Who are you, really? 0-5
I am the invisible, imaginary, twin friend of our beloved Writer. Generally I write in and of her in first person. But… for this series of posts I will write about her in third person just to see what comes forth from the depths of her aging mind, (she’ll be a little offended that I said “aging mind” she’s got feelings about that – not about aging so much as what is happening to her mind.)
She was born in a small town in NM where (her mother) Janie went to be with her family while (her father) William was serving in the military out of the country.
*For years Lane resented both parents for this arrangement and how it repeated over and over through the years of her childhood. But as she ages she finds she doesn’t have enough room in her mind to sustain judgements about every enormous mistake made by her parents and society over the decades that followed.*
William learned of the birth of his 1st daughter via a phone call shortly after the beginning of the new year of 1960.
**Lane loves how the last digit of her birthday correspond so beautifully to the last digit of the years. She never has to perform difficult math when trying to figure out how old she is in any particular year. If she can nail down the right decade she knows how old she was, 12 in 72, 61 in 2021. This is the kind of math she can do in her head!**
***The birth of Lane was kind of a big deal as she was the 1st girl born into William’s family in over 70 years and she remained the only one for 7 more years in her own generation on both sides of the family. “We make sons in this family, it’s what we’re good at,” William’s father was purported to have said, maybe never. But what Lane remembers was the delight and devotion of William’s enormous mother, “Nanny,” who had had it up to HERE with sons and enough grandsons to tear the damn house down.***
William returned to his family, 4 in number, then, as Lane has a brother 5 years older. They loaded up and moved … somewhere cold, we know this from the picture of Lane looking like a puffy little starfish in a pink snowsuit. There were a couple more moves in the dark unknown of her immature memory before a light dawned and shone brightly on a little brick starter home somewhere in Oklahoma with a chain link fence around the backyard and a cool corner cabinet in the kitchen where she could hide. She has a lot of random Oklahoma memories that ended shortly after she graduated from kindergarten. That’s when she grows up enough to be consciously aware of the roiling drama that eventually rips her family to shreds…
