Marble Glass and Railroad Tracks ~ A Memoir

    Woooo-ooo! Woooo-ooo!  The train sounded its horn in the distance and as the lights began to flash and the alarms of the signal rang the cross bar lowered.  I slowed my Buick Terazza mini-van to a stop and as the engine of my van quietly hummed the train’s engine roared louder and louder as it loomed closer and closer.  The horn blared again and my eyes focused down the railroad tracks at the oncoming train, the train came into focus, crossed in front of my van and my vision blurred as my memories came flooding back of marble glass and railroad tracks.

     As a young girl, my parents would take us to Cairo, West Virginia each summer.  We visited my Uncle “Junior” and Aunt Catherine.  My cousins, Paul and Mike, were much older; therefore, my sister and I were often left to find our own entertainment on these annual visits.  The railroad ran through the town of Cairo.  My aunt and uncle lived about 50 yards off of the railroad tracks and directly across the tracks was The Heaton Agate Company marble factory.  If I had not seen a marble factory with my own eyes I would have imagined it to be a lovely place that looked like a magical castle with beautiful flowers and giant sized marbles sitting on top fence posts that surrounded a world where fanciful balls of glass in a myriad of colors with no two alike were crafted out of fire and melted glass.    

     But, the marble factory that I knew was nothing like one would imagine such perfect treasures to be crafted—treasures that would be carried in the small hands of children, tucked inside their pockets, buried in a sandbox as hidden treasures and eventually lost only to be found by some other lucky child to become their treasure to behold.

     Having grown up visiting Cairo, West Virginia, I learned that a marble factory is really a small, square building with dirty broken windows and a flat roof.   On the outside, mountains of broken green, brown, clear and blue glass lay in heaps near the walls of the building.  Overgrown weeds and tall grass so high that it looked like a miniature jungle surrounded the marble factory where the stray cats that made their home there must have certainly pretended to be the king of that jungle.  The marble factory in Cairo, West Virginia looks as if it could have been condemned.  Even though, as a child, I always thought a marble factory should have been a far prettier place, I realize now just as we should not judge a book by its cover, we should also not judge a building by its exterior.  The marble factory in Cairo truly shows that beauty and the treasures one has to offer comes from the inside.

     As I sat in my van that morning, the train cars a blur in front of me, my mind took me back to those railroad tracks that ran alongside the marble factory.  One of the few things I looked forward to on our annual summer trips to West Virginia was scavenging the railroad tracks for marbles.  For some reason, I never really understood why, marbles would end up along the railroad tracks.  My sister Elana and I would spend at least a couple hours a day digging through the rocks along the tracks in search of those precious colorful balls of glass.  We’d start closest to the marble factory.  That was always the easiest place to find them.

     “I found one!” one of us would shout.  The other one would come running over to see what it looked like.  If my sister found one first, I always asked, “What color is it?” as I scampered along the tracks toward her.  “Let me see it!  Can I hold it?” I would beg her eagerly.  There was always something special about the first marble found.  Maybe, it was simply because in finding one, I knew they were there to be found again each year.  Not knowing why they were there to begin with was such a curious mystery to me. “How did the marbles get from inside the building to alongside the railroad tracks?” I wondered to myself.  There was no road that led there.  There was no path-- just that thick jungle of weeds and tall grass.  I suppose from one year to the next, deep down I was always afraid that we would go to visit Uncle “Junior” and Aunt Catherine and those beautiful balls of colored glass, the treasures along those B & O railroad tracks would not be there anymore.

     My sister was braver than I.  She often ventured into that jungle of weeds and tall grass.  I hung back at the tracks teetering on the rails looking for her as she searched the lower canopy for marbles.  I clung to the safety of the perimeter where the bugs and other weed and tall grass critters could not get me.  My sister often found some spectacular marbles on those missions.  Well, they seemed spectacular to me, perhaps in part because she obtained them through bravery which I lacked, but also because those marbles were sometimes a salmon pink colored one or even a two-toned aqua and blue combination—both marbles which were rare.  “Can I have that one?” I had asked desperately wanting the salmon pink one.  “No,“ she said, “Finder’s keepers, loser’s weepers.”

