My Story: Eighth Grade

Until this point in my life, we had been living in my Grandpa's basement. I was the favorite grandchild, and I adored my Grandpa! During summers, I would sneak upstairs and fall asleep on his couch watching TV after everyone was in bed. He kept a stash of orange slices, drug store jelly beans, and Doritos chips in the hall closet. He would read to me, he taught me how to tell time, he edited my papers, he listened when I practices violin and would make me start over if I made a mistake.

Every Christmas, Grandpa would travel back East to visit family and I missed him so much. One year he came back with a full white beard and we were convinced that our Grandpa was really Santa. It finally made sense why he had to leave us every single year.

Though this didn't happen in 8th grade, here's an example of how much my Grandpa loved me...as he left to go buy a new car, I ran to the door and called out "but a red car Grandpa!" Later that day, my Grandpa drove up in a shiny red Camerro.

My poor mother was a saint through 14 years of living downstairs with her father-in-law in a basement with no kitchen, a washer with a tendency to burst open the hose and flood the basement, and constant pipe smoke from my grandpa. My parents couldn't afford a house because my dad was still going through school. It took him a while to figure out he loved teaching.

The first night all of the kids went to the house, it was officially ours, but there was no furniture in it. We begged and begged my parents to let us just sleep on the floor. We were so excited to be in our new bedrooms and be in this house that was ours.

Even better, we had moved in two doors down the street from our good family friends. We must have looked like quite the spectacle on holidays carrying large quantities of food between houses. We did birthdays, holidays, random Sunday dinners, everything we could, our families did together.

The youth at church were welcoming, and I even got invited to a girl's birthday party just days after we had moved in. This was probably the smoothest move I could have asked for as a teenager! But I missed my grandpa. We only lived across town, but it wasn't the same. We only saw him every other week, if that. One time my brothers and I rode our bikes down to his house...it took over 2 hours, but we got to spend the night there, and that was worth it.

Join us each week, as we recount stories of our childhood to preserve our histories for anyone who's interested at Mommy's Piggy Tales.