Priscilla was introduced to me when I was four years old. She had long blond hair that she wore either in a braid or in a bun on top of her head. She liked flowing dresses and she didn’t really like underwear, although she wore it because it seemed like something she should do. Priscilla and my father married when I was five and I grew up living with them.
The first year of Priscilla and George’s marriage we lived in the house my mother and father used to own in Maryland. I was a brat who was still adjusting to life with divorced parents, and Priscilla was primarily responsible for my upbringing. She didn’t know many people in Maryland other than my father’s friends, and while no one ever said as much to me, I suspect many of my father’s friends were members of my mother’s family. The situation was more than mildly challenging for her and within a year, we had moved to Arlington, Virginia.
Priscilla still owned a house in Arlington, only about a mile from where her mother lived. She was renting it out, however, so we lived with Priscilla’s mom Nell the year that I was six. I started first grade at Nottingham Elementary, the school two blocks down the road.
I don’t remember all that much about the year we lived with Nell except that one night my father asked me if I wanted to take a bath. Ever pleasant and agreeable, I said “No.” Dad had a quick temper and started yelling at me. Priscilla sided with me and told my father that because he had given me a choice, he should honor my response. I was a sobbing mess, but Nell held my hand and walked me downstairs to bed. That was the way things started – over the years a pattern developed where Dad and I would argue (though we'd always make up), Priscilla would play peacemaker and I could count on Nell to make me feel better.
By second grade, we had moved to Priscilla’s house, which was thankfully free of renters. I was supposed to switch schools, but evidently my parents thought I had endured more than enough changes in the past three years and they kept me enrolled at Nottingham. There weren’t any buses to my neighborhood because I lived in a different school district, so this meant that someone was responsible for arranging my transportation to and from school each day. Most days Priscilla would drop me off at the morning daycare program, but some days she thought I should walk. It was hardly an arduous distance, but I was stubborn and not interested in doing something that no other kids were doing. To soften the torture of forcing me to actually get some exercise, Priscilla left me at the house of a friend who only lived a few blocks from school. The problem was that Priscilla never called ahead and several times my friend had already left for school and her parents were startled by my presence.
That was the kind of woman Priscilla was – she knew what she thought was best and she didn’t really concern herself with ancillary details. She had a keen sense of adventure and she was afraid of very little. She loved to spend as much time as possible outdoors and an early morning walk was a true delight for her. I, on the other hand, loved staying inside. All I wanted to do when I woke up was be alone and maybe read the newspaper before school.
No comments:
Post a Comment