Part of the healing process: Remembering

What I remember about my early childhood, was not what I learned in the school classroom, but the field trips with my class and playing outside. The school went to the Knowland Park Zoo for field trips and I remember the smell of the tall Eucalyptus trees. I remember the smell of the grassy field I used to play in and the huge holes we dug in the dusty ground for forts. I remember the sound of the trains going by and counting the hobos with their legs dangling off the train cars. They seemed happy and I wanted to be as free as they appeared. As a little child in Oakland, I don’t remember the emotional trauma I suffered, but I do remember the musty smell of the crumbling and abandoned buildings that I and my siblings played in and around. I remember my little step sister falling out of a grocery cart that I was pushing and cracked her head open. I remember the man in a big truck coming to our neighborhood and he allowed the neighborhood kids to ride up and down the cargo lift in the back of his truck. I remember the smell of the giant fig tree in the backyard that my step father started to build a tree house in. I remember throwing up all over myself in my bed and then crawling into bed with my brother and throwing up all over his bed. I don’t know why I didn’t go to my mother. Maybe I wasn’t allowed in her room or she wasn’t home?I dont remember walking to the corner bar to tell my step father that mom says to come home, dinner was ready. I don’t remember my brother being beat for going into her room. I dont remember her hurting him so bad that the police came and took pictures. I don’t remember her putting me in a bath with hot water…I don’t remember the bottle of too hot milk being fed to me as a baby. I don’t remember all the different foster parents, and homes that me and my brother lived in. I do have a vague memory of running down streets late at night with my mom and siblings trying to get to grandma’s house away from home and step farther. Streetlights shining bright overhead…being scared and tired.