I can't say how old I was for sure. I was always told I was two when we were taken from our mom. So, I will say my memories start when I was two or slightly younger. Now maybe these aren't what you would call a giant, and maybe you don't think it would really be negative and you may be right, but to me it is the first giant. Well, let's say it is a brand new baby giant, one that is going to grow over the course of my life. This is where he was conceived and took root deep within me.

  I recall being in a house, more just a room, with a metal roof that was loud when it rained. It sounded like each drop was some hard object trying to force it's way inside instead of a mere drop of water. I remember it well and I love rain. It could have been the boxcar my sister told me that we had lived in once. I can't say for sure, but the room was very much like a boxcar and I don't remember it having any other room. I was there with other kids, but I didn't remember who they were or how many boys or girls were there or anything much about them. My memory holds not even one face for any of them; they were just there with me. I only remember small “clips” of a few things from that time, so I can't offer much about it.

I know we mixed dry oatmeal with sugar and cocoa and ate it dry, bunny now I make one of my family's favorite cookies out of those ingredients.

I had a little toy iron that I heated on the stove to iron my baby doll's dress that I had laid on my toy ironing board. I have a faint scar on my arm from the hot iron burning my skin. I remember that day. I know, I am thing the same thing....what is a two year old doing heating an iron on a stove?! I like to think that I was highly advanced and a rather neat child for two. And, take note that I was already “cooking”. Notice also that there was no adult, none that I can remember. No one stopped me from using that stove or held me when I got burned. There was no smell of a hot dinner cooking. No words of comfort or hands holding me; at least not in my memories of those days. I do however, remember one time a lady with pale skin that was dotted with an abundance of freckles sat next to me and cut spaghetti into tiny pieces and feed it to me.

When I was in the third grade I had an intense love for the series of books titled, “The Boxcar Children”. Those books captivated me. When I was older Vicki told me we had lived in a boxcar once. I was sure that somehow deep inside I had felt an unconscious connection with the kids in the story. I even wondered if the author had known us kids and maybe parts of her books were about us.

Then there is the vision of walking along a curb with a group of children and I was sure we were going to school. While growing up, I was always told that there was no way that I could be remembering an actual event because I was too young to go to school at the time. While I understood the logic, I knew I remembered walking to school and I was convinced it was with my sister and brothers. I knew that there was no one with me to just tell me things that had happened and then have my mind think I remembered then. I remembered and I knew it. I could still see and smell the green grass that the curb lined. I remembered trying to balance on the concrete curb without falling as we walked and I remembered falling often. There were a few kids walking , though I don't remember exactly who or how many. I know Vicki was with me, she was always there. She was my big sister, she was only four years older than me and from what little I can remember she was more of a mom than my mom. Years later, Vicki would confirm to me that we were walking to school. She said she took us all with her, every day. She said that she had even taken our two week old baby brother and would lay him on the floor under her desk. According to her, when the school asked questions about why she brought him, or all of us for that matter, our mom would pack us up and we would move. Again I like to think I was highly advanced to go to school at two. I don't remember the schools though, only the walk to or from it.

I also vaguely remember a woman holding me or more accurately me clinging to her. I remember red hair and freckle, but no real face. Again, years later Vicki explained my mental photograph; she told me it was our mom. She said our mom took us swimming in a lake. I guess she had a strange way of teaching kids to swim. Her plan was to go out into the lake, throw the kid in the water and then tell them to swim back. No wonder I held on, terror filled my little body, fearing that I would be thrown in next. I don't know if I ever was, I can't remember. But I don't have a fear of water, so maybe I was an awesome swimmer at two. The only other memory I have that includes her is one of me wearing nothing but thin training pants on a warm day and I was eating a wedge of raw cabbage. Evidently I wasn't as highly advanced in the potty training area, because I had wet my pants. She was so mad and she spanked me severely for being wet. I remember her freckled arm swinging as she spanked me. Then she was gone. I know most people who have freckles hate them, but I wonder if my memories of her swayed my negative opinion of them.

We sat for hours waiting and waiting for her at some office somewhere, probably in Kewanee, Illinois. There we sat and ate sucker one after another while waiting longer and longer. She never showed up; not once that I can recall. Yeah, I know, I hear you, “what's so bad about that?” Nothing really, right?...but look again. Where is the mom that is suppose to be taking care of her two year old? Where is the dad that comes home after a long day at work to be greeted by squeals of joy from his children? Where are the hugs, the bedtime stories, the dinner, the bath time fun? Don't bother looking, it isn't there. Doesn't seem like a very big giant does it? But it was the first and it would grow. It was the one that taught me that you have to take care of yourself; no one else will be there for you. It was the first one to tell me she didn't love me or she would be there. And my mind....the one that shreds everything looking for meaning, it started thinking....it started twisting thought to try to make some sense of it. So right there at two, the world of my mind began telling me lies that I took to heart. It said I wasn't loved and me....well, I blames me and I believed what that little giant began telling me, even without knowing it was speaking. 

This is one of the few pictures I have of me as a baby.  It was dated June 1959

This is all but one of the six of us children.  I am in the center of the three children that are sitting.  My brother Jeff is standing on the left and Vicki is standing next to him.  I do not know the other two girls standing there.  Greg is on my right and Gary is to the left of me.  Kevin was not in the picture.