     My hopes often rested in the chance that when Mom took us walking up the railroad tracks later during our visit, I would find some special marbles of my own.  Usually by the end of the first day of our visit, I had asked her the required 1572 times for Mom to finally say, “Yes.”  The three of us, Mom, Elana and I, would start walking up the tracks shortly after dinner.  Usually, I would skip along the railroad ties when we first started out on our journey. I could afford carelessness in the early parts of our walk because it was in those segments of the track that I had already scavenged for marbles.  The railroad ties were not evenly spaced.  Sometimes my legs could stretch from one tie to the other, my toes barely reaching.  Other times, I had to take a small leap and landed with perfect ease.  Arms outstretched to my sides like a bird in flight I would from tie to tie until suddenly there was a tie too far to reach with ease and grace I would propel myself forward not wanting to break my record of how many railroad ties in a row I had skipped across without touching the rocks in between.  Sometimes I landed on that just-out-of-reach tie and other times I crashed into the rocks that filled the gaps in between the ties skinning my knees.  Mom would stop and use a napkin she kept in her pocket (probably in anticipation of this event) to wipe the blood from my knee and another one to dry the tears from my eyes.  Once, my knee and my pride seemed healed enough to continue, we continued up the railroad tracks, the three of us side by side.  Inside my mind, I decided that a new game was to count how many railroad ties I could not touch.  Once we entered newer territory, I slowed my pace, often balancing on the rail of the track as if I were a gymnast on a balance beam.

     Some of the marbles I found were barely peeking through the dirt at the base of the Appalacian Mountains, the sunlight hitting them just right so that the light reflecting off of them was just enough to capture my eye.  “Look!  I see one!”  I’d call and dash off toward it as my sister would follow behind asking, “Where?”  Sometimes, I’d get really lucky and as I dug through the dirt with my small eager hands working their fingernails to uncover that one small piece of treasure, I would actually find two playing peek-a-boo.

     As if the fact that marbles seemed to mysteriously get from inside the marble factory to along the tracks outside of it was not curious enough, that marbles could be found as far away as a quarter mile of that marble factory was even more puzzling.  Marbles would be scattered along the railroad tracks lying at the base of the mountains.  I wonder if someone put them there on purpose just for children like us.  Maybe he knew there were kids who liked to search for hidden treasures.  Maybe he knew that there was a girl like me who would grow up to think back fondly on those beautiful balls of glass.  Maybe they were put there for just the right pair of eyes to see.

     By the end of each visit, my sister and I were usually lucky enough to have collected a small Zip-loc bag containing about ten marbles each.  Occasionally, one of us would find a shooter.  Quite often, we would sit on Aunt Catherine’s sunlit couch and look at our marbles trying to decide which one we liked best.  Perhaps we might even work out a trade between ourselves.

     The train cars in front of me passed by in a blur and as the caboose went by, the signal alarms and lights turned off, the crossbar raised and my mind refocused.  I shifted my van into drive and slowly accelerated.  As I drove, I thought of those marbles I found as a child and how I wish that I still had them.  But, perhaps they are in the hands of a child or in a pocket, or in a sandbox as a buried treasure.  Maybe the marbles I uncovered as a child have been uncovered countless times since then in countless other places.

     I may not have the marbles from my childhood to remind me of those family trips to visit my father’s family, but I do have something else that may be just as good.  My father moved back to Cairo, West Virginia when I was 30.  Eventually, he bought the house that was next to the marble factory.  When visiting my father, he and I would sit on his back porch around which chunks of red and yellow swirled marble glass dotted his flower beds.  Because my father was an alcoholic and he and I did not have a close relationship those talks were some of the best we’d ever had.  On his mantle sat a small jar of marbles.  Prior to his death, my father asked me what I wanted of his.  The only thing I told him that I wanted was the marble glass from his flower beds and the jar of marbles from his mantle-- raw marble glass like the mountains of broken glass outside of the marble factory and beautiful, perfectly round treasures.  Together, perhaps, in my mind, they represent that the beauty that lies within.  And even as I write this, I have to wonder, if somehow the raw marble glass and the jar of beautiful, colorful marbles somehow represent my father and me…

http://video.answers.com/the-marbles-making-in-cairo-west-virginia-259884824

Dumped for a Lunchable- A Man is Still a Man Even if He is Just Three

Today, my student "Kirby" who has claimed me as "his" in many was DUMPED me for an Oscar Mayer Lunchable.  After three year old Kirby pee'd on my feet, told other kids who tried to touch me "No, Mine" and physically removed their hands from me, proclaimed his love and adoration for me daily for months...decided that a Lunchable was much more powerful than the love he had for me.  He told his mother he did not want to go see Miss Rosie today because he wanted to eat the Lunchable she had in her car.

