A room with a view...

 When I was six or seven we lived in a house across the street from my grandparents. It was a house that they frequently referred to as old grandma Bush's house. When she died, my grandparents bought the property and my mom became the first occupant. At least, that is how I will tell the story. The house had a beautiful porch that led into an old living room with wood floors, a tiny kitchen with musty smelling cabinets and a back room where the old wringer washing machine would be hooked up to the water outlet. Off to the side of the hose were three rooms, a tiny make-shift room with a built in desk that would be my first technical "big boy" bedroom. I was in fact a third grader and needed my own space now that I was a growing boy. My sisters occupied the middle room, fit with a bunk bed and toys galore. The main room, at the head of the house was my mother's room. Traditionally, a room that was off limits to all children, especially hers. 

I loved this house for many reasons. It was across the street from my grandparents. It was a house and not an apartment or a trailer (which wasn't something that I really picked up on until I was older). It had a tree in the yard that I loved to climb even though my grandmother threatened to beat my ass if she caught me climbing (spoiler, she caught me climbing it more than once and I got my ass beat with a wooden spoon).

I hated the house because of the kind of people that it attracted. My mom used to bring her biker friends into our environment and some of them were not always kind. One man dumped garbage on my bed because I did not take the trash out to the alley one night. That was my punishment, after he beat my ass for being disrespectful and neglectful. Then I had clean it up, and take the trash out. My mom once caught me licking seasoning salt out of my palm and she made me lick seasoning salt as punishment to teach me that it was not food. I have a hard time with certain seasoning salt brands sometimes. 

There was a boy that used to babysit us who lived down the street, his name was Billy. Billy was the first boy with pubic hair and what appeared to be a grown penis that I was exposed to at a young age. I remember looking through a yearbook that my mom had and seeing someone "streaking" and Billy said "oh yeah, that is so much fun! We should do it!" We go naked and crept out the screen door in the back and ran through the alley bare-assed under the only street lamp toward the vacant lot in neighborhood. Still across the street from my grandparents house and in a very, very populated neighborhood. It was neither exhilarating or exciting. I was so scared and fearful of getting caught. But seeing Billy in all of his nudity, man....I was game for that. Then he sat in front of me and showed me what it meant to jack off and cum. I had no idea what he was doing. It seemed so weird. So strange to watch and not understand at all what he was doing to himself. When he finished and the explosion of fluid that came forth only made me more nervous that he would tell the grown ups that I was a weird fucking kid that liked to watch him touch himself or be nasty. I only ever sought him out a few times after that before things changed.

The thing about that house that I am reminded of frequently is the time that I spent there growing up there without realizing how much time I actually spent growing up there. It was the place where I got my first Atari. I remember wanting the game console so badly and really only playing it a few times before my mom gave it away. It was the place where one of my mom's biker friend's named Gypsy gave me a hair cut and the clippers he used cut too close to my scalp that there is a permanent bald spot on my scalp to this day. It was the place where my sisters and I had a Christmas that introduced us to our first Lite-Brite's and other random 80's toys that poor white trash children received around the holidays. It was the home where I remember being on the porch looking out at a barrel cactus in the yard wondering what it would be like to run up and kick it like a soccer ball. I think I must have given in to that thought because I remember running up to that bitch and kicking it with the top of my foot with the full force of my body.

I remember our black and white television with rabbit ears. On crappy days when I didn't go to school, I stayed home and watched Gomer Pyle and I Dream of Jeannie and The Price Is Right and whatever else I could while indulging in nonsense. 

But the one thing that I always found myself exploring was my mother's room. Depending on the time of day, she might have the windows open, a fan blowing to circulate the air and filter out her sheer curtains. My mother is and has always been a smoker and being in her room meant being in an environment that was to some extent a mystery. It was thrilling. To be honest I was probably too much of a lurker and I was probably looking to see what I could find or get into when I was in her room. I think all children do that when they are told "stay out". I just know that when you small, and you walk through the sheer fabric blowing against your skin on paltry days, when the light bounces in different hues of lemony yellow and burnt orange around a mint green room, and the silence and stillness of a room that isn't yours that holds nothing but a made up bed, a dresser with vanity mirror and a few odds and ends pieces of furniture, a few minutes alone exploring creates a core memory of something that must remind me of peace. It reminds me of my mother. It's a very calming feeling and a gentle feeling that I seldom have when I think of things from growing up. 

I think this house could have been her best or brought out her better side. It could have been her power. If only she had let it teach her to protect her children better. I dunno? There's something about the 1980's and how women were taught to let men have total control over there everything. Who knows how many decisions she made to finally say it's time to move on. Eventually we moved and we left the house that was across the street from my grandparents. We moved into "the city" and that is where I learned where my place in this world was actually supposed to be.