milk and coke.

when we were kids, we used to drink milk and coke and thought it was the coolest thing. lindsay justified it by saying that it tasted like a watered-down milkshake, but secretly we all knew better. it tasted like milky coke, which still kindof tasted like coke, which tasted like sugar, which tasted wonderful. we would make it in large plastic cups, and drink it until our stomaches hurt. in all of my memories of drinking milk and coke, i never remember my parents involvement. i don't think they knew that we did it, but i think candyce came up with the idea and then i told lindsay that this was how everybody drank it in the south.
looking back, milk and coke seriously does not taste good but we didn't know enough back then and now we do.

the promised land.

There is really no graceful way to transition from an awkward home-schooled Junior High girl to a private-schooled social butterfly High School Queen. I have no idea how I pulled it off, honestly.

I showed up in Auburn, California, without a clue. I'd recently given up broom skirts and cowboy boots and was trying to embrace the California fashions. It was the early nineties, so baggy black jeans, white t shirts, and a flannel tied around my waist seemed to work nicely. Unfortunately for me, the only white T Shirts I had were ones I had inherited from various church retreats and camps; each complete with some scripture reference and tacky modernized "fish" symbol. It was bad, but I didn't know any better.

We moved to Auburn for small and struggling church. My dad was to take over and work his magic; he was good at bringing life into small, sad churches.

While we looked for a place to rent, we stayed with a family from the church. They were the Ralston family, and they were very very wealthy. There was plenty of room for us- and they were thrilled to take us in. I hadn't experienced such luxury in a long time. They had a dog! And a pool! And 4 wheelers! And guitars! And boats! And a DODGE VIPER. We took to them instantly; our families just clicked. They showered us with love and attention, and we welcomed their generosity with open arms. It was a far cry from the emotional wasteland of Cody, Wyoming. I believed we'd reached the Promised Land.

The had one son, Josh, who was a year younger than I. Josh and I bonded over our love for the movie, Forrest Gump, and Josh did the BEST Jenny impression I'd ever heard. We watched that movie every night for two weeks straight and we loved it more with each viewing. Josh and I got along royally, and I think he was the main conduit in my de-Wyomingification. He, too, wore white church T Shirts with fish emblems. We were like peas and carrots, me and Josh.

The time came for the Ralston family vacation. Apparently the Ralstons were known for their decadent vacations and every year Josh was allowed to bring one friend. For years, it had been the same friend. Josh would always bring his childhood best friend, Amber. But this year, he changed his mind. Amber was old news, and apparently I was the new best friend. Josh picked me! I was going to Disneyland with the Ralstons!

We loaded up their large RV and took an extended trip to the Magic Kingdom in Anaheim, CA. We stayed in the Disneyland Hotel, had breakfast with the "stars", and had 3 day passes to the park. They paid for absolutely EVERYTHING, including souvenirs, snacks, and embroidered Mickey hats. I was in heaven.

Vicki, the mom, was a woman who liked to shop. She drug me into all the expensive Disney boutiques and made me watch her try on jewelry, hats, and other trinkets. Nothing really caught her eye until she saw THAT necklace. The small, silver, sparkly diamond necklace in the shape of Mickey Mouse's head. She was in love, she had to have it. And, it just goes without saying that she needed the matching earrings as well. I don't recall the exact price of the Mickey jewels, though I do know it was more than I was comfortable with. I didn't understand this way of life.

All was well in our Disney paradise until that evening. We heard a shriek from the RV bathroom. "JOSH! LINDSAY! WHERE IS MY NECKLACE???" I didn't know Vicki well at the time, but this sounded bad. "OHMYGOSHHHHHH WHERE IS MY NECKLACE? JOSH! AHHHHH! WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT? I LEFT IT RIGHT HERE! FIND IT! RIGHT NOW!". What followed was a frantic search for the missing Mickey necklace. We were on our hands and knees, we were nervous, we were scared. We had to find that necklace. Every minute that passed without the necklace, she became more infuriated. She stood in the corner of the RV and lorded over us with arms crossed, acrylic nails tapping impatiently, and a scowl that was permanently etched into her chubby cheeks.

