My Earliest Memory

When I was 2.5/three, my mother moved North to Missouri after separating from my father.

The town in which she lived--Rich Hill, MO--was, and still is if memory serves, quaint. Everything was within reasonable walking distance from every point of interest.

I remember a tiny yellow house with wood floors and playing by the front window on my wooden rocking horse, and having polite conversation and tea with my eyelash and maid's frock-bedecked bear. This was my calm, with my mother. 

I remember getting bundled up in that front room (much like Ralph's little brother in A Christmas Story), then hopping from footprint to footprint as I followed behind mom to...wherever.

The worst betrayal was being taken to VBS; at Vacation Bible School lived the tattlers with weak imaginations. The followers who were always ugly to me. And who wants friends like that? I would bide my time until mom would pick me up, and then beg her to not make me return.

I guess from a young age I had social anxiety and was happy to stay in my own head.

Funny, that.