From the Beginning

I was blessed, and cursed, with a pretty good memory. It's a double-edged sword remembering with joy the triumphs of my life, but also recalling with sadness my many failures. While I don't remember every last detail of every day of my life, I do recall quite a bit of what I've lived. The part that always perplexes me is why I remember what I remember. I understand remembering things like my wedding day and my kids' births, but sometimes I remember the most trivial things, like playing with army men in my mom's living room. I'm sure there's some expert out there who could provide an explanation for this but probably not to my satisfaction.

My earliest memory is one of being in the back yard of my parents' house. I distinctly remember being on my back in something, a playpen or a crib, and looking up at a pecan tree. My next memory is that of my big brother on the back of a motorcycle. Some years later I would question my mom about that memory and she was surprised I could remember that. She told me I couldn't have been older than two or three at the time. I guess these were significant events in my early years - I know the motorcycle ride my brother took influenced his future - but I don't see how.

Anyway, I thought I'd write down these memories -I may gloss over a few to protect the guilty- because I've started to become more forgetful, which may be because I'm doing it on purpose, or because of sleep deprivation, or because I'm getting old, which beats the alternative. I want to tell my story so my children will know about me and maybe I can pass it on to the rest of the world. Who knows, someone may actually find my life interesting, God help 'em.

I Thought I was a Child

I'm not a very fashionable individual. I tend to wear clothes that I like, not what's trendy. I don't own, nor do I care to own, any clothing that turns me into a billboard for the designer, manufacturer, or retailer. I like my stuff off the rack, at K Mart or Wal-Mart if you please. So, as fashionable as it is to have some sort of traumatic childhood - alcoholism, abuse, extreme poverty, etc. - I am once again outside the loop. My parents were good, decent people, who raised me, and my siblings, in a loving home. So how I turned out this screwed-up is anybody's guess.

I was the sixth child of E.C. (It stood for Edward Charles, but no one ever addressed my father by anything other than E.C.) and Louise Hulda (Singletary) Ladnier. I was preceded into this world by four sisters, Gaynelle, Sandra, Jill, and Ann, and one brother, Chuck. I also had one bachelor uncle, Harold "Sox" Singletary, who lived in an Airstream trailer in the back yard.

One of the great things about south back then was that no one ever moved very far away, so I was always around my relatives. Growing up around my aunts and uncles was great; it's one of the things I wish my kids could have experienced. Hopefully they'll be around each other for a long time so that their children get to know their aunts and uncles like I knew mine.

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