I was at my wit's end. We searched high and low for an hour, with no sign of the Mickey head. Just then, a quiet voice came from the back of the RV.

"Oh, well here it is. In my pocket all along."

And that was it. No apology was ever given, no sympathy for our fruitless efforts. She simply put on the necklace and went about her day.

I, however, did not recover so easily. I had seen a side of that woman that I'd never seen before. She was angry, she was mean, and I lived in fear of her. But, like it or not, she was in my life. In fact, she was in my life a lot more than I bargained for the next couple years. She was my youth pastor.

That was not the last time I heard an outburst from Vicki; there were many more. They were always unwarranted, and most of the time unexpected. She was a miserable woman who was hell-bent on ruining my life. And I will admit that for 2 years, she did a pretty damn good job at that. Disneyland was simply the beginning. This was not the promised land I'd envisioned. It was a whole new wasteland, it just had a different face. The wasteland of Auburn, California, was sneakier and more subtle. It just took awhile to figure out how ugly it really was.

windblown.

i remember the day we drove four hours in our dodge caravan that smelled of old tuna sandwiches stuffed into crevices to get to billings montanta, the closest mecca of civilization to wyoming and home of our first experiences with costco. man, we loved costco. we would always beg my dad to get one of those huge orange flat carts to push around so we could ride in style while keeping an eye out for the next old sample lady to ambush. but we always got the normal carts for normal families and got our boring old groceries in bulky bulk to last us the next several months until we could get to billings again.
this trip, however, was monumental.it was near the beginning of our stay in wyoming, and dad was about to make good on his end of the bargain. in order to pry us away from our beloved solar-heated house in the midst of the sierra nevada mountains (home to the best trees in the world for making forts), he had told us that he would buy us a trampoline. a real one, not a baby one.
that sold us completely, and we once again begin packing our belongings.
at costco, surrounded by cardboard boxes and concrete walls, we saw our bribe hanging high on the wall: it was so big you could have sleepovers on it and it was so shiny and black you could jump as high as the tree tops.
we were giddy with excitement, and the trip back to cody had never felt as long. as soon as we got home we bullied my dad into putting it up right away, which turned out to be an ordeal of metal pipes and springs that could severely pinched fingers if handled incorrectly. candyce and i backed slyly away and just watched expectantly as lindsay and dad grunted and pulled and pushed our dream into a reality.
we were officially rich: we had a trampoline.
from that day on for the next 18 months we were on that trampoline whenever we could be. we gloried in our new status of luxury and endless entertainment, and our isolation didn't feel as claustrophobic anymore. now we just had more time to jump on the trampoline.
cody was the windiest place i had ever been in my short life, and for the first few weeks we lived there it was hard for all of us to sleep at night. it always sounded so angry outside, and it felt that way too. as a result of the wind, we learned that we had to chain our trampoline to the ground in order for it not to be blown away, and we learned that wind is the best thing in the world to help you fly away.
when it got really windy outside, where you could hear it whistling around the corners of your house and saw the long brown grass flattened first one way and then another, you knew it was time to go outside and jump. we would start at on end of the trampoline, launch ourselves straight up in the air, and find ourselves at the opposite end of the trampoline by the time we came down. we were flying, we were really flying. we just had to be careful that we didn't fly off to far, because the wind didn't make the ground any less hard, and it didn't feel very magical to get dirt ground into your knees.
we did have sleepovers on the trampoline, and we would wake up in the middle of the night to find everyone crammed together in the middle of the trampoline, and all night long you would try to get back out to the edge but in your sleep you just rolled back into the center, back to where your sisters were, and eventually you stopped fighting it and fell asleep with your face smashed into someones arm or knee.
we never got exceptionally good at doing tricks on the trampoline, except for maybe lindsay. lindsay could actually do flips and candyce and i would crouch on the edge of the trampoline, watching wide-eyed as she tried to "land it" on her feet. i was terrible at flips and such because i had such a terror of feeling my neck crunch underneath me that i could never bring myself to fully flip. i would land on my back and sigh, knowing deep in my heart that i would never fully flip around, and knowing that it was okay. candcye was never very interested in performing acrobatic feats, and instead she created elaborate games of make-believe that all took place on the trampoline, and candyce and i (lindsay could never be bothered to participate in anything that wasn't a contest) would bounce around on all fours pretending we were ponies looking for our moms or foxes that needed to get out of the jungle or dolphins that had just met and were going to be best friends.
sometimes we would just bounce up and down and look at the few trees around and see how far our eyes could make it, but they never saw much more than long brown grass and barbed wire fences. we created contests for ourselves that involved singing as loud and as good as we could while bouncing so high that we flew. we recreated our facorite commercials or funny parts of movies, cracking each other up with our impersonations. my very favorite one to do, the one that brought the house down with my sisters, was my impersonation of a foster's commercial. in my best, most outlandish australian accent, i would scream out: "FOSTERS--IT'S AUSTRALIAN FOR BEER!" and we would collapse on the trampoline, laughing at how ridiculous australian people sound.
i think my parents thought that the trampoline would be a good way to get us excited about another transition in our life, and that it would be a good source of exercise for us.
really, it was our place to go and hang out with each other, to escape the loneliness of being new in an ugly and dry place, a place where the wind became friendly and the possibilities seemed endless. we were pioneer children, or pioneer ponies, our faces straight into wind, our chins lifted high, we were flying over the wildness of it all.
in all of our family pictures from this period, our hair always looks long and bedraggled.
we were forever being windblown, and we loved it.

