When Jason Crouch first announced this contest, I became a bit apprehensive about adding a submission. Good thing that he mentioned that the memories didn’t have to be happy…
I have had the “pleasure” of living in several houses during my childhood. They were all, for the times that I lived there, the place that I got to call home. Without really thinking about it, I knew exactly the house that I would write about…
Have you ever lived in a place where the experiences in that place have shaped who you are, today?
I remember the excitement of moving with my father, mother and two younger sisters to 45 Johnson Street in Waterbury, CT back in the fall of 1979. We had been living on the third floor apartment with my father’s mother, my remaining grandmother, since my parents had gotten married back in 1974.
Even to this very day, after 31 years have past, I still remember the house as it was. It was a three story colonial, sort of square, with one of those funny angled corners on one side of the house, painted brown with yellow trimming on the windows. It did not have a garage, and my father would park his mustard colored Cadillac in the driveway. There wasn’t much of a yard, but that didn’t stop me from playing outside and roaming the neighborhood.
Inside, there were two large rooms as you entered the house, to the right and to the left. Ahead, you could see the kitchen past the stairway that lead to the second floor, and there was a formal dining room, and a full bath on the main floor of the house. Up the stairs, there were four bedrooms. I got the small bedroom in the back of the house, and my younger sister was supposed to get the larger room right next to it, but it had not been painted yet, so she stayed in her crib, which was placed in my room . My parents occupied the room in the right front corner of the house, without the funny angled extra space. That other room had been painted a maroon red with black trim inside, but my father had not decided what to do with that room, so it stayed empty, as did the three rooms up on the third floor. My sister and I would use those rooms, with their hide-away wall closets, to play, keep our toys, and occasionally take a nap.
It was not too long afterwards that the excitement died and gave way to apprehension, dread, fear…and an intense desire to be disassociated with anything that had to do with the owner of the house.
The memory of that one Friday night has never left me, even after all this time. I remember it like it was yesterday. I had gone to sleep late that night, only to be awoken by the sound of crying.
It wasn’t my sister, sound asleep in her crib, and my baby sister was asleep in her crib…in my parents’ room, where the crying was emanating….
“Mommy???” I walked toward the sound of the crying I heard. There was an old black and white TV in the room, playing something, I don’t remember what, and it wasn’t loud enough to mask the crying I heard that night. I called again, “Mommy?????”
She couldn’t hear me for her crying….“No, Bill. Please, Bill. STOP, Bill. Please, Bill. Stop, Bill. No, Bill. Please, Bill. STOP, Bill! NO, Bill!....”
The sheets were drawn over the both of them. I called my mother again, but she could not hear me. I reached out to her, but sensing the violence taking place beneath the sheets, I quickly withdrew my hand and walked back to my room.
My youngest sister was born nine months later…and it was almost 4 months to the day of that nightmare when my mother got up the courage to walk out and leave.
Me? I was nothing short of a wreck that year. Of course I didn’t know it at the time, and back in those days, schools didn’t really care or care to know how a child’s home life impacted their behavior at school. I had to know that something was terribly wrong with what had happened with my mother, because again, I was nothing short of a wreck that entire school year, and no one knew what to make of it.
It was only years later, that I finally was able to connect the dots.
When I was a child, I would never allow anyone to call me “Bill” or “little Bill”. If they did, I would always, without fail, fly into a rage. DON’T CALL ME THAT! My name is NOT BILL!!! It did not matter who it was – teachers, principals, aunts, uncles, grandparents, older cousins, the reaction was always the same. As I got older, I would still prohibit people from referring to me by that name. If they didn’t know any better, I would simply correct them; and if they didn’t get the point, I’d ignore them. Today, it’s not an issue. Most people either know better, or if they don’t, they’ll ask me what I prefer to go by…and I tell them my name.
The desire to not be anything like my father was so intense, that when I started growing facial hair, I made sure that I cut it all off. To this very day, I prefer to remain baby faced.
I’ve been married nine years now, and neither my wife nor my children can say, nor will they ever be able to say, that I have behaved in such a manner. I know that it will never happen.
I do have memories of my other childhood homes, but in none of them did I have any experiences that have stuck with me throughout my life like this.
...William James Walton, Sr.
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