http://www.EileenWilks.com
Top Nine Places I Lived as a Child
(Okay, all the places I lived as a kid)
Monahans, Texas
Don’t remember it, but apparently that’s where
I picked up my spider phobia. My mother trained my then-a-toddler
brother and me to run to her whenever we saw one because
there were so many black widows around. Ugh.
Canada
Don’t remember much of this place, either. .
. we moved to Canada when I was two, left when I was three.
I do remember having to bundle up in endless layers of clothing
to go outside in the winter. Snow came up to
the hood of the car.
Ada, Oklahoma
The boy across the street convinced me there were bears living
in the woody area behind his house. I had a tremendous
crush on him, which may explain my gullibility.
Independence, Kansas
Sledding. Oh, I do remember sledding. And The
Wall—this great stone wall around our house which all
of us kids dared each other to jump from, barefooted. Such
daredevils.
Eureka, Kansas
There was a little creek behind our house and my brother
and I tried repeatedly to catch fish in it. There
were no fish. I was worried about flunking music
class (tone deaf, maybe?) when we moved to--
Venezuela
My memories jump from faded snapshots to Technicolor, starting
the moment we landed here. My father worked for an oil
company and we lived in a company camp away from any large
cities. No TV. I remember guavas and sleepovers and fire
ants and coral snakes and anacondas and parrots. (We
had a parrot, but he only liked my mother. Bit the rest
of us and terrorized the cat.) We learned to pound
our shoes on the floor before putting them on—scorpions
and such crawled into them sometimes. All of us kids
hung out in a pack. We climbed tress, ate food that
grew on trees, got in trouble, but not too much. Swimming
in the pond, for example—which had snakes. We didn’t
mean to swim there, honest. We were building a raft,
but it kept sinking . . .
Venezuela is where my brother acquired the little scar over
his eyebrow. I didn’t intend to hit him with
the golf club. He really should have been standing
farther away when I swung. It’s also where I
began to develop breasts . . . and tell stories. My
two best friends and I would draw pictures and make up stories
to go with them.
Andrews, Texas
Culture shock. After living the tribal life in camp
in Venezuela, I had to cope with puberty, New Math, and the
nation-rending tremors of the Sixties, oh my.
I discovered science fiction here, in the sixth grade.
Midland, Texas
Moved again, though not far. My parents built a house
on a couple acres in an area where many people kept horses. I
wanted a horse desperately. A friend of my father’s
rode over to visit one day and let me get up on his enormous
beast—but didn’t adjust the stirrups. That
horse soon figured out I had no idea what I was doing and
took off running. Galloping. Hard.
Somehow having a horse run away with me did not inspire
my parents with confidence in my goal of horse ownership
. . . but I didn’t fall off, did I? Even though
crazy creature jumped ditches, I didn’t fall.
While we were in Midland, my brother and his friends dug
a cave. I pestered them into letting me help, and we
spent quite a bit of time underground. My parents must
have been insane.
Hobbs, New Mexico
Last year of Junior High, then High School. Not going
there again, even in memory—though I do sometimes think
about my first real boyfriend and wonder how he’s doing.
(Chuck, if you see this, drop me an email, okay?) But
while I lived in Hobbs, my best friend and I began writing
little stories--fan fiction, it would be called now—about
the Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Who usually (the plots varied)
got to fall in love with Illya Kuryakin, and the two of them
fought evil together.
Now that I think about it, I’m still writing about
tough women fighting evil—and falling in love.
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