Every 5 years
Where were you...
1970: Two years old, living with my parents in Texas. Mom stayed home with me and I liked to bang on pots and pans, swim, and look at myself in the shiny step trash can.
1975: Seven yo, living in Catonsville with my mom, though spending large chunks of time at my grandparents' house in Brooklyn. My parents were separated and going back and forth with their relationship, not telling me a thing, and my mom was seriously depressed. I was a latch key kid and loving the solitude and autonomy. My best friend was Kelly, who lived down the block. I was insanely jealous of my friends who went to Catholic school. I was desperate to go to Catholic school for some reason.
1980: 12 yo, living at my grandparents' house with my mom. In 7th grade, arguably the very best grade of my school career. I went to school a one hour/2 bus ride away, had tons of homework, tons of awesome friends. On weekends I either went to my dad's or took the bus downtown to meet my friends and scamper around H-place.
1985: 17 yo, living in CV with my mom, in 11th grade. In the midst of a serious depression which ultimately resulted in a serious suicide attempt and withdrawl from school. One of the worst years of my life, I felt completely alone and awful and yet imprisoned by my crazy ass parents.
1990: 22 yo, living in Cville again, renting the basement apt in my mom's house with my new husband J. Working full time as a receptionist, going to school on and off, having lots of parties, seeing lots of concerts. Happy in some ways but struggling in others. Adopted the Pam-Cat.
1995: 27 yo, living in Mt Washington with E. Been divorced for a few years now, now working part time and almost finished my BA. Loving my internship at CB, becoming friends with Wa, Ken, Patricia, Shannon et al. Have my Pam & Ike cats.
2000: 32 yo, living with E in our house in CV. Finished my MSW last year, still working at CB but have been promoted. E is getting sick, needs a biopsy; it's scary. We get married in our house with a small group of close friends and family.
2005: 37 yo, same house, same job, but the family composition has changed: We have a Sammy! He is 3. Pammy died 2 yrs ago and we adopted Miranda since Ike was so lonely. My grandfather passed away four years ago.
Thus far, 2008: My grandmother was diagnosed with dementia and moved into an assisted living facility in PA. My uncle and aunt moved to SC. Sam started kindergarten. Iky got cancer, lived for a few years with treatment, and recently died.
posted by Gina @ 10:48 PM
2 Comments:
I had to giggle to myself when reading your entry about 1980. I, too, look at that year as possibly being my favorite year of school ever.
Many times over the past 25 years, I've talked about the group of friends that we had in 7th and 8th grade. It was unique in that we hailed from all over the city, from all different backgrounds and yet did EVERYTHING together! And it wasn't just during school. Almost the entire class of us hung out together during the summer and during vacations. Again, that might be more normal if it were a neighborhood school, but we traveled from all over Baltimore, just to hang out together.
And my view of 7th grade might be a little biased, since, in spite of the major crush that I had on you, that's the year that I met the wonderful woman who ended up being my wife.
I loved 7th,8th and 9th. Those were the years I realized that differences make us the same. Those were the years that I talked about my friends Gina and Sandy and for the first time was comfortable with show how much I knew. Remember the fries at McDonald's--that's all we would order.
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