When I was about four or five, we moved up north, leaving our family behind. I don’t remember what life was like before then. I do remember that after the first blizzard I was ready to pack up and go back home—but we were stuck there several years.
We went home every year, for a week I believe, at Christmas time. I believe it was a ten- to twelve-hour drive ... one way. Six of us ... three boys, my parents, and myself … all crammed in a car. That was bad enough, but it was really horrid should anybody have gas. With four males, we should’ve been called the Gas Family. I wanted the Ingalls Family. Or the Partridge Family ... they would’ve been cool. But no, I got the Gas Family. So naturally, I can beat about any man in about any contest. Oh yes, I make my brothers proud. Of course I can’t get or keep a man but I guess I didn’t really need a husband.
But to see my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—we obviously considered it worth it as we did it every year. This was my mom’s side of the family. A bunch of comedian wannabes ... can you tell? Although most of my dad’s family was around the same area, we rarely got to see them. Just my mom’s seven living siblings and all of their offspring crammed within my grandparent’s very small three-bedroom house. But we obviously didn’t mind as we did it every year.
Christmas of 1978, I got a Barbie doll that was supposed to stand on something and you were supposed to be able to push something and make her swivel around. She didn’t work, so the minute I got the OK I handed her to grandpa ... will you fix her for me? I don’t know how long he tried but he couldn’t make her work either. I remember he felt bad ... poor grandpa; it was just a stupid Barbie. That year he had a lump on his neck. He was going to go in for a biopsy—a simple procedure. He assured me he would be fine. So I went back up north assuming all was well ... except for Barbie. Grandpa had his biopsy on a Friday and came home. He was sick by Friday night or Saturday, in the hospital by Saturday or Sunday, and dead by Monday—January 29, 1979—of cancer.
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