Memories Blur...

     I recall being told "if you swallow your gum, it will stick to your ribs" by one of my brothers one day. That night I had a stomach ache and couldn't sleep.
     Grandma got out her bakery whole wheat bread, toasted it and slathered it with butter to settle my stomach. While sitting on her lap at the table in the big kitchen, I revealed the bitter truth to my mom across the table: I would probably need gum removal surgery.
     The two giggled and asked who told me gum sticks to ribs and I divulged the name.
     Relieved I wouldn't need to be sliced open to get the Doublemint Gum out from between my ribs, I sauntered off to bed with a full tummy and nothing but dreams ahead for the night.
     "Sweet dreams," Mom would say to me every night before bed.
     There were some nights it was just Grande Anne giving me multiple kisses on the neck and ears, sending shivery tingles up and down my spine and making the giggles start up. I'm sure Mom did the same thing, too. I just can't recall that.
     There have been many memories that have blurred together and mixed into the stew I call my life.
     It was all too soon that Mom, my brothers and I moved into a cute little rambler with a basement apartment. My grandpa was able to work through all the financials so my mom could get her little family on with life on their own.
     Austin Avenue was a sweet little neighborhood in the late 60s/early 70s. Adventures were behind every corner. Mom gave us a lot of freedom. She also had to get babysitters from time to time because she had a full-time job not too far from our house.  She worked with the health department and very much enjoyed her new-found freedom of bringing home a paycheck.
     Not only adventure was behind every corner. And not every babysitter was kind.
     At a young age of three, a 14-year-old boy babysitter took away what can never be given back to me: he raped me. My brothers were, at the very least, molested as this boy removed his clothing and told all three of us to touch his private parts.
     It happened right there on the couch in the front room of our little home. It was disgusting in that I remember my brothers touching and me feeling so defiled and petrified beyond belief.
     It terrorizes me to this day - one of the few memories I remember inside that house.
     I weep with sorrow for the loss that little girl endured. The shame is still so strong.
     I have kept the secret from my mother until now as I push the "publish post" button on this page.
     The need for healing has now surpassed the shame.

What Happens in Vegas....

     ...goes to Salt Lake City. At least that's where my story led me. At 18 months old, I wasn't exactly your image of a well-adjusted toddler. What toddler is adjusted?
     Heading into the holiday season and no other place to go, Mom moved back in with Grandma and Grandpa. Humbling, frustrating, maddening, saddening: all describe the situation for Mom.
     Stunting and bewildering seemed to describe me. My guess is my brothers felt the same.
     Once we got to Grandma and Grandpa's house, life drastically changed. A constant stream of activity with Mom's siblings, my aunt and uncle, left us in awe. Mom was on the hunt, for work, among other things. Rebounding after a marriage gone bitter sour can't have been that pleasant. Mom was, and is, a beautiful woman with great legs (it's true)! So she wasn't out of the running for finding another man.
     She quickly got into the secretary business and did very well. She was a great typist and organized herself into a highly-sought-after assistant.
     Her three children organized themselves, too. My brothers were attached to Grandpa as soon as he got hom from his civil engineer job. I attached myself to Grandma.
     We have fond memories of living in Grandma and Grandpa's gingerbread Victorian house near Sugar House.
     My earliest memories of Grande Anne was being pushed in the old, red metal stroller up to the corner market. I recall the sound of the "click, click" of the wheels on the sidewalk cracks. I recall the brown loafers Grandma wore with white ankle socks. I remember dusting the staircase with the old dusting rags sprayed with the lemon scented furniture duster sold to Grandma by the traveling salesmen. I thought I was helping her...but she was helping me.
     She did that a lot.

The Tidal Wave

     As I understand from conversations with Mom and Grandma, Gary dropped me, my brothers and my mother in Las Vegas where Grandma and Grandpa met us and took us to their home in Salt Lake City.
     I imagined it was like Gary sent us back to the manufacturer because of faulty wiring or we turned out to be the wrong size.
     I couldn't understand it at that time, and I still can't.
     I mean, it's not like I am the cutest person in the world, but what would bring a man to deposit his family and drive away?
     Was Kendra cuter? Was her mother cuter than my mother or a better lover? Did my brothers ruin everything because they were unruley?
     I now know that he must have been a very sick individual. His brain must have oozed out of his ear and re-entered in through the "barn door." There was never a letter, never a phone call, never an apology, never anything to make me believe he still cared for me. (There was some stalking, but that happened years later.)
     I became very closed.
     Mom said I stopped walking. For a young child to stop walking usually takes a major cataclysmic event or injury. I know I must have felt both. I know my brothers must have felt similar feelings.
     But, we never talked of it as children.
     The hurt never healed properly for me. You could say I was "infected" with self-doubt, fear of abandonment, grief and weakness. I "self-medicated" with hate, anger, anxiety, depression...Diet Coke! :)
     It's time to scoop out the puss, cleanse the wound, get some antibiotics and heal all over again.
     The only way to do this is through the grace and mercy of God ... in other words...the Atonement of Jesus Christ.
>>Enter angels, stage left.<<

Sh...It's A Secret!

