Learning to Stuff

Some of my earliest memories are of eating compulsively, not that I would have known to call it that at the time.  The first food I remember bingeing was saltine crackers.  The width of the cracker perfectly matched my mouth & could be slide in onto the top of my tongue.  At that time, saltines came wrapped in waxed paper and when a sleeve was finished, there were lovely crumbs and salt at the bottom.  I would make a kind of funnel of the waxed paper sleeve and pour the crumbs into my mouth.  This made me extremely happy.  But though I remember saltines as my start into disordered eating, sugar has really been my truest love.  Our kitchen was typically stocked with the name brand snacks of the time:  Kool-Aid, Chips Ahoy, Oreos.  All of which went perfectly with the popular TV shows of the time, of which Gilligan's Island was my especial favorite.   Later on, I would get much more creative with getting my sweet fix.

The Farm

When I was about 8 years old, we moved from our house in the city of Molalla to a huge old farm on the outskirts of town.  My Mom was not happy about the move.  In fact, I remember her crawling into bed with me on the last night in our old house and sobbing hysterically.  This was all my Dad's plan.  The new house and farm was a fantastical playground in the daytime and a nightmare at night.  It was over 100 years old when we moved into it and had the look of a horror movie set, complete with gothic arched windows and an on-site graveyard.  I remember thinking as we turned down the long driveway and I got a look at the facade of the house, "I"ll never sleep again." And so I was introduced to the place where I would spend the rest of my childhood.
The house and outbuildings had lacked regular maintenance for some time, so my parents had their work cut out for them.  The house needed extensive updating.  This was the kind of thing that my Dad enjoyed tremendously; my Mom, not so much.  My Dad tried to press my brother, Keith and I into service whenever he could get a hold of us.  We kept pretty busy exploring the barn and fields and I suspect we were too young to be very useful to him.  I remember having to sweep the wood floors after they had been sanded in preparation for refinishing.  There was the sharp smell of sawdust and hazy air everywhere.  Perhaps Keith had to do more than I did, as that was certainly the case later on.

Growing Up with Animals

Growing up I think I loved animals more than people.  Around age 4 I became completely obsessed with cats. I felt it was significant that word "kat" was part of my name.  The spelling didn't bother me a bit.  I tore pictures of cats out of magazines and made books out of them.  My favorite book was called "Captain Kitty" and I had to hear it read to me every night.  I can't remember too much about any actual cats we had but at one point one of them did have a litter of kittens.  The first cat I remember by name was called Gin-Gin and I believe that she moved with us from town out to the farm.  She was all black and somewhat stand-offish as I remember, which is possibly due to my over enthusiasm for her species.  I was fond of picking cats up and hugging them close to my neck.  Once I got ringworm on my neck, which was blamed on the cats.  I was ordered to leave them alone but apparently paid little heed, as I remember my Dad opening the upstairs window, where he had been taking a bath, and screaming out at me, "Stay away from the god damn cats!"   This would not be the last time that my love for animals would irritate and confound my Dad!