I NEEDED TO USE MY OWN WORDS

Bobby and I at Marineland, Palos Verdes, Calif. 1958

I've always felt close to my younger brother

Although my sister and I are only twenty months apart in age, I remember we spent more time fighting than getting along. During the years we lived in Los Angeles, I became best friends with Robin Freels, the girl who lived next door. When I wasn't playing with Robin I was playing with my little brother. In fact, I spent so much time with Bobby that my mother had to ask me on a regular basis to translate his very inarticulate speech. I was the only one in the family who could understand much of what he was saying during his preschool years.

In retrospect, I realize that at a very young age I was often used as a surrogate mother. Yet I don't remember it bothering me. In those days, cooking and cleaning was not work. It was fun pretending that the toy box was a rocket ship heading for the moon as a way to encourage my little brother to pick up his room. I loved teaching him how to read before he went to Kindergarten.

When I was around six years old, my parents discovered that if I were reading Bobby a book they could sneak out of the house for the evening without him having a screaming fit. Soon it became my almost nightly responsibility to implement this form of distraction. However, the reading and re-reading from my small collection of children's books eventually became monotonous for both of us. This is when I discovered the power of expressing myself in my own words. Many an evening I would delight my younger sibling by changing the benign Norman and the Nursery School into Norman and the Mean Lady. It was a harrowing tale rivaling any told by the Brothers' Grimm.

My second grade class at Cimarron Avenue School, 1959. I am sitting in the middle of the front row. Robin Freels is second row, third from left. My other good friend, Ursula Sack, is back row, directly behind Robin

I soon found another audience that appreciated my passion for storytelling. Beginning in second grade, a small group of kids would follow me around each morning at recess. I literally composed stories on the spot as we wandered the playground of Cimarron Avenue School. The black asphalt, with its noisy and enticing games, was a tough teacher. I quickly learned how to be more entertaining than hopscotch, four-square, or jump rope. And my secret weapon for ensuring a return of my entourage the next day: the cliff-hanger. I became skilled at dramatically inserting it into my narrative just as the bell was ringing.

This birthday card I made for my father is atypical because it doesn't have odds and ends glued on the paper to create collage-type pictures

My need for self-expression also manifested itself in another memorable event at that time. I vividly recall coming home from a Bluebird meeting in tears. The group leader would not allow me to insert my own original poem in a Father's Day card. In typical 1950's conformity, each girl in the troop was required to make identical assembly-line ashtrays and identical greeting cards. Each card had the same cutout blue and white polka dot tie on the cover and the same cliched prose on the inside. When I was younger, I always made my own cards for family members. My cards were often multi page with lots of artwork and rhyming prose. One card that survives is typical:

Happy Fathers Day

It would be different with a lunch with no sack

Or a train with no track

Yes it would be different with a lad with no shoes

But it sure would be different if we didn't have you!

Looking back on this memory, I find it noteworthy that I was so resistent to giving my father an impersonal written message as a Father's Day present. Ironically, I was not bothered at all by the fact that I was giving an ashtray as a gift to a man who didn't even smoke!

When I was eight years old, I used pictures I cut out of the Sunday "LA Times" to generate story ideas for homemade books. I wrote "Sing a Song of Lima Beans" to go along with this advertisement for Birds Eye vegetables.

copyright 2008 by Kathleen Stewart Goodrich