write down as many of my earliest memories from childhood as I can remember

When I was a kid my dad was a volunteer firefighter/EMT for my tiny town’s tiny fire district. Once my family participated in an emergency drill. The fire department staged a car accident and as fake victims we got to wear bloody makeup and sit in our blue Datsun as we waited to be triaged. I remember feeling anxious in the car as the sounds of radios and rescue descended. The accident was staged on a gravel road and the mesquitoes were hungry that year. They sealed my mom in the back of the ambulence and told me she had died, and although I knew it was fake I couldn’t help but feel a small wave of panic wash over me as I thought of the red wound above her eye.

Later, in high school, I particpated in another drill—this one an island-wide earthquake/natural disaster drill involving fire departments and paramedics from all over the area. My triage tag said I was an old lady who would be left for dead, but by high school dying was boring and instead of panic I felt angry I didn’t get a more interesting part.

In fourth grade I decided to start a club called Safari Club. Safari Club’s mission was simply to save the planet. I decided the best way to do this would be to hold garage sales and then send the proceeds to Greenpeace. My friends Alyssa and Tonia and I spent a lot of time gathering up our parents’ junk and drawing elaborate posters with lots of animals on them. I think we had two garage sales and I probably sent Greenpeace about $70, which is obviously a whole ton of money for a fourth grader. I got pamphlets, magazines and other materials from them for Safari Club for years. My parents thought the Safari Club was great and they told all their coworkers about it, who would then ask me how I felt on other hot button issues like the death penalty (which I was totally against, BTW!).

This is what hippy parents get you.

I found a pamphlet in the library lobby advertising some kind of hotline where you could get information about something called AIDS. I could tell from the tone of the pamphlet that AIDS was something very serious, and I remember a green phone on the cover. I asked my mom what AIDS was and she said it was a disease. I asked her if I could get it and she said no, only adults, and children with blood diseases, could get it. I asked her if I had a blood disease and she said no. I asked her if she and Dad could get it and she said well, yes, they could get stuck by a needle at work and get it from that. For several years I thought for sure my parents would die of the mysterious AIDS disease.

Then when I was in high school my dad really did get stuck with a dirty needle at work and had to have all these tests and re-tests. All I could think about was the green phone pamphlet. But he is okay.

My sister saw a spider in the kitchen sink and washed it down the drain. Later, my mother, hurt voiced by the fridge: “Where’s Abercrombie?”

In first grade my friend Mimi broke her leg by falling out of a tree and I was really jealous because everyone signed her cast and she got to get pulled in the wagon during recess. I climbed our apple tree all the time and sat in its branches and hoped with all my heart that I would fall out and break my leg too. I was too chicken to jump though. It wasn’t a very tall tree so I seriously doubt I would have broken anything even if I did fall. In retrospect, I probably should have concentrated more on falling off my horse or bike. Hindsight’s always 20-20. I still have yet to break a bone.

Once my dog Jerry pinned a little brown bunny in the yard. The baby bun was passed out due to shock and trembling like a leaf. My mom put her in a shoebox with a towel and set the box under the bed. We named her Harriet. I think my dad was out of town and Harriet’s home under the bed was supposed to be a secret. Later that evening, when Harriet had revived, we took her back out to the woods, far from any violent dog paws.

Another time, a bird flew into a window and knocked herself out. We gave her the same shoebox treatment and left her in an upstairs room away from the cats. A while later there was a tremendous crashing sound coming from above. Our bird friend had woken up and was freaking out. We opened the door and managed to usher her outside.

Dogs
Pandora: She was a Doberman, my mom’s dog from her hippy days, who died when I was pretty young, before we moved to Washington state.

Coco: Coco was a brown and white Springer Spaniel that belonged to the people who we bought our house from. They were living in a hotel for awhile or something and couldn’t take her with them so we kept her until they got settled. She was really gentle with the other animals and would catch the baby ducks and chickens when they escaped. I was really sad when she went back to her owners.

Katie: We got Katie after Coco left. She was a black lab nightmare, always jumping on my sister and I. We were terrified of her and soon she “ran away.” I think my parents gave her to the pound or something. Dog house bore the name “Katie” forever after that.

Jerry: BEST DOG EVER. Black and white Springer mutt who replaced Katie. He shook hands and sat on your feet if he liked you. My best friend. Died when I was in high school.

Trixie: Another brown and white Springer, another nightmare. Always ran away and had to be tied up while we were at work/school. Finally ran off for good. I hope someone took her in.

Cats

Blackie: First cat. Very sweet until my mom ran her over with the car. Then she got cranky.