Sunflower Yellow.

I fancied myself to be a gymnast. It was 7th grade and it seemed like the right thing to do. There wasn't much else to do in Wyoming, so my sisters and I threw ourselves into various and random sporting events; namely Tae Kwon Do and Gymnastics.

It wasn't that I was particularly bad at gymnastics, it was simply a matter of size. I wasn't built like the Ross girls. They were strangely petite and they could hurdle their bodies over bars and through the air in ways that I could never dream of.

However, I made a valiant attempt to be a good gymnast. I tried very hard and I trained a lot. I made it all the way to Advanced Level 2, which was the second highest level one could reach at the Cody School of Gymnastics. I competed in a few meets, which was exciting because I got to create my own floor routine, complete with music. I stayed true to my awkward Evangelical junior high self, and chose Michael W. Smith's "Ashland" as my floor routine jam.

My coach was absolutely crazy. She was extremely overweight, with short hair and a loud raspy voice. To this day, I don't know how she actually coached us because she could hardly move. She would wear baggy shorts and you could see her legs, which were always covered with weird sores or blotches. My parents told me later that they thought she had AIDS. I have no idea if this is actually true.

One day, coach decided that the Advanced 2 girls were too advanced for the large crash pad that would cushion our falls when we were practicing the Vault. Instead of the usual crash pad, she put down a thin mat and challenged us to a contest. It was a contest to see who could get the most height on a Straddle Vault. I'm terribly competitive and knew that this was a challenge that I was willing to accept. I ran at that vault with all of my might, I hit that springboard with force and determination...and I got a LOT of air on that beautiful vault.

There was just one problem: I got cocky. I dropped my legs sooner than I should have, and my right toe grazed the top of the vault. This one movement was enough to send my body flying forward and before I knew it I was heading face-first into the mat. I did what any normal person would do - I threw my arms out in a desperate attempt to save myself.

I did, indeed, save my face. My left arm, however, was quite another story.