The question left in my poor broken heart...was this just a regular Lunchable I was getting dumped for or did it at least come with a drink and  Reeses cup.  I mean... I would hope I would get picked over a regular Lunchable...I can let the issue go if there was a Reeses cup involved...

But (sniff, sniff) I knew all along the fastest way to a man's heart was through his stomach so when it came to Miss Rosie vs. the Lunchable...there could only be one clear winner...

A Bridge of Trust ~ A Memoir

Grandma and Grandpa Amstutz are “one-of-a-kind” grandparents.  At least to me they are since I didn’t really grow up with any.  All but one of my grandparents had passed away before I was three and the only living one, whom I only saw once in awhile, died when I was in high school.  Yes, Grandma and Grandpa Amstutz are special.  They went out of their way to make family more than just a group of people connected by blood but gave the word “family” meaning by giving the people in their family attention, love and time.

     Grandma and Grandpa Amstutz wanted to share themselves with the people in their family.  When Dave, my husband and their first born grandchild, was growing up they would spend weekend days together walking the quiet wooded trail of the College Farm woods looking for birds and grasshoppers, picking up leaves and sticks, and crossing the swinging bridge to the other side of the river. When Dave and I had children of our own Grandma and Grandpa Amstutz often talked about their desire to take Noah and Nicholas on the same walk, wanting to create in them a similar memory as they had done with Dave and his sister Jennifer during their youth.

     The summer that Noah was five and Nicholas was 2 1/2 Grandma and Grandpa finally got their wish.  Dave, Noah and Nicholas and I headed to Bluffton one Sunday morning.  I was filled with anxiety during the entire hour and twenty minute drive north up I-75.  So many questions ran through my busy mind. “What if Noah ran off from them during the hike?”  “Could Grandma and Grandpa handle all of Nicholas’ hopping?”  Nicholas hopped everywhere instead of walking.  “What if Grandma had an asthma attack of Grandpa fell—the boys wouldn’t know what to do?”  I was truly a nervous wreck inside.

     You see, the thing that made me the most anxious was that Grandma and Grandpa wanted to take this walk with Noah and Nicholas without Dave and I—well, more accurately without me.  I always was in control of my kids and in the span of that walk, I would have no control.  Having a son with a developmental disorder and a hippity-hoppity toddler on a walk in a place I had never been—especially a place where they would be crossing a swinging bridge (and I remembered many swinging bridges from my own childhood and that gave me even more cause to be anxious) frightened me.

     Nevertheless, after hugs, kisses, and a  delicious family dinner, Grandma and Grandpa set off on their walk with Noah and Nicholas—water bottles and frozen Snickers bars packed in a thermal lunch bag.  Dave and I drove our tan Dodge Caravan around to the back side of College Farm to meet them on the other side to the point that would be the end of the hike.  Dave and I walked to the arranged meeting point— the other side of the swinging bridge.  As we were walking towards it, I could hear the happy sounds of my children’s voices off in the distance and the voices of their loving great-grandparents asking them questions and talking to them gently as they approached the swinging bridge.

     A wave of relief washed over me as I realized that for one of the first times since Noah was first diagnosed with a developmental disorder I could turn over some control to others for at least a little while and that everything would be o.k.  As Dave and I stood on one side of that swinging bridge and watched Grandma and Grandpa Amstutz take Noah and Nicholas’ little hands and walk across that swinging bridge, not only were special memories formed that day for the boys and their great grandparents, but a bridge of trust was also built.  This bridge of trust was built between them and me.  Trust is something that I do not give easily and on that hot day in that wooded area called College Farm in Bluffton, our bridge of trust was built at that swinging bridge.

     After Grandma and Grandpa and the boys arrived safely across the bridge, we  hugged and kissed.  I took a photo of the four of them to commemorate this occasion when great-grandparents and great-grandsons took a walk down memory lane.  An occasion where grandparents shared with their great grandsons a piece of their father’s history and made new memories for themselves.

     Afterward, we spent time exploring the old building that existed on that side of the bridge and drank water from the old well.  They boys took turns pumping the handle to bring forth water letting Grandma and Grandpa lean forward and quench their thirst just as if they were children, too.

     We shared a lot of laughter and made memories in those woods that day.  I often wonder what kinds of things Grandma and Grandpa told Noah and Nicholas about when I was not there with them.  But, that is special between them.  They built their own bridge of trust that day too.

