Mermaids

Where I thought we might end up after the swimming pool episode.

When I was little we belonged to a country club.  It fit in well with my Dad's job as an advertising executive for KFMB TV in San Diego.  Stardust (yes, it really was called that) was a place to do business, a place to take potential clients for a round of golf or cocktails.  Very "Mad-Men"-esque (I've actually never seen the show, but from what I've heard about it, my dad would have fit right in with the cast).

Lyn and I on the golf course.

An added benefit to being a member of the club was that my sister Lyn and I got to go there to swim and to have the occasional Shirley Temple or Roy Rogers in the red and black velvet wall-papered lounge.  It was the height of "I may look like a kid, but actually I'm a very cool grown-up in disguise"-ness. Awesome.

One day Lyn and I got really brave at the club.  We were very bad indeed.  There was another lounge at the club and this one was strictly off-limits to kids.  It had a tank behind the bar that took up the full wall.  In that tank, actually a small, deep swimming pool with a glass side, women dressed as mermaids would do an underwater ballet-type show.  One day, when the lounge was closed, Lyn and I snuck in to the glass pool.  I remember thinking it was so dangerous and exciting.  We swam in the pool, did flips underwater, and put on our own show.  There we were, a teenage mermaid and her little sister, swimming behind the bar.  I remember how hard it was to hold my breath long enough to gracefully swim deep enough that I could open my eyes and see through the glass to my imaginary audience.  It was wonderfully dangerous.  I wish I had a picture.

Me, three months, and Lyn, 8 1/2.

Over the years, people who have heard some of my childhood stories have often ask me the question "How did you go through everything you've been through and turn out so normal?".  While I might argue with the "normal" part, I usually answer, from the heart, that I made it through because of the loving foundation my mother gave me in my first five years, and because of my sister, who has ALWAYS been there for me.

Lyn and I shortly after I moved in.

My sister invited me to come for a visit, which turned into forever, with her and her husband the summer before I entered fifth grade.  I was ten and she was 18 and her husband Mike was 21.  Eighteen!  Crazy.  Since then we've been through so many things together- five bouts with Cancer, three life threatening car accidents, the trials and joys of raising our combined total of 12 biological and adopted children-several of whom have had special needs and challenges, deaths in the family, multiple moves, separations, surgeries, heart-aches and holidays.  We don't see each other as often as we would like, but when we do, its like we never left.  We understand.  We've been there. 

Thank you, Lynie, for rescuing me, and for being my forever sister and fellow mermaid.

Ignore the glamorous Costco background.  I like this pic.