I heard the cracking and the popping and I didn't have to look down to know what damage had been done. My left arm was burning and the whole world was a blur. They called my dad, he needed to take me to the hospital. I had broken my arm, and I'd broken it badly. Looking and my limp and deformed arm on that mat was sickening. It was twisted in ways that I didn't think that arms or bones could go. I waited on that mat for what felt like an eternity. Later, I found out that my dad had been mowing the lawn and decided he needed a shower before he took me to the ER.

Driving up to the ER, I remember thinking to myself that speed bumps in an ER parking lot are a terrible idea. WIth every bump that we hit, my arm throbbed. I hated the hospital for those speed bumps.

The next 12-24 hours were some of the more miserable hours in my life. The X-Rays were excruciating; really, it just seems cruel to make someone move their broken bones that much without any pain killers. I'd broken my arm in 4 places. They put me under and tried to set my arm to no avail. I was going to need surgery. Apparently I was in surgery for a long time - they put 2 metal plates and 8 screws in my arm that night.

I woke up in a strange hospital room with a broken TV. A lady from our church stopped by to visit and told me that her Grandmother had died earlier that week in the very same room. I had poor veins, apparently, and the nurses kept moving my IV. They finally settled on the top of my right hand, and neglected to check on me for a number of hours after doing so. The needle wasn't actually in my vein and proceeded to fill my right hand with the pain killers that were supposed to be flooding my system and bringing me sweet, sweet relief. I got no such relief; instead, I was rewarded with a horrible burning sensation in my hand every hour when the pain killers were dispersed through the malfunctioning IV. By the next morning my hand was huge and swollen and black and blue.

My cast was enormous. I was in a big "sunflower" phase of life, so I chose yellow for the color. They didn't tell me that the yellow that had was an obnoxious neon yellow, as opposed the buttery sunflower yellow I had envisioned. I looked like a big fat neon dork and I hated it. This neon cast would be my prison for the next two months.

That broken arm ruined my summer, plain and simple. There was no swimming with the girls in the pool at the Dude Ranch. There was no barrel racing or horse back riding.

And...there was no more gymnastics.
I quit.
I think deep in my heart of hearts, I knew that I wasn't cut out to be a gymnast. The broken arm gave me my perfect out. I quit the Cody School of Gymnastics that day and never looked back.

our friends have come and gone.

Every place we lived, we had a batch of "homeschool friends". Our poor mom tried her hardest to find families with similar interests as us. The only reason I think she did this was to assure ourselves a stable relationship with a family not unlike our own, that would be fun to have over for holidays, like the 4th of July, where the dads would barbeque hot dogs, and the moms would sit round quilting.
This never happened.
Amongst our search of suitable families, we became friends with our local "Tae-kwon-do" trainers (certified black belts!) But when you are forced to do extra push-ups at the end of the day because you and the teachers daughter got in a fight, its usually not a good sign of a healthy friendship. and besides, they were crazy.
One family i remember in particular, seemed alright (they had bible names!) They even introduced me to fun and cool new games, where you fight wizards and dragons, and get to re-inact fight scenes with swords and staffs and things! dungeons and dragons, they called it. but i dont think my mom liked it much because shortly after, i stopped going over there.
There was one family, who i loved the best. they had three girls, all the same ages as my sisters and I. they too were homeschooled, but didnt look like it. they were pretty and cool, and they became a constant staple. But i remember thinking they were strange because they refused to ever go to church. didn't go to church! it was ludacris! but sometimes we would go over there on weeknights and do what they called a "house church". They always let me pick out one song we would all sing from their hand-made hymnals. I always picked the same song. and I loved it.
I didn't realize this until recently, but I am pretty sure that family saved my life. They were completely out of place in that state, but they made the best of it. They were comfortable and nice, and we had hours of endless entertainment on a daily basis.
One day, they invited us over and said that they were getting new carpet the very next day. they gave us each a marker, and told us to have at it. the whole carpet! the living room, stairs, bedrooms, and even the bathrooms! to this day, i have never seen better carpet art. to this day, I wonder what those girls are doing now, and i wonder if they remember the trampoline slumber parties, the "house church" and the walks around "buck lake". I wonder if they would recognize me, and I wonder if we would still be friends. of all the homeschool friends i've had, they are my favorite.
and i miss them terribly.