I'm From

I’m From…

I’m from Crystal Lakes,
last house on a dead in street with a metal cable that separated “us from them”.
I’m from a house with a curved driveway and a front porch with a black scroll supports I loved to climb and a bedroom I shared with my sister, beds bumped together.
I’m from a red brick house with a breeze way, a flower planter and a large cement patio where we had picnics and parties on the outside and danced to my father’s old LPs, watched Little House on the Prairie and roller-skated in the basement on the inside.
I’m from a white brick ranch house down a long gravel lane on six acres of land in the country.
I’m from many houses but not one single home.

I’m from yards with rock gardens and flower beds with a rainbow of colors-- yellow daffodils, red tulips, orange poppies with bright black centers, and blue hyacinths.
I’m from vegetable gardens, hands in the soil planting seeds, pulling weeds, watering, hoeing, harvesting—sweet corn, green beans, sugar snap peas, ripe plump tomatoes, bibbed lettuce, radishes, carrots, rhubarb and more.
I’m from canning-- podding peas, stringing beans, cutting corn off the cob, skinning tomatoes, peeling apples and pears—making dilly beans, salsa, bread and butter pickles, tomato juice, and applesauce.

I’m from riding lawn lawnmowers on hot Saturday afternoons with birds circling overhead, swooping and diving down dangerously close wasting their efforts to protect their field nests as I listened to the cassette single of “It Must Have Been Love” by Roxette on my Sony Walkman.
I’m from a barn with a covered patio and a porch swing from which I swung back and forth as I smelled rain thicken the air, watched dark clouds loom in the distance, heard the rumble thunder roll in and felt the first drops of rain as Mother Nature unleashed her anger during a summer night’s thunder storm.

I’m from baby dolls—Rub-a-Dub Dolly, Baby Sneezes, Jackie, and the “Giant Baby”, too, but the best doll baby of all was “Pouty Baby”—I loved her so much my mom bought me two.
I’m from Barbie Dolls and Barbie clothes (some store bought and some homemade) which I spent endless hours playing with in my own land of make believe.

I’m from springs spent riding my red bike down the street wind in my face, trying to beat my sister to the stop sign.
I’m from summers spent playing kickball and baseball in the neighbor kid’s yard with “ghost man on third” when we were a few players short of a team.
I’m from autumns spent carefully selecting new school supplies, shopping for new school shoes and clothes, happy to be back in school after a summer at home missing my “school friends”.
I’m from winters spent wishing for a white Christmas, snuggled deep under layers and layers of mom’s warm hand-made afghans fighting off the chill of a house heated by the heat of only a kerosene heater.

I’m from delivering newspapers with my mom out of our blue Dodge Aspen station wagon on hot summer days halfway through which we’d stop for a Fago and chips at Notter’s market.
I’m from bussing tables at the Amateur Trapshoot Association cafeteria for two weeks each sweltering August for two summers where I gave the aged shooters my time and a listening ear for the stories of their youth.

I’m from after school guitar lessons with Sister Anne where I traded finger nails for calloused fingers so that I could make music, live music, and feel music and not just hear music.
I’m from first chair clarinet in the junior high band, delicately blowing life into my instrument to play the sorrowful tune of “If” by Bread.
I’m from talent shows singing “Out Here On My Own” and “The Rose” – both songs having a heart tugging meaning to them then and now.

I’m from an alcoholic father and a mother who stayed with him, choosing that life for her daughters, too.
I’m from wanting children of my own to perhaps I can have none.
I’m from “congratulations you have a son” to “we think there’s something wrong with him.”
I’m from mother of one son to mother of two sons.
I’m from “it’s my fault” and “God made a huge mistake when he gave him to me” to “God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called.”
I’m from feeling weak because I cry and because I’m tired to knowing that I cry and I am tired because I have been fighting the fight and in doing so that is strength—giving up is weakness.
I’m from knowing that we only become courageous by being tested and I have never really quit, I just had to rest for a bit.

I’m from the movie Pay It Forward where the idea of doing a good deed for nothing in return but having it spread forward  like a beautiful infection infected me.
I’m from the movie Signs where the lesson I learned was that if we truly opened our eyes we would see the things and people God put in our lives to answer our prayers, to guide our ways, to give us the tools we need, to show us our purpose.
I’m from the movie All About Steve where Mary Horowitz taught me that simple things like red boots can remind me to be happy when inside I really feel like crying and where the power of words, the spoken word, was said so profoundly when she said, “There are meaningful words, there are pointless words, and then there are words that hurt!”

