What are You Looking for posted 5/17/2008 2:57:12 PM | 15 kudos what's this?     report abuse

LaughTillYaPuke

My father called me the great wanderer. He said that I really didn't speak much until I was about 4 years of age. He never could decided if I was a lost soul trying to find my way back home, or just too damn sneaky for my own good.

All of my baby, toddler and childhood pictures have me wearing bells. Little ones on my white high top toddler shoes, on my dresses instead of buttons and even on my mittens that were strung through my coat. My parents desperate attempt to keep track of me. I think that was how I learned to sit still for long periods of time. It was the only way to get some peace.

I was an outrageously cute child. And eventually my dad glued bells on my pajama's as well. My older brothers and sisters would steal me out of my crib to come sleep with them. My brother Steve said he loved the way I would lay there and just stare at him and play with his hair. But too much silence from any one of his kids made dad nervous and he would come check on me in the middle of the night and find an empty crib.

But without a doubt I was daddy's girl. Rumor has it that the family would have a mad scramble running around the house trying to find me so that dad wouldn't have to know that I had been lost AGAIN. Stories of me calmly sitting in the bottom of the clothes hamper. Found sound asleep in a pile of leaves at age one and a half. Sitting under a card board box by the side of the road. (I loved the sound in there) Five people standing like statues all over the yard. Shhhhh. Did you hear that? I think she's over here! But now that I look back, it is kind of weird that no one thought of me until 4:45 every day.

And Daddy would come home to find me virtually naked. I had made every attempt to get every bell off my body. And I was willing to freeze to accomplish my goal. There are pictures of me standing in a diaper inside my crib at the top of the stairs. Apparently I had tried to make a break for it again. Got all the bells off me and had "hopped" my crib across my room, somehow opened my door, hopped the crib through that and down the hall. And by some miracle, got one of the legs of the crib caught on a throw rug and it wouldn't move anymore. A pile of my crib toys laying at the bottom of the stairs. Dad said that was his first grey hair.

I remember being about 8 years old and disappearing until about 11 O'clock at night. I couldn't tell you where I had been, or what I had been doing. But I know it wasn't anything naughty. Just out exploring. I came home to every light on and my brother Steve meeting me about a half a block from home. He lifted me up by one arm and cracked my ass all the way home. It was my first experiance with how men dealt with fear. And it scared the hell out of me. Whatever worry, rage and anger was in that house when I got home, drifted away when everyone saw Steve spanking the bejeezus out of me.

"Mimi, come over here." Wow. Dad had a deep voice. And in that moment, he was a huge man. I stood in front of him. No shoes, torn jeans and my pony tail falling out. "Honey, What are you LOOKING for?" And I sobbed. That awsome moment when you feel totally loved. Safe. Cared for. And for ONCE, understood. "I don't know daddy." But he finally had placed a question that I would spend years trying to answer.

Now don't get me wrong. I was a happy child. Always smiling, laughing, heck, the prankster of the family. But I remember seeing a a globe once. And spinning it round and round. I had looked at my brother Tommy and said "How do you know all those places really exist? How do you really KNOW?" His answer was to look at me like I was an idiot and say......"Because people TELL us they exist."

I knew that was a bunch of baloney. I wanted to touch the parthenon, suck the sand from the pyramids in to my lungs, bow before the Buddha, and lay with the elephants in Africa. THAT was the only way it would be real to me. And I would spin that globe and run my finger over the bumps that showed me the glorious differance between gobs of salt water and distant and ancient lands. And oh how I wanted to go.

It was never to be mine. But the one brother that tortured me the most, would do all that I had wanted to do and more. And he never forgot me. A diamond from Africa. A cartouche and a bottle of sand from Egypt. Intricatly painted rice from China. Jewelry from India (with bells of course), and a incredable carved Buddha from Nepal. Oils, spices and resin were mine upon his return.

And yes, I do believe. Those incredable places exist. I have been loved by many men. But those first 3, Daddy, Tom and Steve were the ones that I could trust my passions to. I wore them out. I tried their patience. But I believed in them. And if Steve says that those ancient places exist, then they do. Even if it is only in my own soul.

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Blogs by LaughTillYaPuke: Better than Ice Cream Breathe Body in the Road Always the Hard Thing to Do Blood, Sweat and Tears Coming to an End Elusive Thief House of Cards Gypsy Queen The Gum Tree The Age of Reason Felonies and other Petty Crimes What are You Looking for Rattling the Bones Spit In the Eye of the Devil The Best Damn Wayside EVER Coming into My Own Daddy's Girl Enough Already Trees Around My Heart The Mother Tree Colors The Most Beautiful Place on Earth Mother Barn In The Beginning