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| that's me on the left |
I'm from a red brick cape cod on the south side of
Milwaukee. I'm from a family of nine people who inhabited that five
bedroom house. Birth order and gender dictated the occupancy of the
bedrooms. Upstairs, the oldest two boys shared the large bedroom, the
oldest girl had the medium-sized room, and the next two offspring - both boys -
shared the teeny-tiny room, which is now my mother's "Christmas
closet." On the first floor, one bedroom was my parents' and the
other belonged to my younger sister and me. We two were the babies of the
family, and my mom dressed us alike when we were little. At some point,
our brothers coined the term "Puds" to refer to us
collectively. The etymology of this word is a mystery to me.
We Puds spent a lot of time in our first floor bedroom. It had white wallpaper festooned with stout geometrically-shaped flowers in vibrant colors. My dad engineered a built-in closet and drawers and painted them in bright colors to match the wallpaper flowers. We slept in bunk beds with Kermit the Frog bed sheets. The décor didn't change as we got older, but we covered the walls with posters of Duran Duran and Rick Springfield and Michael Jackson. Cousins slept over in that room, two or three at a time.
There were oodles of cousins. Both my parents came from large families and many of their siblings had large families too. Some cousins were much older than us Puds and did inexplicable things - like get married - when we were only just making our First Communions. Older cousins and older siblings might convince us to hold séances in the attic or play with a Ouija board. But plenty of cousins were close in age. Together we put on plays in the basement. I remember taking part in a theatrical version of "Rumpelstiltskin." We organized fashion shows in the living room. Our parents sat patiently through these amateur performances. We played "The Gong Show" and other t.v. show-inspired games. With our closest cousins, we had our own secret language. We made up elaborate codes and wrote them in notebooks.
We Puds spent a lot of time in our first floor bedroom. It had white wallpaper festooned with stout geometrically-shaped flowers in vibrant colors. My dad engineered a built-in closet and drawers and painted them in bright colors to match the wallpaper flowers. We slept in bunk beds with Kermit the Frog bed sheets. The décor didn't change as we got older, but we covered the walls with posters of Duran Duran and Rick Springfield and Michael Jackson. Cousins slept over in that room, two or three at a time.
There were oodles of cousins. Both my parents came from large families and many of their siblings had large families too. Some cousins were much older than us Puds and did inexplicable things - like get married - when we were only just making our First Communions. Older cousins and older siblings might convince us to hold séances in the attic or play with a Ouija board. But plenty of cousins were close in age. Together we put on plays in the basement. I remember taking part in a theatrical version of "Rumpelstiltskin." We organized fashion shows in the living room. Our parents sat patiently through these amateur performances. We played "The Gong Show" and other t.v. show-inspired games. With our closest cousins, we had our own secret language. We made up elaborate codes and wrote them in notebooks.
I'm from secret languages and shared memories. I'm from big
families. I'm from home. I can't imagine being from any other
place.
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