New Duck answered my Reader Survey and asked me to blog about what things were like growing up. I assume she wasn’t looking for a deep psychobabble-filled recount of the dysfunctional history with my ADHD/raging abusive brother, narcissistic mother and bipolar father. So let’s talk about the fun times, shall we.
Once upon a time, PT-LawMom lived in a small town in New Zealand called New Plymouth in a tiny room in a teensy house with a mother, father and brother. Mother stayed home and taught guitar lessons from the house. Father worked as a chemical engineer at a large refinery nearby. Brother was a pain in the ass, as he remains to this day. PT-LawMom had a group of close friends. There was Odessa, the daughter of an American man and a NZ woman, who was the teensiest, tiniest friend. Then Nancy, the gorgeous, tall ballerina with the palest skin and freckles you have ever seen. Olivia was one of the “rescue cases” that started PT-LawMom’s history of codependence. The product of a “broken home”, she was being molested by her stepfather. PT-LawMom told her parents who intervened to get Olivia help and the girls became good friends. PT-LawMom also had a young Maori friend, Anthony, who was scared to go home alone. So PT-LawMom would go with him and play as late as she was allowed. Anthony would sit in the window with the saddest, most fearful eyes when she would hop on her bike to ride home.
The teensy house was just a few miles from the beach and fell within the shadow of Mt. Taranaki. We would go visit the rock pools at the beach to search for starfish and hike up the mountain to cut down Old Man’s Beard, a vine that was choking the rainforest. Nancy, Odessa and I had a book club and we would alternate between sitting in a tree together reading side by side and crouching inside a little “fort” in between thickets of bamboo. I remember racing around for hours outside, never caring what time it was. We would run in and out of each others’ houses, never worried about strangers or the time or our parents. I miss those carefree days. We used to put on little musical shows for our parents, dancing and lip-synching to the 80′s hits of the day. 
One day I took tiny little Odessa for a ride on the back of my bike down the steep hill on which we lived. Her foot got stuck in the spokes at the bottom and she wet flying. Fortunately I was always the tallest, biggest girl in any place my parents moved us so I was able to push Odessa two miles home on the bike to get her help. On the way back I managed to fracture my ankle as I walked up the hill with one foot in the gutter and one foot on the sidewalk. Klutz!
I remember the black sand beaches, the hot mincemeat pies at lunch, playing hopscotch between the buildings during lunch, sitting by the beach with my family eating fish ‘n’ chips wrapped in newspaper and spending many afternoons with my fishing line cast off the end of the local pier. I think that of course people always look back on certain times of their lives through rose-colored glasses, but NZ really is as beautiful as you imagine and I miss the friendly people, the “Girls Can Do Anything” attitudes and the general atmosphere. My brother and I used to put our gumboots on and climb over a nearby electric fence to roam through pastures and pet the sheep, cows, etc. I never did love the smell of the animals (bleech!) but the deep greens of the farm were breathtaking.
That’s all I have for now. Yes, New Duck, I have one brother. Nothing else. My parents have been married 32 years on April 1. High school sucked and that’s about all I can say about it right now. I’ll try to think of one pleasant meory to share…