The longest drive.

There are certain events in my young life that I remember very clearly.

Most of the time I feel like my memories are muddled, as if my brain doesn't have enough room to store all the information so it just starts blending my stories together. Every time I experience something new, I'm quite sure my brain pushes one memory out the back door. There are just too many memories, too many crazy times, and one head simply doesn't have enough room to store it all.

But I remember that day.
I remember driving and driving and driving. I remember mom and dad, in the front seat, sitting silently. My mom was crying, and I'm not sure my sisters knew what had happened or what we were doing. I'm not even sure I really understood. I just knew it was awful and I knew that this drive is what we needed to do. We needed to be together, to be a family, and we needed to be silent.

I know that I loved her.

Debbie was somewhat of a constant in our lives, a staple presence at the Strannigan household. My most vivid memory of Debbie was from one fateful night when Danielle threw up enchiladas all over Debbie. It was so unexpected and so bizarre; one moment Danielle was sitting quietly on her lap and the next moment she was heaving chunks of enchilada all over Debbie's shirt. Debbie handled it like a champ, and no amount of kids or vomit kept her away. Debbie was always there, she was my mom's best friend, and we adored her. I didn't know the details, I didn't know Debbie had a past. I just knew she was part of our family. I was too young to know that it was very complicated and that Debbie was very sad.

On that day, the day of the long drive, my parents told me the truth. I was 8 years old, but they didn't hold back. They explained to me that Debbie was dead, and that she had taken her own life. There was a gun, there was a note, and now Debbie was gone.

There was also a housekeeper. She was Debbie's housekeeper but she cleaned our house, too. She smelled like cigarettes and she had a little baby boy that she would bring over while she cleaned. I never liked the way the house smelled after she left, she always left a trail of cigarette stench behind.

My parents told me that the housekeeper was the one who found Debbie. Everyone was skeptical, everyone wanted a scapegoat. The housekeeper's prints were on the gun and the whole family suspected that she was involved, if not responsible. I don't know what came of it all, but I know she was never charged. I know on that day I blamed the housekeeper. In my 8-year old mind, it was easier to accept a murder than to accept that one of my heroes had just committed suicide.

I look back on that day and I still feel sad inside. I grieve for my mom and the loss of her friend. I grieve for Debbie and the lonely and secret life that she lived. I found out so many things in later years, things that ruined my image of Debbie and things that shed a lot of light on her death. I choose to remember Debbie as she was to me - a hero, a friend, an integral part of my family. I think that its only fitting that she's buried a few yards away from my brother, and I when I visit his grave I always stop at her tombstone, complete with the picture of a Collie, and I think about that day.

It didn't make much sense to me then, and it doesn't make much sense to me now. I still marvel at the strength of my parents and their decision to tell me the truth. We've experienced a lot of loss in our lives, and I'm convinced the only reason I'm still sane is that we experienced it together.

mom's gone.