Shortly before and after my birth, Gary the birth father, began acting strangly in front of my mom and brothers. She said, he (a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known teetotallers) would bring home a six pack of beer and drink it in front of my mother and my brothers. He would act coarse and mean. She found various women's underclothing in her closet.
He was trying to make her leave him - she whom had been plucked from the University of Utah as a 19-year-old freshman by this "older" man of about 30. They were married and later sealed in the Manti, Utah temple.
He often said he hated pregnant women...
(Silent, awkward pause)
My maternal Grandma and Grandpa came to visit Carmel upon my birth. The first vision I saw of my mom's dad still exists in a picture taken on the beach at Carmel. It is on display at my mom's house.
I need to get a copy of that.
Grandma and Grandpa came from solid pioneer stock out of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They would become my most solid base for years to come.
Now, obviously, I don't remember my life in Carmel. I only go by memories of chats with mom and Grandma, Grande Anne, as I affectionately call her. Mom said I learned to crawl on the beach. She told of when I would only crawl INTO the ocean and she would have to race to get me before I was swallowed up by the waves. Mom also said I learned to walk on the beach, which must have been around 10-11 months.
Mom's beach stories were all she had to keep her spirits up, somedays.
The family tsunami was immenent. The beach was receding and mom was getting nervous. Three mouths to feed and one wouldn't stop crying. Yes, I had colic.
It could have been because all I would drink was orange juice.
My diet still gives me fits...

What's In A Name?

Mom wanted to call me Mandy Leigh, but she named me Amanda. This notion of two names has run the gammut from no problem to slightly irritating to overwhelmingly maddening. It may not seem like a big deal, but for a shy girl having to speak up to teachers -  who always called out "Amanda?" at the beginning of the year - and tell them to just call me "Mandy," it was unnerving.
So I did the same thing for my children: all but one have a nickname that is a short version of their "given" name. Haha.
Anyway...
Upon entering this world of woes, my last name was one thing, five years later it was another, now 44 years later is yet another. I feel like I have lived three lives. Let's see, now if I were a cat that would mean I've got six more lives.
Anyway...
Kendra kept the same name her whole life. I still don't know why. I plan to find out more about her and her short life. I understand that shortly after her birth (and my birth father's departure from my life), she, her mother and my birth father traveled in a mobile home, probably in California.
Mom often wondered why there was no child support for my brothers and me. I guess Kendra and her mom needed the money.
Adultry has its way of messing things up.

Coastal Byways

Carmel, California is my birth place. Mom said it was an amazing place in the mid-60s - not as busy as it is now. She had a variety of friends there - people with whom she and her husband went to parties where she dressed to the nines and stayed out... 'til about nine.
My brothers were born in '63 and '64 in Salt Lake City and moved to Carmel some time before I was born. They played on the beach with mom, searching in tidepools for crustasean creatures, sand dollars and conches. All this whilst the conscience of their father was on standby. Where it stayed...for quite some time.
My birth at the Montery County Hospital was quite an event. Mom checked in when her labor started and the doctors discovered I was coming out elbow first. Caesarian section was the only choice, because breaking my arm wasn't an option.
I imagine my thoughts upon coming down the birth canal, and, realizing the events that would take place in my life, they must have gone something like this (now imagine my elbow sheilding my head) "No! You can't make me go. I've seen what happens and I am scared!"
You see, I believe in a premortal life.
I knew Kendra there.
I didn't know her here.

Life 101.5

It began for me on May 2, 1967.
It began for my half sister, Kendra, on May 11, 1967.
Forty-four years later, I found out Kendra was only nine days younger than I.
Mmmm.
I guess that makes me first in line for the Crown.
Oh, wait. There is no crown. Come to think of it, there aren't any family jewels either, unless you count Gary's "sovereign sapphires (which, by the way are blue, normally)." Gary is my birth father. I use "birth" in that way because he was the means to the end, which is me. :)
I  - am Mandy Leigh.
Take a journey with me.
By the way, Kendra is dead.