Family Ties: The Early Years

She gave her husband a pointed look. "Ashley used an interesting word today. I can only hope she learned it from her classmates."

He cringed. She had been in the garage with him while he was changing the oil in their van. She might've learned it from him. "And what word was that?"

His wife sighed. "'Irregardless.' I don’t even know where it came from."

He had to smile. "Did you tell her it wasn't a real word?"

*

I've said it before and it's worth restating: my family is different. We all know this and to be totally honest, we all relish it. While there's no way I can get all the "differentness" into one post of any form of reasonable length, I thought this week would be a spectacular one to start trying.

On of my earliest memories is from when I was four years old. We were just moving into a new house and Dad took me for a drive. He was pointing out a window: "That's where you're going to go to school in just a few months."

School. I loved the sound of it. I especially loved that I wouldn't have to go to the babysitter with my sister, nor to work with Mom, where I would get bored with my Barbies far too easily and inevitably get myself in trouble trying to find scratch paper on which I could color.

The new house was neat. We had a real backyard, one that wasn't bordered by a stream (I had fallen into the one behind our old trailer and was now rather scared of water) and that was twice the size of our old lot. And our neighbors were nice ... There were two boys that lived across the street that could play just as many random games as my sister and I could, and two girls a few houses down from them that had so many toys that I didn't always notice that they didn't like our other games.

Their mom didn’t want them playing with the boys, either, or crossing the street without her. My sister and I had no idea what was wrong with either of those things, so we didn't play with them as often. Besides, the boys were up for pretending to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so they were more fun anyway.

Time went on and we got a little older. I loved school, except for trying to read -- I was terrible at it. Then the grammar wars started; my mom was determined that we would speak correctly. Of course, the gonna/going to thing kind of came back to bite her.

But now it was a game, and now I was willing to keep trying. One night, I read the whole of "Cat In The Hat" out loud ... Mom doubts that I could actually read it (she was pretty darn sure I had the whole thing memorized) but it was the motivation I needed to keep trying. I caught on quickly, and pretty soon I was grasping for longer and longer books. My parents' love for reading had spread -- so much so that the only thing I got in trouble for at school was reading when I was supposed to be doing school work (even if I was already done with said school work).

Right before first grade, I gained a little brother and my own bedroom, both of which were vastly exciting. Shorty turned out to be one heck of a novelty for both of us girls. We could play with him, carry him around, and eventually got to help teach him to talk. I'm not sure if he was the first or the last to do any of those things -- he hardly had a need for legs for his first three years, nor his vocal cords -- but the bottom line was that we all seemed to like each other.

Mia Sorella and I both proved to be very good at school. I had issues keeping my desk clean and my sister had issues keeping quiet, but aside from that we were model students. At home, we still played together, making up game after game, amused for hours with two hula hoops in the backyard or several blankets in the family room. Our imaginations were impressive, if not a little out there.

Life was idyllic. My parents still liked each other, even though they spent most of every day together. My dad owned a company with his dad and brother, and the company was doing steadily well. Mom worked there, too, so we got to tag along some days and rustle up coins to buy candy bars from the snack box. It was there that I glued pictures for five dollars a roll (an awful lot of money for a small kid), and there that I would eventually have my first "real" job.

It was the beginning of fourth grade when I found out we were definitely moving.