Part of my journey has been taking the time to reflect on my childhood. For some reason, I am finding it to be an important part of the puzzle. As I mentioned before, I remember only bits and pieces of it. Some of the memories I do have I think are really either my sister's or my parent's memories of a particular event from their point of view that they have shared with me. Therefore, it is hard to distinguish their memories from my actual memories.
For me, I seem to mostly remember the traumatic memories.
Until I was in fourth grade, my parents moved multiple times. I vaguely remember a house they rented having a very large fenced-in yard. I think this house was before we moved to Pennsylvania, so I must have been younger than three years old.
What I remember was it was warm day and I was playing in the yard. I suppose you could say I had a creative imagination. I was pretending our large dog was my pony.
After trying to climb on the dog multiple times with no success, I had a brainstorm of an idea. I could walk the dog, over to the folding lawn chair, hold him steady while I climbed onto the lawn chair, and easily saddle my pony. Seemed like a great plan.
Things sometimes never work as planned when you are three. I remember convincing the dog to come near the chair. I remember climbing onto the chair. I remember the chair closing as I tried to climb on my pony. I remember the dog moving. I remember falling.
And then I remember tasting blood and crying. I remember getting the stitches.
Today when the light hits the area between my lower lip and chin, I see the scar from the stitches where I bit through the skin when I fell.
The scar reminds me it is not a good idea to stand on a lawn chair to try and climb on the dog’s back. However, even with the scar, I still think it was a good idea to pretend he was a pony.
