No Rain, No Flowers
By: Stephanie Nies
What was your very first memory? I have heard that some people don't remember anything from their childhoods. Then there are the people who swear they remember being born. For me... My first memory was a person. Not my mother or father. Not my brother, Lee. My very first remembrance was my first love. Christian. I can see it like it was yesterday. I was in my front yard playing in the grass making a food dish out of grass shavings and these little flower type stalks that had little seed like leaves. For the life of me, I couldn't tell you what they are but, in my imagination, they were rosemary leaves. I would run my fingers from end to end of the stalk and the little seeds would come off in my hand and I would sprinkle them on my dish for a garnish. I was five years old and I was pretty sure that my imaginary husband was somewhere holding our baby wrong.
A moving truck pulled up to the house next to ours and a man and a little boy got out. All I saw was blonde hair walking around on the other side of the truck and suddenly, my Dad was next to the man giving him the guy hug. "Michelle, Honey, come here..." my Dad called to me. I stood and ran over to him. He introduced me to Hank who was an old friend from when they were both little and lived in these houses. I don't know what Hank looked like when he was younger but by the looks of him at this time, he and my Dad ran in different circles. My dad stood at a tall 6'4 and Hank was barely 5'8. My Dad was a big teddy bear with a belly like Yogi Bear that I used to call my pillow. Hank was slim aside from a beer belly.
My dad was neat and clean cut with short dark almost black hair and a well-groomed beard and mustache. Hank had long hair pulled back in a ponytail that was graying before it was supposed to. He had an overgrown five oclock shadow to boot. My dad wore polo shirts and jeans with sneakers and Hank wore jeans and t-shirts with a constant pack of benson and hedges in his shirt pocket. He wore an old cigarette smoke smelling flannel coat. My dad had a tailored navy peacoat. They were like night and day. Band geek meets stoner cowboy. Hank called the little boy over who was older than I was but not by too much. His name was Christian. He was almost exactly five years older than me. I remember everything leading up to that moment because my five-year-old self fell in love with him the second I looked shyly into his eyes. I couldn't tell if they were blue or if they were gray which made me excited because he had eyes just like mine.
We lived in a suburb of Pittsburgh Pa, called Bethel Park. Funnily enough, the name of our street was Bethel Park Drive and it was lined with split-level ranch style houses. In some houses, you had older people whose kids had grown up and moved out and started their own families. Then you had people like us who had recently bought or inherited their homes. Our house was the fourth house up on the right or just up and over the hill depending on which direction you were heading. When we moved in originally, my Grandma owned the house and had kept it preserved in it's orginal 1960's – 1970's décor.
This included the burnt orange shag carpeting in the gameroom we had downstairs. A few years after she passed away, my Mom upgraded the carpet to a pale blue and all of the furniture was switched out. Brass and Glass was everywhere. To this day, my Mom swears up and down that my Grandmother haunted her. They never had the best relationship, both of them battling over my father. He was torn between being my grandmother's baby boy, and my Mom's husband. I think he did a pretty good job of appeasing both. My Grandma never did anything scary, she just liked to move my Mom's things. She was very meticulous about putting things back EXACTLY where she found them. To the point that she could tell if anything had been touched or moved. Well, some of her things flat out disappeared for days at a time and then suddenly reappeared. My Mom got tired of it and started having a very stern conversation with my Grandmother one day.
"Mrs. Nies, I know we didn't have the best relationship, and I know you are probably upset that we are still living here, but I know you love Michelle, and your son. So I suggest, if you don't want us to sell this house and move out, you will stop with the nonsense and stop messing with me. Now, I don't know if I believe in ghosts or not. As I grow older, I believe more and more. But one thing I can say, nothing ever went missing again. Our neighborhood was full of kids. Children of all ages who while at school acted as though they barely knew one another but the second they got on and off the bus, you'd think we were all the best of friends.