I’m from dandelion wishes and day dreams longing for better days.
I’m from reflecting and remembering and not letting go.
I’m from knowing that “knowing” is one thing but unless I can “be” that all the things that I know really make no difference when the challenges face me.
I’m from reading and writing and thinking deeply, trying to make sense of what I can to learn the lessons from both the good things and the bad.
I’m from many things, many places, many memories, but most of all, I’m from God and in Him I need to have more faith—because trust is belief in someone, but faith is acting on that belief and I know I gotta have more faith to get to where I want to go because I come from where I’m from.

Inches Above Me ~ An Autobiographical Excerpt

Water is such a wonderful thing.  Listening to the sounds of water flowing whether be it from a babbling brook, a softly flowing stream a raging river or from one of the many beautiful waterfalls of the Earth, the sounds of water calm us and bring tranquility to us in time when we need it.  Water is changing.  It takes the form of its container or even no shape at all.  Water.  Actor Bruce Lee says, “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

     When we need to clean ourselves, we use water to wash away the dirt from a day’s hard labor.  When our bodies ache, when they are weary, or when they are in need or relaxation or play, we turn to water.  We submerge our bodies in a bath or in a swimming pool.  When we thirst, we turn to water.  When our bodies are hot with sweat, our mouths dry, we take a glass full of ice and water and fill our mouths with water and use it to cool us, fulfilling our bodies need to replenish what it has lost.  It refreshes us. It nourishes us.  It sustains life.

     Water is a wonderful thing.  It soothes our souls, it cleanses, refreshes, it sustains life.  But, it can also take away life.  And that is what almost happened to me on a hot summer day in my seventh year of life.

     Swimming lessons were always something my sister Elana and I looked forward to each summer.  They were one of the few things we actually got to do “for fun” since neither of us took any other type of lessons like some of our friends did.  I had always been envious of Missy Witte and her fanciful sequined and beaded dance costumes.  Her parent’s let her take not just one type of dance lesson but THREE:  ballet, tap, and jazz.  I was so enthralled with her dress-up wardrobe of old dance costumes it made it difficult to ever take them off.  There were even times when I would put two or three on at a time.

     But, swimming lessons were what I got to do and I would have to be grateful for that.  Each summer, my mom would take Elana and me shopping for a new swimsuit and towel for swimming lessons.  I can’t specifically recall what my swimsuits were like from summer to summer but I do know that I always picked a swimsuit that was pink because pink was my favorite color back then.  And, I am sure that I tried to pick out something as fancy as possible—something with lace, sequins, or fake rhinestones (Better yet, all three)—just like my friend’s dance costumes.  I am sure that it was a one piece swimsuit.  Mother never let my sister or I wear anything other than that—it would be indecent to have done so.  My mother went to Catholic schools in the 1930’s and 1940’s when the nuns were indubitably strict and she still clung to those “old-fashioned values” often reminding Elana and I that back then if girls did not wear skirts or dresses that covered their knees they were just “asking for trouble” and telling us stories about how in those days when she went swimming, girls only went with other girls so that no parts of their bodies were exposed to other boys.  However, Mother also recognized that we were now living in the 1970’s and change was constant but uncomfortable.  So, she took us to swimming lessons, in our one piece swim suits and I was happy to go even though I still wished I could have dance lessons because I would rather have had beautiful satin and sequined dresses with tulle, lace, and fringes.

     The summer when I was seven, I swam one level below my sister’s level.  This put me two summers away from getting to jump off the diving board…the grand prize of swimming lessons.  Being in the highest level, you got to swim in the deep end and jump off the diving board.   I remember my sister and me longing for the day when we would get to jump off the diving board like the big kids.  I was two levels away and my sister was one level away.  I always felt one step behind my sister but that summer, I had my shining moment!  My swim instructor thought I was so accomplished in my level that she decided to promote me early.  I didn’t have to finish out the summer where I started but got to move up to my sister’s group!  I was so excited!  To be two years younger than Elana and in the same swimming level was a big deal to me.  “I’m not the ‘little sister’ as far as swimming lessons are concerned,” I thought to myself.  I was so filled with pride.  But one must be careful of pride.  With it comes a price.  “The only problem is that my feet barely touch the bottom of the pool here but over in the other area my head stayed above water easily,” I worried.  For me to stand in this area, I had to stand on my tippy toes.  I could barely touch bottom.  Despite my excitement over thinking I was my sister’s equal in one way, I knew she stood inches above me.