whenever my mom would go to her conferences, which happened around once a year, a sense of quiet desperation would hang in the house. the two years that we lived in wyoming, lindsay got to go along to the conferences, which gave her a sense of spiritual as well as biological superiority over candyce and me. we didn't mind so much that she got to go, because "conferences" sounded boring, just like a long long church day with louder music. but we envied her so much because of one thing: she got mom, and we got stranded.
which is exactly it felt like. living in a mobile home in the middle of barbed-wire fields with no mom for a week felt like you could do anything and nobody would care, which was awful. we loved our dad but he was the funny parent and the last resort when we were really bad parent, and he was the dad. he tried hard, and me and candyce knew it, but terrible things still happened.
the first year, we started off mom's absence in the usual way: we cried our eyes out. but dad had a few bribes up his sleeve and took us to the grocery store (the only one in town) and let us each pick out our own box of sugar cereal. my mom was an extremely health-conscious person, much to our dismay. we never had soda or sugary juice or crackers with orange cheese in the middle or those pretzel sticks that you dipped in frosting, and the only time we ate chips was when people in our church gave us 12 bags of nacho cheese doritos, which we hated by bag 3 but had to keep eating because we couldn't waste.
but whenever my mom left for a period of several days, me and my sisters were allowed to get our own box of sugar cereal, cereal that was so sugary it made our stomaches hurt and reminded us of cartoons on saturday morning and helped us get up in the morning because even though there was no mom to kiss our heads, there was a bowl full of sugar cereal waiting to be eaten. we always got horrible kinds, me and candyce especially. cereal in the shape of chocolate chip cookies and cinnamon rolls, cereal that turned the milk to chocolate milk (which we also never drank), which was like a double treat, and cereal that we picked out ourselves and that nobody else could touch, because it was special. because mom was gone.
this year, the first year in wyoming, dad bent over backwards to stop our sniffling, because mom was going to be gone for a whole week: he let us pick out t.v. dinners to eat. we had never seen anything so exotic in our lives--there were little compartments for all the different little foods! and there was always, always dessert! and there were t.v. dinners just for kids, kids like us with no moms, with penguins on the front and brownies with rainbow sprinkles (which i loved) and corn and chicken nuggets in the shape of other things like dinosaurs, which was so cool.
this kind of exciting food would get me and candyce through the long, boring day of being good and doing chores without the threat of moms punishment. we amused ourselves the best we could, and longed for the time to come where we could eat our exotic t.v. dinners. i even think my dad let us actually watch t.v. while we ate them. it was the best time ever, and the best brownie with rainbow sprinkles ever, and dad was the best dad ever because mom would never let us do this.
and then it happened.
the next day, me and candyce came down with the flu like we had never experienced. we threw up our beautiful t.v. dinners, the food no longer neat and compartmentalized, and we threw up our sugar cereal that was supposed to make missing mom easier and we threw up things that we couldn't even remember eating, but it just kept coming. my dad came home at lunch time and immediately went out and bought us some 7-up, which we couldn't even appreciate as soda because we couldn't keep that down either. we laid on our beds in our room and shivered and missed mom more than we ever had.
our poor dad. he was ill prepared to care for 2 little girls with serious cases of the flu, and his only cure (7-up) didn't seem to be working. and so he resorted to depserate measures. he called the church ladies.
every day and for most of the nights when he was busy pastoring, my dad had different church ladies take care of us. we hadn't lived in cody that long, and so candyce and i didn't know any of these ladies, we just knew that they were old, they had a different smell about them, they sat on the couch and watched t.v. shows in the middle of the day, and they were definetly not mom.

it was a traumatic week, but we got better before mom and lindsay got home. we begged mom not to go away again, and we tried to convey how terrible the week was without her. the church ladies watched t.v. in the middle of the day! and gave us meatloaf when our stomaches hurt! but she just laughed and kissed our heads and checked out foreheads and told us we were fine and that we should go play outside. we sighed, disappointed that she didn't realize that we almost died without her, but secure in the fact that she was home again, and everything would be back to normal. which it was, except for the fact that i didn't eat chicken nuggets again for a whole year.

Dolphins meant freedom.

There seems to be a curious trend of "Wyoming memoirs", and seeing as I am not one to dissapoint, here goes.

