Plans

Are you kidding? I remember walking to Chet's Meat Market after school with Ronnie Jacobs for a Watermelon Jolly Rancher. He paid a whole one cent for each one back then. It was my sixth grade year.

The sixth graders I spend time with now seem to feel they are grown up and ready to hit life head on, and all the adults are blocking their way. Unlike most of them, I knew there was much of life ahead of me. I was looking forward to all that was to be.

Ronnie, my first boyfriend, was of course in my mind, to be my future husband. Silly me. I wonder where Ronnie is now and what track his life is on. See what I mean about plans. One day we just weren't anymore. There was no big break up, we just moved on, after all, we were only 11.

The Walton's had a nice family. Everyone got along and once the kids grew up, most likely they would build a home, with pa, on one of the acres of the property.

One day in my late twenties, early thirties, I discovered I was from a dysfunctional family. I had never heard that word before or closed myself from it. All the holidays and non holiday time we spent together, all the phone calls, laughter and caring words escaped in soap bubbles into the dark universe.

That was when it began for me. 'It' being a downward spiral of disillusionment, doubt, fear, confusion. Was I so ignorant that I did not read between the lines all those years. Did I shield myself or was it the Lord's love that kept my childhood from being so ugly by keeping my eyes, ears and heart from the harsh reality of growing up in my home.