We all looked out for each other and Christian was a part of that group. We played together every day after school and we walked to the bus stop together every morning. The house to be at was always The Burland's who lived catty cornered across the street from us. They had three children, Jessica, who was older than me, and Julie, and Craig who were younger. Christian would come and pick me up in the morning and then we would head over to the Burland's. We would play Barbie Dolls and Christian and Craig would throw the football around or just flat out wrestle each other. Once we got a little older, we got into playing murder mystery games like ghosts in the graveyard or we went searching for clues that lead us to the culprit of our made-up crime. I always ran off with Christian. In my mind, Christian was my boyfriend. It was a joke to everyone. They even called me his little girlfriend and when someone was looking fot him, they always asked me "Where is your boyfriend?" He went along with it good naturedly. He thought it was adorable that I so openly liked him. I got a hug hello and a hug goodbye every single day. I lived for those hugs. It was all a cruel joke that came crashing down the moment he started sixth grade and was going to Junior High. I was devastated on the first day of school when my Mom got me ready and sent me on my way with the rest of the neighborhood kids and Christian was nowhere to be found. That day was just the beginning of the end for our relationship. He slowly stopped coming out to play with everyone, as did all the kids who went into middle school on the street. It was always sad to see them go, but this was Christian and overnight, I wasn't his sidekick. Suddenly, he had other friends and less and less time for his father, let alone me. A few years went by, but my childish crush did not. As the years passed, Christian slowly evolved. His little boy look was gone, and it was replaced with hormones. The baby white curls faded into a sandy blonde color. He grew up and out. He started playing football and his body showed it. His piercing eyes remained the same though. The problem was, even though I didn't see him very often, when he did come around for holidays and special occasions, it was as though no time had passed at all. One night close to Christmas, Hank, Christian, my Mom, Dad, and I piled into the van to get something to eat and go shopping. As we were leaving the house, my Dad was finishing up inside, so we waited for him to come down and close the garage door. Now, something else about my house and street. We lived on the steepest hill that was literally uphill both ways. No matter which way you went to my house, you had to go up a few big hills. Throw in my super steep driveway and you have yourself a match made in blizzard heaven, which is exactly what we were recovering from on this cold night.
We were sitting in our van and the car began to slide backwards. The van was very boxy, and I was always terrified it was going to tip over whenever we took a turn too sharply, so naturally, I was terrified of the same exact thing as we slid uncontrollably down the driveway. There was a mixture of reaction from everyone. Hank and Christian looked confused.
My Mom instinctively yelled out "HOWIE!" and then there was my reaction which was a horrified "OH SHIT!" The second I said it, I knew I shouldn't have. I was in the 3rd grade maybe? "Shit" had not been added to my approved vocabulary list yet. I didn't get in trouble, but this was a story that was told for years and years. My Mom deemed it a definite "Oh Shit!" moment. My dad came running out of the house and wrangled the car to the bottom of the driveway safely before heading back up to close the garage door.
People still called me his little girlfriend long after he started distancing himself and he still gave me those amazing hugs that I just squeezed him as tightly as I could because I knew when he let go, I had no idea how long it would be before I got another hug. In my head, I didn't understand the age difference. Especially when he started growing up. To me, he was still the same kid I fell in love with. He had just gotten cuter and his voice deeper which didn't help my crush go away. As far as I was concerned, he was my boyfriend. He had feelings for me. So, one day when I knew he would be coming home from Football practice, I ran up to my Mom's room and sat at her vanity. I reached for her eyeshadow and found a color that hadn't been touched. I knew that if she hadn't used it, she wouldn't get mad at me for using it. I grabbed her makeup sponge and started smearing the bright blue eyeshadow across my eyes. That stuff was everywhere.
I completed the eye look with some mascara. After stabbing myself in the same eye twice, that eye was red and irritated, and I couldn't get it to stop watering. There were rogue brush marks all under my eyes. I decided that I would take attention away from the watering eye with some fire engine red lipstick. After this debacle, I realized he would be home very soon, so I hurried outside and waited.
The other kids on the street were playing as usual but I didn't have time for that. "Michelle! Come play freeze tag!" Julie yelled to me from across the street. I ignored her. I was going to ask Christian if I was his for real girlfriend. So, I waited. Then I waited some more. What seemed like an eternity passed and finally, Hank's old blue Ford truck pulled into their driveway and three people piled out. I ran down to him and almost didn't notice the girl standing next to him that he was holding hands with. "WOW!" He exclaimed when he saw me. He smirked and started to chuckle but then sucked it back in.
"Michelle.... Your makeup looks so pretty..." He pointed to the girl next to him. "This is Kelly..." he told me. I looked at her. She had an acid washed blue jean skirt with a matching jacket on. She was wearing two pairs of socks, one pair white, the other neon pink that matched her shirt and scrunchy that was holding her long blonde hair back in a ponytail. "Hi, Michelle... It's nice to meet you..." she said in a sing songy way. I didn't like her. "Who is she?" I asked with a confused look on my face.
"I'm Christian's girlfriend..." she said. My stomach dropped to my knees and my heart fell to my gut. I tried so hard to not cry, but the tears came. I was his girlfriend. I turned and ran as fast as I could back to my house and all the way up to my room. In a very dramatic third grader way, I threw myself on my bed and wailed. I cried so hard that I didn't hear the phone ring and I didn't hear my Mom come into the room a few minutes later. "Michelle, honey, what's wrong?" my Mom asked. I wouldn't answer her. "Honey. You know Christian is too old to be your boyfriend... Right?" I sobbed some more. "He loves you to death. You're like his sister. And that relationship means more than anything... Especially being his girlfriend..." I turned over and my Mom saw my face for the first time since I'd given myself the makeover. "Oh my GOD, Michelle.... What did you do to your face???" I could see the slight smile on her face that she was trying to hide. She took me to the bathroom and washed all the makeup off and sent me still crying back to my bed to calm down. The next thing I remember was being woken up for dinner.