them and we all marched door to door in the sparsely snowy neighborhood all looking like the Colonel.

Little Ed, Jeff,Tabatha, Little Amy, Tammy

I never wanted to leave Aunt Amy's house. Aunt Amy made the offer to let me stay.  I wished Mom would just leave me there.  But, I was a "grown up" now, and had to help her with the kids, so we all went home in early November.  Back to a very sad and creepy 4071 Eagle St.  Back to evil Mrs. Anderson.

Mrs. Anderson

 And I had missed over a month of school.  She would have plenty of reasons to make an example out of me now. And she did on a daily basis for the rest of the school year.

The trip to Aunt Amy's house showed us that there was another way to live.  Calm. Respectful.  Content. Where kids were kids and adults were adults. But now it was back to reality.