The King House When I was Young

I'm the oldest of 4 children. My sister Christine is 3 1/2 years younger than me. My sister Amy was 3 1/2 years younger than Christine. And Jerry came along 2 years later. That's 9 years between me and Jerry.


My dad worked at Sears most of his working life as a technician...repairing TVs, washers, lawnmowers...pretty much everything Sears sold. It was tough, because it seemed like Dad was either working, laid off, or on strike. I think for a good 10 years it was half working and half not.


Mom was a stay-at-home mom...with 4 kids it would have been tough to do otherwise. Somewhere around the time that I was 12 Mom took a job at the ice arena, working the concession stand. She was injured at work - she suffered a ruptured disk when she turned and hit the stainless steel sink. She lost the feeling in her leg for a while. She ended up stepping on a piece of glass. Because of the nerve damage, it didn't heal right, and Mom developed osteoporosis, which basically ate away her heel bone.


So Mom was in and out of the hospital for 10 years; she was in a wheel chair for a while, and ended up using a walker for many years.


Despite some of these problems, I'd say my home life was filled with love and laughter and doing things together. we always had dinner together, watched TV together. we had a nice pool in the backyard, so we spent a lot of time together when we might have been at a friend's house. we went on vacation to upper Lower Michigan a lot...especially the Mio area. I played hockey as a youngster, and we went on a lot of hockey trips as a family.


a lot of this time together was spent laughing at one another. woe be to the one who fell or dropped something...even at 5 my youngest brother was in on picking on everyone.


spent a lot of time watching TV together. During the afternoons I watch game shows with my mom, and we laughed at Password and Hollywood Squares and Match Game and the such. This was the time of the mini-series, too...so we watched Roots, several mini-series (series-es?) on WWII and Nazis, Civil War...and the Human Body. But my parents took the time to explain about the things we watched. I particularly remember being fairly grossed out when the "pregnancy" episode of the Human Boday came on...and Mom and Dad explained exactly how the making a baby thing worked! :O


Because my Mom was sick a lot, my sister and I took care of the house a lot. I remember changing diapers, cooking dinner, generally taking care of my siblings. We were a close family.


Those were the things that stayed with us the most. Laughing. Learning. Family. And the things that we'll make sure that Chloe grows up with too.