Beyond a Defining Moment

I was five years old, maybe six, running down the street with my big brother, Rick, who was two years older than me. I'm not sure where my little sister was. Kelly was only two or three at the time so she was probably indoors with our new stepmother.

My brother reached the oncoming car first. It had stopped in the middle of the road and he was standing beside the driver's window, ashen white, with tears in his eyes.

He turned and yelled "Shari! Hurry up!"

I arrived panting and unable to speak. My mother sat there behind the wheel. All I heard was a choked and shaky "What?"

For the first time I witnessed heart-wrenching emotions that devastate the face but are never spoken.

Her hands were folded in her lap and her arms were limp. She took a deep breath and she held it.

"I'm sorry," Rick was saying. "We have to! They're making us."

Then he told our mother how we were being forced to call her "Pat" and our new stepmother would have the title "Mom".

It was the defining moment.

From that moment, events and memories of the years that followed were shadowed and shrouded in darkness. I learned to put the pain of days far away in the recesses of my mind, locked securely behind impenetrable doors.

Mine became a Cinderella story with not one but three stepchildren trying to learn the new rules of life. We learned by shame and punishment to do chores, eat with table manners, sit up straight and do as we were told until the simple delights of childhood faded away.

Such was our life until the summer.

We all piled into the Volkswagen and headed north into Oregon. Eventually, we pulled in front of a modest home, piled out of the car and went into the most enchanting home I'd ever seen.

It was a modest home, one level, with a living-dining room, three bedrooms, a kitchen and one bath. Just beyond the house, across the footbridge that spanned the creek was the Community Presbyterian Church.

The house was packed with stuff from wall to wall, cupboard to pantry to shed out back. This humble home was to become my castle and I became a princess. Our parents let us stay there for much of summer break.

From the template of the summer, I determined the kind of grandma I would be. You see, this Grandma baked pies and got dirty with us kids. Her kitchen had those pull down bins where the flour was stored and she'd toss up a scoop full on the counter. Presto! Like passing her magic wand over a dusty white mountain - a pie shell appeared beneath her powdery hands. It disappeared quickly under an avalanche of fresh picked berries.

Her home was tiny and well lived in - packed to the rafters with memories and dreams. And grandpa's teeth were kept in a cup on the bathroom sink next to a special cup where his shaving brush waited while he slept. There was the bedroom with the large old-fashioned bed, fat and mountainous. It was wall-to-wall delight.

Grandma grew a flower garden with carrot seeds tossed in amongst the marigolds. She showed us how to tell when they were grown. We could pull them and wash them under the hose and eat them - right there in the back yard - between meals! Without asking!

Life was an adventure, day after day, where we shared hikes in the woods, hunting crawdads barefoot in the creek by the house and digging for garnet in just the right shale hillside. Grandma let us explore the old shed at the back of the yard where vines of flowers grew up the gnarled wood walls and the window panes were so old you couldn't see out!

Grandma taught us how to fish in the deep part of the creek under the bridge and sometimes took us to cast our lines from a stair step dam at the end of the McKay Reservoir past the Indian Reservation. She'd send us kids scrambling up the bluffs at the end of her street to pick wild flowers up at the top where the wild horses roamed or to look for old Indian drawings on the rock face cliffs.

She laughed and she sang - she would play piano and joy in the music. She introduced me to Lawrence Welk and Hee Haw. She drew the most adorable little children drawings - chubby little boys and girls with twinkling eyes and chubby toes. She often painted storefront windows with advertisements. She kept boxes and boxes of her little children drawings and I could pull them out and look - any time I wanted.

Grandma took us to the old hunting cabin in the woods where the bunkhouse room was upstairs. There were so many beds I couldn't even count them. There was a fireplace that faced the main room and the kitchen both! There was an old stinky outhouse in the back down a steep wooded path. It had a swing out front - tied from a branch so way up high - I didn't know trees could grow so tall. We could swing as high as the airplanes flew.

My Grandma brought sunshine into every room she entered. Everyone knew who we were because we were Marty McGowan's grandkids up visiting for the summer from California. We were special and important and famous!

And Grandma was my very own fairy godmother with magic in her soul.

I can't sing and I never learned to play piano. I'm as tone deaf as a human can be! I can draw a really cute frog - but no chubby toed children with twinkles in their eyes! I could still find garnets because Grandma showed me where to look. I can thread a worm on a hook with flair and no flinching. I still love fields of wild flowers and the taste of carrots pulled straight out of the ground and washed under water from the hose.

I learned a lot from my grandmother - but mostly - I learned how a child should be loved and I always promised that when I grew old I would be a Grandma who delights in children just like her.