By the time this photo was taken, I had begun to grow a sparse crop of hair on my head again, but it couldn't compare to that first, newborn hairdo.
I had also, if you notice, already perfected my Michelin Tire Man impression, though it had only thus far progressed to my arms.
(BELOW, LEFT) Ahh. Next we have photographs of the day on which I received my first kiss. I was almost 4. My cousin Bobby was 6. He was a charming older man ... how could I resist? Especially when we were sleeping under the same blanket? Our cousins Bobby and Denny had come to visit us for a few days ... who knew that romance would bloom?
On the upper right, Denny is displaying an evil expression while I cover my mouth, giggling. In truth, what was happening here was that Denny kept bashing into the back of my tricycle, trying to make me fall off. I apparently thought this was terribly funny.
On the lower left, we see my cousin Bobby warming up for that first kiss, giving me some kind of line like, "Come here often?" I am once again giggling into my hand. On the lower right, we are rudely interrupted by Denny, who leapt upon us with no warning. The course of true love never did run smooth. Notice, however, that I am still giggling into my hand. I think I was just terribly embarrassed and excited by this whole "two cute boys in the house and one of them keeps flirting with me" situation. No shameless hussy, I.
My dad is in the foreground. We're down by the creek that ran behind his house in Silverado Canyon. This was when my parents were divorced, but Dad hadn't yet moved out of California, so we spent every other weekend with him. Alan and I had a lot of fun playing back in the creek (which Dad pronounced "crick," leaving me with an apparently permanent tendency to pronounce the word that way). Dad taught me to shoot rifles from a young age (as evidenced here), and we continued to shoot at bottles and cans together well into my 20s, until I cut him off.
You should also note my red-and-white striped pyjamas. I loved these and wore them often, partially because my two best friends had matching pyjamas and we wore them whenever we spent the night at each other's houses.
The reason this photo was taken, however, was to spotlight the new headphones I had received for Christmas. Check them out. They're as big as my head. And my stereo is a happenin' bit of technology, if I do say so myself. I particularly like the gargantuan radio tuner on the right-hand side. Stylin'!
If you look closely, you can see in the background a unicorn calendar, a picture from the movie The Last Unicorn, a feathered roach-clip (these were all the rage for a year or so, though I didn't wear mine clipped in my hair like the cool girls did), and extremely ugly curtains. John and I played cards all the time, sometimes in my room, sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes outside, just basically everywhere. Mostly not at his house, though, because his mom was weird and his older brothers liked to rag on us.
At the dance, we didn't actually dance very much, because I was too shy and he was wearing his father's shoes, which were too big for him and hurt his feet. The one song I remember us dancing to (possibly the only song we danced to) was Spandau Ballet's "True." I'd hated the song previously, but then went into a stage of going all misty eyed and embarrassed whenever I heard it.
In the photo, you may notice the attractive dead plant in the upper right, displayed in a hanger made of shells. My mother was one hell of an interior designer! Go Mom!
The kitten I'm holding was named Nigel ... after John Nigel Taylor, bass player for Duran Duran. Make jokes at your leisure. She (yes, she, despite the name "Nigel") was a very sweet cat and I missed her a lot after I moved away. I cried a lot when Mom called me to tell me they'd had to put her to sleep.
What you can't see in this photo is that I'm also wearing a green-and-white Duran Duran t-shirt. I'm not joking, either. I had a serious obsession thing going on.
Notice my lack of accessories, though. Even as a teenager I was impaired in that department, though I did during this time have a tendency to wear very long, dangly earrings. I had both ears pierced twice. Now, almost 20 years later, all 4 holes have closed up. I'm no longer chic. Darn.
Things to notice: I'm wearing a Depeche Mode t-shirt. My cousin Misty is wearing the little plastic shoes that were so popular during this time period. Alan is wearing slip-on Vans, which had pretty much gone out of style.
This photo was taken when we were at a Parents Without Partners gathering. A hay ride, I think. We'd shown up early (my mother is always incredibly early for everything) and so my mom forced us to pose for some pictures while we waited for everyone to show up. "Pretend you like each other!"
Tim was Russian. He wasn't born in Russia, but all 4 of his grandparents were born in Russia and escaped during the Revolution, fleeing to Persia. His parents were both born in Persia/Iran and grew up there before moving to the U.S. when they were teenagers. Going to his house to visit was always very strange, because his family mostly didn't speak English to each other. Instead, they spoke a mishmash of Russian, Farsi, and broken English. I mostly couldn't understand anything they said. When Tim's dad tried to speak English to me, Tim had to whisper a translation in my ear. I mostly spent my visits nodding and smiling and trying to be invisible.
Our relationship eventually ended very badly. We were together for about 3 years, and then I ended things while we were living together in a sort of annex of my grandparents' condo. Tim was obsessed with getting us back together, so I was the one to move out and find another apartment. He continued living with my grandparents for about 6 or 7 more years afterward. It was freaky, and I stopped going to visit my grandparents because of it. They luuuuuuuuuuuuved Tim. He and I tried to be friends, but every time we would try to do something friend-like, he would eventually work the conversation around to, "I think I've figured out a way we can make this work!" or some similar conversational twist.Eventually, I said that I didn't think we could be friends until he was able to move on. We never did become friends again afterward. Every time I saw him, he had this distressingly pathetic eagerness to talk to me. I just stayed away from him. Sometimes I wonder what he's doing now, but my experience with reinitiating these types of friendships after a long time hasn't been good.
He died a couple years ago. For rather complicated reasons, I wasn't able to go to the funeral. Thinking about him still makes me cry, because I wish I could have spent more time with him, especially before he became so ill and debilitated by strokes and heart attacks. The last couple times I saw him, he was mostly paralyzed and couldn't talk. He tried, but he couldn't get the words out and it made him really mad, so that he slammed things around in his hospital bed as much as he could, which wasn't much. He was in a hospital bed, but not in the hospital. I think that, at least, was probably a comfort to him. His wife was a R.N., so she nursed him at home. I'm not sure if that changed near the end, but at least he didn't spend YEARS in a hospital room. Instead, he spent years mostly paralyzed in a hospital bed in his living room, watching "Wheel of Fortune" and getting pissed off that his wife was telling him what to do and he couldn't argue back.
But I'm selfishly glad that I got to see him and talk to him and read to him a few times more than I would have if he'd died right off, like the doctors thought he would. And for the first couple years, he could still get around on his own, sneaking out back to smoke cigarettes when his wife wasn't watching, that sort of thing. It was only when progressively more and more strokes rendered him mostly paralyzed that things got bad.
I wish I'd lived nearer, so that I could have visited every day. (It was an all-day trip on Greyhound for me to visit.) I wish I'd been able to spend time with him frequently, telling him about my life, telling him jokes, reading to him, even just watching tv with him and holding his hand.
He was a great guy. I think I'll always miss him.
