Family Portrait

My family is best described as one huge complicated, dramatic jumble that I would not trade for all the gold in the world. My older brother and sisters all moved out after they finished school, so I was the oldest at home for a while. My little brother Kaleb, my two little sisters Abby and Winona (we call her Winnie) and I used to entertain ourselves by using our imaginations. I guess mum and dad were pretty strict on us as kids; when they said "Go outside and play," we went outside and played. We would build tree houses, pretend we were ninjas, made nun-chucks and grappling hooks, and made countless, terribly edited movies with our friends and cousins when they came over. We made friends with the kids two houses down from us, the Whites. The White clan was Charlie, a little boy Abby's age, Britney and Sara, who were around Winnie and my age, and another sister who was a few years older than me. Her name was not Susie...but for the story's sake it is.


We lost Abby once. This was when I was maybe seven or eight and we used to live in St Aubyn's Square, which was this neighborhood with a big square park in the center. We loved it. There was a playground in one corner with a slide, set of swings, some rocking animals and our favorite item to play on, a big spinny thing that you push then jump on. Yahoo! Answers seems to think this is called a merry go round....but it's not. The top border of the park was lined with some really great climbing trees, but it was the other end that we spent most of our time. The bottom end was bordered with overgrown trees and shrubs which created a number of little, and sometimes big, room-like canopies. Some trees had huge branches that were so weighed down that they seemed to droop perfectly, as if to say, "Come on over and chill under me, I make a perfect roof of leaves." They were the best. We'd choose which canopies we wanted to be our rooms and houses and then began our own life like version of the Sims. We would make pies from mixing mud with water and decorate them with little gum nuts that fell from the trees, and any other little colorful things we could find. Then we'd pay a visit to our neighbors and share the treats. By share, I mean that I don't think we actually ate them, but at the same time, I'm not too sure.


So we are all playing our Sims game in the park one afternoon with the Whites. Abby, probably about three years old at this stage, runs up to me saying, "I'm going over there, but I'll be back soon!" She toddles off somewhere and is back in five to say the same thing. She runs off again, but this time I forget to notice that she doesn't come back until it begins to get late, and we have to return home when it gets dark. The sky is turning red and pink as the sun is setting, and we freak out! In my little head I'm like, "Shit! I just lost my sister!"
I run home and look through the lounge room window where mum, dad and baby Kaleb are watching TV but can't see Abby, so I sprint back to the park and panic some more. We all round up our bikes and start riding around the neighborhood, and Susie told her mum, who even takes her car out and surveys the greater area to no avail. Poor little Charlie is crying his eyes out. He had given Abby a bunch of flowers he'd picked himself from his mother's garden only yesterday. Now she was lost and it was dark so we have to go home and confess little Abby had wandered off.

I was so nervous entering the lounge...and then I saw Abby sitting on the couch too, where she'd been the entire time. My jaw must have dropped to the floor, literally. I blurted, "I thought you were lost!" Then I got in trouble for losing her in the first place, even though she sort of ended up not being lost...
I always felt hard done by when I was growing up. I'm not saying I had a terrible childhood, but it definitely had it's downs as well as the ups. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, my brothers and sisters and I all witnessed some pretty turbulent times that I know my parents aren't proud of, but when I look back on my younger years I think it will reassure them to hear that I only ever look back on the good memories, unless otherwise prompted.

I'd like to give a shout out to Mr. Walt Disney for giving me so many happy childhood memories. In Disney movies, I would find pure happiness and peace of mind. Except for in The Lion King, when Mufasa dies. That breaks my heart every time. But for the most part, I call those happy times the Disney Days, the days that I would spend with my friends and we would engulf ourselves in these colorful movies. I remember making tee-pees out of sticks and blankets with my friends, then we would put headbands and feathers in our hair and smear colorful zinc cream on our cheeks like war paint, and then settle down to watch Pocahontas. It was gorgeous fun.

I actually have a tattoo now which in part pays tribute to those Disney Days. It is a sparrow on my right arm, wings spread and his head tilted up. He is holding a banner that says 'Hakuna Matata,' which means 'no worries'. I like to think that in my times of despair, I can always look down on my little sparrow, and he will remind me not to worry. Most of all, I want it to remind me of those Disney Days, of all my innocent fun experienced by a youthful mind and soul. And I want it to remind me to keep some of that in me always and forever. Over the years I have realized, the people that still, and always will, bring me back to that state of mind and that feeling of home, are my family and my friends that are so dear they might as well be blood related too. I want them in my family portrait too.