Most of the time, I am a fairly "aware" person. I have this sense about me, where I can usually tell what people are thinking, feeling, about to say, or about to do. I like to be as perceptive as possible in a world where things always seem to be slightly blurred by numerous things or events that surround our lives. There are, however, times in my life where this principal has been completely abandoned. Wyoming was one of those times.
Looking back, I realize that I was probably one of the strangest kids I knew. But at the time, I thought every kid owned a ferret and had the weekly chore of checking every corner of the house for ferret poo, and I thought everyone knew that there was nothing better, than to explore the bull-dozed houses hidden in the fields behind their own homes. In a state where cowboys and ghost towns are the norm, these things just made sense.
When I think of our time in Wyoming, the colors orange, brown, grey and baby blue come to mind. Let me explain. For almost my entire life, I process in manners that make the most sense to me. Colors bring on certain emotions and when I think back on a time that brings on one particulare emotion, I almost immediately have that color in my mind. Orange, brown and grey are probably the most obvious. Not only were those the very colors of the landscape (and most of the housing facilities)I also associate these uninteresting colors with stifled feelings of desperation. Individually, these colors (orange, brown and grey)have very different emotional affiliations, but clumped all together, this is what I feel. Stifled desperation. But baby blue is another story. baby blue gave me hope.
Being a chubby, outspoken, homeschooled pastors-daughter in a land of rodeos and spurs, I just didn't fit. But I was desperate to fit. I tried wearing cowgirl boots, but the pink tweety-bird sneakers on sale at wal-mart just made sense. I tried being like my older, cooler sister, but really, I just loved being my own, obnoxious self. I tried burying myself in books, like my clever second-oldest sister, but books just did not satisfy my exploding immagination. But I was desperate to to find my place.
And one day, I found it.
We lived in a creaky modular home, which appeared to have been dropped hap-hazardly into an open field behind the church, and accross from the video store. I cannot think of one place in Wyoming where not a mile exists without there being a barbed-wire fence. And our yard was no exception. In the beginning of our Wyoming days, I dared not explore the untamed lands beyond that fence. I mean, there was no need. we had everything we needed in our backyard. we had the trampoline.
However, my curiosity could not be controlled. I remember watching as our dog (Apache-because she has a "patch" over her right eye)lept over the fence like a flying reindeer or something, and I remember being annoyed that i had to seperate the barbed-wire to climb through. I wanted to leap.
On the other side of the fence, was another fence. There was a good 15 feet seperating the two fences, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you, but heaven was in those 15 feet. At least, heaven to a chubby, outspoken homeschooled pastors-daughter who just didn't fit in. At one point, there must have been a raging creek that flowed through the two fences. It resembled something of a war-trench, with its steep edges and soft, sloping floor. Void of water, It was filled with sand, consistantly damp, and always clean. nobody knew this magical trench existed. nobody, but me. And it was my oasis.
I remember one time, as a little girl, my parents must have taken us to the beach (maybe california, maybe mexico, maybe florida)and as we strolled the peaceful scene, we were able to witness a sand-castle building contest. Everything (at the time) was enormous and lifelike and bursting with magic! I had no idea sand could look like this. and it was exciting.
There was one "sand-castle" that stuck out to me imparticular. It was a picture of freedom, of beauty passion and awe. It was a dolphin. but not just any dolphin, no. It was the most majestic creature I had ever seen, bursting from the sand like it wasn't sand at all, but a vast, rolling ocean. The dolphin, accompanied by its jovical co-horts was, obviously, having the time of its life (and i swear its eyes were sparkling) If this sand dolphin had a color, it would have been baby blue. It just made sense.
So, the next logical step, after having discovered the magical trench, was to re-create that same scene. Everyday that summer I had the same routine: grab my most loyal pet ferret (Belle) grab a snack, treck the field, climb the fence, and disappear into my imagination. and it was always Dolphins. because dolphins meant freedom. I made sense with dolphins.
It was always the same scene: dolphins leaping out of the water, causing a ripple of waves on all sides. In all reality, come to think of it, the dolphin resembled more of a beached whale, because it certainly wasn't leaping, and it certainly didn't have any dolphin friends, playfully following along. no. come to think of it, if a stranger had happened to walk by while I was creating this scene, their response probably would have been along the lines of:
" why are you building a dead fish out of dirt? and why is your ferret wearing a leash?"
But to me, it was the most glorious leaping bottle-nosed dolphin I had ever seen. And in my mind, it was baby blue. the color of peace, of joy, of purity, and hope. This dolphin offered me respite in a world of mass confusion.
At the end of the day, I would carefully smoothe the sand over again, so as to fool anyone who happened to wander by, that there was not, in fact, any sand dolphin building going on. Noboby would every know the real magic of this trench.
Looking back, I see our life in Wyoming as nothing but a serious of amusing, if not slighty painful memories of a homeschooled pastors family of 5. I hear stories, told back and forth throughout the family, of things I must have stored away, never having meant to be remembered. And I can laugh now, knowing that our strange time in that strange place has ended, leaving me nothing but the colors orange, brown, grey and baby blue. And to this day, baby blue makes sense.

