The Origins of Hope

People tell me all the time that I have such crazy and funny stories. They say that they are just “hope things" because the stuff that seems to be part of my daily life just doesn’t happen to other people. I always say that if my life were a sitcom it would be hysterical but sometimes when you are in the midst of it, it doesn’t feel as funny. But like Ompa would tell me, humor makes life a lot less bad. He inspired me to share my stories and now as I get ready to retire I am going to take the advice of many that have told me to write all this funny stuff down. But where to start? I guess I should start at the beginning.

As I mentioned in my first post, my name is Hope because my mom didn’t think she could have kids so when she got pregnant with me, I became her HOPE--no pressure lol. My biological dad still wanted to leave his wife and marry my mom which freaked her out, I guess, and she took off to Florida to move in with her parents who had retired down there. That was probably a good thing because as you know there was the dog that almost killed me when I was just learning to walk and apparently I ate dog poop off the sidewalk one time--she used to love to tell that story to new boyfriends. I guess it is true what they say about Gen X that we were raised on hose water and neglect--our parents maybe were not the most equipped to be parents. But as a concert pianist, she made sure I was always surrounded by music and lots of whimsy.

My mom met my adopted dad when I was about 4 years old. They got married and he adopted me when I was about 7. He had four kids from his previous marriages (my mom was wife #4) and they became my big brothers and sisters–it was kinda great. My elementary school childhood was mostly picturesque and I have a lot of great memories from those years. We lived in Sarasota, Florida so we were out on the boat, at the beach or in the pool most weekends on Siesta Key (one of the best beaches in the world). That was mostly great except for the fact that my parents didn’t get the sunscreen memo which might be why I had melanoma in my early 50s. But back then, we would just burn and then peel and then repeat. The Solarcaine girl was my best friend. Why use sunscreen when you can just dull the pain later?!?

My dad’s parents had a place out on the Siesta Key beach so we were out at their condo all the time. My dad’s side of the family all had places there so there was family there all the time. The building was covered in these blue gems that my cousin Julie and I thought were precious gems so we would take them out of the stucco because we thought we were going to get rich. We had a lot of family in the area on my mom’s side of the family too but they were a little different than my dad’s side. When we were with my mom’s side we went to Morrison’s Cafeteria at the mall or ate chicken livers but at my Papa’s beach condo, we ate lamb at 8 pm and even the kids got a taste of the champagne. Of course I didn’t like lamb but my Papa always tried to get me to eat it. I was a picky eater which did not fly with my Dad who was born during the Great Depression.

One night when my mom was at a meeting, my dad made me sit at the table until I cleaned my plate which I never had to do when my mom was home. He kept talking about all the starving children in Ethiopia. My mom arrived home at 10 pm to find me sitting in front of a cold plate of food. She excused me to my bedroom to get ready for bed but I didn't let it go. Instead I got a shoe box, put all my food in it, addressed it to all the starving children and gave it to my dad. Pretty sure I almost died that night but somehow I lived to see another day. Can we credit hope or my guardian angel with my continued existence?!?

I looked sweet!

I was a good kid but I certainly gave my parents a run for their money. My pastime was to read encyclopedias to them which sometimes they would pay me if I would stop. I wasn’t allowed to have pets so I would put leaves in a tictac container and pretend they were fish. When we went to the grocery store I loved to walk the pet aisle pretending to get things for my pet so everyone at the store would think I had a dog or a cat. The grocery store was a dangerous place for me. You never knew what I might sneak in the cart and take home. One time, it was Jerry Curl Cream that I immediately took into the bathroom when I got home and put the whole bottle in my hair. It didn’t work out so well and my mom eventually had to do a chemical treatment to get it out of my hair. A bit later I did something similar with vaseline and said that I wanted to be Elvis. Of course maybe not my fault because my mom was always using me as the guinea pig for her hair perm trials so I just figured you put the whole thing in your hair just like when my mom gave me a perm at 8 years old. 

One of those bad perms for school pictures!

The bathroom was probably a room I should not be left alone in as one time I decided to use the razor that I saw my mom and sisters use on their legs and underarms on my forearms. Still to this day I blame my hairy arms on that moment. Of course the bathroom was not the only place I caused trouble; one time I pretended to be sick so I could stay home and have a gigantic Barbie wedding in my room where I was supposed to be resting. Barbie had to have candles at her wedding so without access to matches (probably a good thing), I snuck out to the kitchen and rolled up a paper towel to light on the ELECTRIC stove and then ran quickly through the house with burning paper to get to my room where I had relocated my mom’s dining room table candelabras. You’ll never guess but I got busted and that kinda put an end to my school skipping barbie wedding days.

My parents thought that I was a really good kid but I think I was at least a little handful. All in all you could say that I had a pretty great childhood until my parents got divorced and then everything changed. But I think this foundation gave me hope that the future was bright no matter what challenges lie ahead and of course there were definitely challenges.