     One particular day, we were practicing a back stroke.  Those of us waiting for our turn hung onto the side of the pool bobbing up and down while we half paid attention watching the swimmer practicing and half giggled and played amongst ourselves dipping our heads under water and popping back up again as if our heads were bobbins and our bodies fishing hooks with giant worms attached.  It was a fun time hanging on the wall and popping up and down having wet hair come down over my face clinging like a damp curtain.  The water ran down that curtain, down over my shoulders, rolling in streams and in beads back into the basin from which it came—the pool that soothed and relaxed me, that gave me pleasure, that game me my first time of being  “my sister’s equal.”

     My turn finally came.  I held onto the wall with my wrinkly fingers and my toes curled, knees bent, face to the sun. I pushed off the wall.  Arms and feet kicking, each stroke took me away from the wall of security where I had just bobbed like a fishing bobbin close to the shore of a lake.  Now, I was propelling myself into the middle of the pool but what I didn’t know, what I could not see with my face to the sun, the sun that was warming me, was that as I swam my strokes took me towards deeper waters.  When I heard my swim instructor call from the edge of the pool, “Ok! That’s good work!” I stopped my strokes.  I lowered my legs. I tried to stand on my tippy toes like I always did in the newer area of the pool where I was my sister’s equal except for that she stood inches above me.  But when my feet touched bottom, my head was well below the surface of the water.

     My heart started pounding.  I felt my pulse race as the blood pumped faster through my veins in my panicked state.  I pushed myself up with my toes from the bottom of the pool and when my head popped through the surface of the water, I yelled, “HELP!” but it did not come out that way because as soon as I got to the top, I was going down again and as I went down, mouth open from my plea for help, I took in a mouthful of water.  I touched bottom again.  Panicked still, I pushed up again!  Again, I yelled, “HELP!”  . But the same thing happened, I inhaled and swallowed mouthful after mouthful of chlorinated water into my lungs and stomach.  I yelled for help while under water.  Those cries for help were muted by the water.  Fear and panic was overtaking me.  On one trip to the surface of the water, I could hear someone shout, “She’s drowning!” and I turned my head to see my mom standing up putting a newspaper down.

     My arms and feet kicked and flailed and from the first moment my feet touched the bottom with my head inches, maybe even feet—I really don’t know—under water, I forgot everything I knew about swimming and I knew I was not my sister’s equal because the inches she stood above me in that area of the pool made all the difference in the world in that moment.

     No one bothered to try to save me that day.   No swim instructor.  No lifeguard.  No mother.  No other adult.  I saved myself.  My pushes to the surface launched me towards the edge of the pool.  Maybe they didn’t try to save me because they could see that I was making progress on my own—but I didn’t know that.  I was seven. I was scared. I thought that I was drowning. I thought I was going to die.  And, I was waiting for help—help that never came.
When I made it to the edge of the pool, I climbed out, exhausted, gasping for breath.  I sobbed, “Why didn’t you help me?”  When I said “you” I wasn’t referring to anyone in particular but to everyone—everyone who stood by and watched—everyone who I thought should have helped me.  The swim instructor.  The lifeguard.  My mom.  Other bystanders.  I was seven and I was alone in that pool and I was drowning and the only one I had to count on was me.

     After that day, I went back down to my previous level of swimming.  I was not going back to that group again.  I wanted to be where my feet touched the bottom because I would never be fooled into thinking I could trust anyone other than myself to save me if I ever needed it again.  With some things, it only takes one time to destroy trust and feelings of abandonment when I thought I was going to drown were a deal breaker for me.

     I never went back to swimming lessons after that summer.  I never did fully lean how to swim.  I don’t like to get my face wet anymore—not even in the shower.  As soon as my face gets wet, I immediately grab a towel and dry my face.  I refuse to go in water deeper than my shoulders without holding on to the edge and taking a cruise for a vacation is not an option.

     That summer the water which nourishes us, relaxes us, gives us a place to enjoy our hot summer days—that water gave me my first opportunity at being equal to my sister and it took it away.  But when it took it away, it also took away bits and pieces of trust that I had in others.  It took away trust I had in the way I thought things were supposed to work.  From fancy dance costumes that I wanted to a one piece swimsuit that had to substitute for those costumes, I started to lose my trust in others the summer my sister stood inches above me.