Welcome to the monthly edition of Where Bloggers Live. It’s kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…Bloggers! Who doesn’t like to peek behind the scenes and see inside people’s homes? Every month a group of six bloggers share their work-spaces, homes, towns, and more!

This month we’re sharing our childhoods.

Me and my mother in Los Angeles

I started coming at this from many different directions and it was turning into a War & Peace length word pile. So I decided to narrow it down by selecting just some significant memories up to the age of 10 (so won’t be here til 2023) – some I know I’ve shared here before…and to be transparent, these may not be my MOST significant memories, but they’re the ones I can remember at the MOMENT. The pictures may or may not have anything to do with the memories…cuz that’s not the way memories…or snapshots usually work.

I feel like I look like a cute baby who is actually somebody else, not me – ha ha

Okay, caveats out of the way……

1ish when we lived on the beach in Ponte Vedra Beach in Jacksonville, FL

My mother and I would take the train cross-country (3 days/3 nights) from NY to Los Angeles almost every summer from when I was little little, up until jr&high school age when I started protesting cuz I wanted to spend summers with my friends. But I have fond memories of those train rides. I have always loved riding in the car and looking out the window and this was like 72 hours straight of that. My mother would always buy me books and activities for the train, and we’d play cards and eat in the dining car. And we didn’t fight šŸ™‚ On the NY->Chicago leg of the trip we’d get a sleeper car, which I thought was so cool…and on the Chicago>LA part we’d sit out in the seated section which was actually better for looking out the window. She bought me my first set of pearls one time when we had a “layover” in Chicago…and she always bought me little trinkets when the train had a long stop in Albuquerque and the Indian women would lay out their wares on Indian blankets – Indian dolls, silver and turquoise jewelry, pottery. And when we arrived in LA, her whole family would be there to greet us. Arrivals in Los Angeles were always so good – whether by train or plane (by myself or with my father, my didn’t fly after I was born). My grandparents, aunt and uncle and three cousins would all come to get us – and this was back in the day when you got to meet people at the gate at the airport. How great it was to get off a long flight and be welcomed by familiar, loving, and excited faces! It’s really shame those days are over…but I’m glad I got to experience it.

My mother dressed me in red A LOT.

Summers in California, overall, are great memories. My cousin pretending he had a rocket ship on the top shelf of the pantry closet and I was not allowed (by him) to go up there with him…and he’d stay “in space” for hours it seemed, and I’d get madder and madder…and only realizing as an adult that I was really the winner in that scenario cuz he was stuck on a shelf in a closet for hours while I was reading or playing piano or watching tv. Ha. Eating out what seemed like every night. Homemade vanilla (with a tinch of lemon) ice cream. Dr Pepper (before it migrated to the east coast). Beverly Park pony rides on Sundays after church. My grandmother’s tuna salad and perfect iced tea. Riding the bus with my grandmother to go shopping downtown LA. The time my aunt made me a carrot cake for like my 9th birthday (VEGETABLE CAKE? WHAT?!?) and my grandfather sneaking away from the table and making me a white birthday cake. Oh, yeah, my uncle worked for Procter&Gamble and there were always cases of boxed cake mixes stored in the garage and my cousin (space ship) would sequester ourselves away in my grandfather’s camper trailer with a box each of cake mix which we’d eat til we were done or sick. I never got sick. After we’d eat a bunch my cousin would tell me there were boll weevils in the cake mix. Never stopped me. I have always had a concrete stomach. I trained it well. Time in California just always seemed brighter and more fun somehow.

Me and Space Ship.

