This guest post is courtesy of @hanniespice. We grew up in the same area about 10 years apart. Most of the places she refers to are on the Kitsap Peninsula of Washington State. Hannie is a sharp-witted member of the local Democratic party and blogs at hannie.org.
My name is Johanna but more often than not, I go by hannie. Right now, I’m 40, but I’ve been through much in my lifetime. I like to tell people that I’m like a cat and I’ve used up approximately seven of nine lives. Do I have regrets? Not much, no, because you can’t change the past. You can only work with the present and aim for the future, but the past sort of serves as a reminder and a lesson learned
here and again.
When I was actually living my childhood, I used to really be angry and resentful. I thought everyone was nuts and I was being raised in a way that any NORMAL parent would never subject their children to. Some of that is true. But most of it, most of it was a foundation to me that I would carry for the rest of my life, to today, right now as I type this, because I appreciate it now.
This is the example I use most often. When I was in junior high, kids were going to concerts, parties, and what seemed to me to be “fun” stuff. Me? I was sailing. I was attending the Port Townsend Jazz Festival. I was watching Pacific Northwest ballet perform. I was hearing the Santa Fe Chamber Orchestra in the Pantages theater and perhaps the youngest one in the audience. I was seeing exhibits at Seattle Art Museum. What the heck? These are not events that you want to tell your “cool” friends you were doing as an teen thinking that she needed to be popular to be cool.
(You don’t need to be popular to be cool. I learned this in ninth grade when I thought that changing my hair color to blonde would make me popular and beautiful. All it did was make the others who were mean…meaner and more emotionally damaging. I decided that it was time to just have me be me and if you didn’t like it, oh well. If you appreciated me past the weird hair colors, the converse, the shredded and paint splattered clothing, then you were good as gold with me. Those people I still talk with to this day. They know I’m me and truly they like that and I love them all dearly.)
Let’s talk about what my parents decided I needed to do each weekend and how it impacted me. I learned to sail and row at an early age. I went to two years of sailing camp as a Girl Scout and was basically a student helper, meaning I got to teach others for two weeks during the summer. I love the idea that you can glide across water, under power of wind and sail and the smell of the salt water breeze always makes me euphoric. I wish I could have shared that with both children. Only one got that and he loved it. We had plans to fix our old sailboat and spend most of the summer sailing. It never came to fruition because the boat broke free during a storm, slammed ashore and was destroyed. Almost everyone in the harbor cried that day. I received emails from Southworth to Manchester from concerned residents who wanted to know what happened to the sailboat.
I still love the arts and classical music. I’ve tried to give that to my children and sometimes, they can get it and sometimes they tell me to shut it. I allow them that. I want to hear their opinion no holds barred.
Our first return to Texas, we were crossing the state border at sunset. I pulled the car over and asked the kids if they wanted to see something spectacular and they both agreed. So I pop the iPod to Aaron Copeland’s “Rodeo”, start it playing, and return to driving. The piece is beautiful and as we drove into Texas, we saw the most beautiful hues of amber, pink, purple and beige in the sky and what a heck of a soundtrack. Both children were in awe, just as I was.
I look back and I think that yes, indeed I had a rough childhood in places. But I look back and I also say, you know, I had incredible opportunities to learn, see and appreciate not only different things in the world but people as well that although yes, different than me…we actually shared more in common than we thought or would admit to.
I won’t tell you I’m a victim and I won’t allow my children to say that either. I prefer to tell you that I’m a survivor and what an amazingly weird life I have led so far.
If you can contribute to her family in this time of need please visit her Caring Bridge page. You are welcome to leave a photo or word of encouragement also. Updates will be at her newest project, Aiming Low or at The Spohrs are Multiplying.
Mike works an industrial job that involves a bunch of big words. Words that sound like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.
It’s been 6 weeks since I toured the Ford plant in Chicago. better late than never, right?