Tuna: my mom would let him in every morning and he’d run to our bedroom and wake me up by jumping on me and purring. Then I’d wake my sister up (she was in the top bunk so Tuna couldn’t get to her). Tuna was our alarm clock for years.

Mo and Pookie: Mo and Pookie were brother and sister. My mom picked them up as strays behind her work. Mo lived until just a couple years ago. Once my mom saw a coyote pick Pookie up and she chased it until it let her go. Pookie got a hernia from that and required surgery. Then she wouldn’t eat so we brought her back and it turned out the vet put her spleen in backwards.

Also: Friendly (a super mean calico), Baby Orange, Lucy, Floppy and 80 million barn cats I can’t even begin to list. Many fell victim to the coyotes.

Misc House pets
Snuggles: Guinea pig. I didn’t really like it.

Bernice: Cockatiel. My mom’s bird; lived a really long time. I swear her ghost haunted the hallway where her cage sat forever after she died. I would hear her hiss whenever I left my room.

Fish: They were a hobby of my dad’s for awhile. I think in California we even had a saltwater tank.

Horses
Thunder: Palomino pony! A dream come true, except he was kind of mean. We sold him when we outgrew him.

Rex: A quarter horse-Arab mix my mom got from neglectful neighbors. He was all scrawny and sick but she nursed him back to health and beauty. He was a great horse; she originally got him for herself but I sort of took him over and then she got Skeeter for herself. He loved trail riding and was afraid of water, and had to be put down when I was in eighth grade due to stomach cancer. Watching a horse be put down is really heartbreaking. I never really rode after that.

Skeeter: A fat, cranky, colicky Appaloosa who liked to nip. My mom’s horse; got it from the neighbors when they moved. I’m not sure what happened to Skeeter.

Minesha: A real live actual Mustang that my sister rode. Such a beautiful horse and she’d get super fluffy in the winter. She didn’t like men. Minesha is still around and now lives in Spokane with my mom.

Misc. farm animals

Chickens: We had all kinds of chickens. In the spring we’d get a bunch of little yellow babies from the feed store and put them in a little bin with a heat lamp. They were so sweet but they only stay that cute for like a week. Teenage chickens are so ugly. And they really do sort of run around after you cut their heads off, FYI. It was mine and my sister’s job to collect the eggs.

Pigs: We raised pigs for a few years. My parents had to call someone in to kill them because if you don’t do it right you spoil the meat. I’d hide in the closet until I heard the gun go off. All I really remember about them is that they loved zucchini and that they were really smart. My dad built this sort of half-assed electric fence around their pen that broke all the time and the minute the fence turned off they’d be out of the pen and running around the yard all crazy like, and we’d call Matthew the neighbor boy over because he liked to wrastle them back in. We kept a “slop bucket” under our sink and we threw all our leftovers in there and then fed it to them. Gross! The bacon was the best ever.

Ducks and geese: Goosey and the two ducks (can’t remember their names) were a short-lived experiment. The coyotes ate Goosey before she could even grow up. I remember the patch of blood and feathers on the ground beside their little plastic kiddie pool. I feel like as soon as we got the ducklings they ran under the raspberry bushes and I never saw them again; I’m sure they got eaten too.

I think I must have been about eight or so the year the tent caterpillars experienced what is called an “outbreak.” I would call it an invasion. It seemed like just overnight, millions of them hatched from their foamy-looking egg sacs to build gauzy tented homes in every crook and bend of every tree branch. I’m not sure if I can convey how horrific it is unless you’ve experienced it yourself. Every tree branch, every leaf, was covered with them. They’d be all over the porch, the yard, the roof, the road. It seemed like the entire world was coated in ugly squirmy bugs. If you walked under a tree they’d be all over you.

I swear you could hear their constant chewing. You could definitely hear the continous plop of them falling off the branches and hitting the ground. Once I went over to my neighbor Jessica’s house and she was collecting them in an empty margarine tub. She said her parents made her do it to save the trees. Jessica also taught me how to play gin rummy, not that that’s important.

They seemed to disappear almost as quickly as they came, turning into to ugly brown moths and leaving bare-limbed trees as a parting gift. I still get sick to my stomach when I think about them.

This is how I remember the story, though i am not sure it’s right: My aunt had some old stuffed animals in her girlhood room at my grandparents’ house. I asked if I could have one and she said no. Before my parents and my sister and I moved to Washington state, they held a big family yard sale. I was outside poking through all the stuff when I saw a stuffed hippopotamus sitting in the front of the yard—it was one of my aunt’s stuffed animals! As if driven by instinct, I liberated Hippo from his perch and squirreled him indoors. Later I confessed to my mom that I stole him from the yard sale, but she said it was fine because she had stolen something too.

Believe it or not, I still sleep with old Hippo.