When we moved from Long Island (the first time) to Newark, Delaware, when I was 4 or 5, my father must have gone on ahead to get the house ready for us, cuz we drove down in the heat of August and when we got there I was greeted by THE MAGIC OF AIR CONDITIONING. In my HOUSE! It was a MIRACLE. I have never felt so cool in all my life. The feel of air conditioning FIFTY-EIGHT YEARS AGO is still a significant memory for me. I’m a weirdo. Anyway, I loved living in Newark, I think I’ve shared that here before in our “places we’ve lived” blog-post. Living across from a giant preserve park was a child’s dream…as well as down the road from a horse farm where I could just rest my chin on the fence and watch Speedy graze until my mother called me home. Delaware is where I had my first Best Friend…and we’re still friends today. And I wonder now how that magic happened cuz I don’t remember us ever being in the same class at school, and she lived up the hill from us, not in the little “cul-de-sac development” where I lived – so how did we even meet? Maybe she’s reading this and can shed some light on our first meeting. I just remember all the fun things we did…playing horse, playing with Johnny West dolls/figurines (Johnny West was like Barbie Goes West, with horses and chaps and cowboy hats and Indians….),Ā turning the garage into a haunted house by drawing ghosts and scary things on the wall with crayons (Step #1: How to Make a Father VERY ANGRY), sleepovers, walking to Stafford’s (1968’s rural 7-11 but like in a little old house) for rock candy and chocolate-covered ants and Ice Cubes (the chocolate treat, not the frozen water treat), buying goldfish at the Paint Pot (hardware store) with our church plate money…when we wereĀ supposed to be in bible school.

Me and my sister. Look how cute she is with her button nose and flippy hair. My favorite part of the picture is her bare feet…and the scissors on the floor right behind her. Optimal Parenting, right there. I still have those scissors.

I remember watching JFK’s funeral on TV in 1963. I remember my mother crying and the black horse (BlackJack) with the “fallen soldier’s boot.” I didn’t understand the significance of what I was watching, but mother crying + horse had a lasting impact on me.

Me and my parents. I have NO IDEA where this was taken.

I remember the magic of our first color television set in probably 1965-66 (I was 5 or 6)…my father brought it home on New Year’s Eve and we got to watch the New Year’s Day parade in color. Or maybe it was the day before Thanksgiving and watched the Thanksgiving Day Parade. MY FATHER BROUGHT HOME A COLOR TV AND WE WATCHED A PARADE THE NEXT DAY. There.

One of my favorite pictures of Little Girl Me.

I remember how devastating it felt to be RIPPED from my home in Delaware (I was 9), with my park and horses and friends and small school…and dropped into LONG ISLAND with its billions of people and weird accents and billions of people. What an adjustment THAT was. It would be 20 years before I considered New York my home.

My mother loved a fur collar. I loved a white go-go boot. This is me with my bible on the way to “sunday school” (aka Goldfish Buying)

I have wonderful memories of Labor Day weeks spent in Ocean City, Maryland. We’d stay in the Gateway Motel right on the beach, which was always a little shabby but it was clean and affordable and the owners remembered us from year to year. I think we started going there when I was 6 or 7 (a weird story about my mother’s friend – WHAT? MY MOTHER HAD FRIENDS?!? – having to hide from her husband ?? so my mother put me and the friend in the car and we just drove a couple hours…and ended up in Ocean City where we stayed for the weekend) and kept going almost every year til my father died when I was 22. Long days alternating between the beach and the pool, my father teaching me how to respect the ocean and not be afraid of the waves no matter how big, seashell shops, crab-house dinners, boardwalk evenings…my mother hanging the bright beach towels over the balcony railing and telling me STAY IN FRONT OF OUR ROOM when I was in the water so they could keep an eye on me. Sand in the bathtub ALWAYS. My first experience with an ice machine. Getting to bring friends as I got a little older. Meeting boys when I wasĀ even older. It was all good in Ocean City.

Back in the day before girls were allowed to wear pants to school.

Other than moving to Long Island when I was nine…life seemed pretty okay up to the age of ten. It was the NEXT ten years that got a little rocky. But that’s for another time šŸ™‚

Me and Space Ship and Lady, the pony, on my other grandfather’s farm in Fresno.

I can see your eyes glazing over so I’m gonna stop here.

Make sure to check out my friends blogs today, too:

Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Leslie at Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After <- Sadly not joining us today.
Sally atĀ Within a World of My Own