Tell me more Mom...

Last summer my husband Edmund and I took a walk with Ben and Deryn to a Mason’s Cemetery near their home in Eugene, Oregon.  We spent time walking through the cemetery reading gravestones and sharing interesting dedications with one another.  Along the way there were these little trees, dotting the landscape. Italian plum trees, the purply elongated kind. They were ripe, many having dropped to the ground below the trees here and there around the cemetery. I picked up one tossing it to Ben saying, “try this!” Then I threw a couple for Edmund  and Deryn to try because they loves plums. Consensus delicious.
However, it reminded me of a time that wasn’t so happy. I asked Ben if he wanted to hear a story. After telling him the story, he looked at me, genuinely surprised, he said, “Mom, I have never heard that story! I bet you have lots of stories that you have not shared with us, right? I, for one would like to hear them and I think the other kids would like to as well. You should write them down.”
so here I am, writing some down. This is that story.
When I was in 6th grade my dad, his wife Georgine, who was my second step-mother and I all moved to a nice neighborhood in Rockledge, Pennsylvania. Next door to us there was another stuccoed spanish style home, like ours with a lot of wrought iron porch furniture and fencing. The yard was home to 5 Italian plum trees…tantalizing and delicious…I knew because they often dropped into our yard. Finders keepers right?
  One day Georgine called me into the living room and said “ Go into the top drawer of the sideboard  in the dining room and bring the pink envelope to me. “ I checked both drawers…there was no pink envelope. I told her I couldn’t find it. I was frantic. I heard her coming from the living room all along the way telling me how stupid I was and asking if I was blind? I knew I was going to be punished. She came in the room, roughly pushed me aside, opened the drawer and grabbed a yellow envelope, opened it and lo and behold there was the pink envelope that she wanted! She was furious that she had to come to get it herself and that I “lied” !
I didn’t lie…there was no pink envelope to be seen immediately upon opening the drawer.  No matter to her... I was sentenced to sitting on the dining room floor between the wall with windows facing out to our neighbors plum garden and the dining room table. I had to sit cross-legged or indian style as we said as kids, with my hands on my knees.  I had to have my head straight a head and not move. If I moved I got kicked in my lower back…to this day I have issues with being still and with my back. At any rate…because i had to sit there for over four hours…I used my eyes to hunt around. I counted the plums I could see…I counted the panes of glass in their windows, I counted the lines between the tiles on the kitchen floor and the wood slats on the dining room floor. I counted leaves on the trees…I spent a lot of time counting and finally was allowed up off the floor just before my Dad came home from work.