When John Wimber ruled the world.

It was an awkward time for the Strannigan family.
I was in junior high, living in a town full of cowboys and cowgirls and juvenile deliquents. We lived in an orange and yellow trailer on the church property. We had two ferrets, a cat, a slough of ill-behaved dogs. There were two horses and a mule that lived in the pasture in front of the trailer, and while they weren't our horses I pretended they were. There was one large and beautiful horse - Big Red was his name and he was my favorite. I learned how to mount him bareback and on days that I finished my school early, I would go and ride Big Red. I think my solo horseback rides were some of my favorite times in Wyoming; it was really the only time I ever felt at home there.

The first summer we spent in Wyoming, I went on a road trip with my mom and 3 other ladies from church. Wyoming was a spiritually dark and stagnant place and my mom always struggled with feeling stifled. She was judged for her charismatic leanings; there were few that understood this type of Christianity. But there were a few ladies who understood, and my mom packed them into our minivan and drove us to Anaheim, California. This was in the glory days of the Anaheim Vineyard, when John Wimber ruled the world and before everything got weird.

I don't think I knew what I was signing up for when I decided to go to the conference, but it was a chance to get out of Cody and that was good enough. We drove across the U.S. and it was my first time seeing Las Vegas. I was so enamored by the lights and the glitz and the glamor; it was such a far cry from the barren wastelands of Cody. I was excited and happy. I didn't mind that I was with a bunch of overweight married women (except for my teeny mother, of course), I was trekking across the country and I was going to the Vineyard. And God was going to speak to me.

My memory of the conference is spotty, at best. I remember that it wasn't at all what I expected. I remember the laughing, and the barking, and all those other charismatic outburts. I hated them. I remember Jackie Pullinger speaking and I loved her. In the midst of a charismatic conundrum, here was a woman who followed after Christ. Everything she said made sense and I was moved by every story and every word.

And, lastly I remember walking out of the conference. I think I was going to lunch. An asian girl - maybe early 20's - approached me out of the blue me and asked if she could pray for me. To this day, I don't know why she chose me. I always assumed it was God that prompted her. But she laid hands on me and she prayed and she prayed and she prayed. My mom was there, watching and praying. I think this girl expected greatness. I think she wanted a miracle of some sort; she wanted me to fall over or shake or laugh or bark or cry. I think I cried a little, mostly from the shame of disappointing her. But no such thing happened, I had no outward "manifestations" of the Holy Spirit. The girl said beautiful things to me and spoke truth in my life - I was truly grateful for the encounter. But after an extended prayer session, it was evident that I wasn't going to do anything exciting. So, I simply said thank you and proceeded to lunch.

On Sunday, we packed up and headed for home. It was Superbowl sunday, and my team - the San Francisco 49ers - were in the Superbowl. I was in the last stages of a particularly tomboy phase of life and I was THRILLED that my team made it to the big game. I was young and I was poor, but I desperately wanted to show my support. I attempted to make my own 49ers shirt by crudely drawing the numbers '4' and '9' with a sharpie on a white t-shirt. One of the ladies in our little troupe saw my haphazard shirt and had pity on me. I woke up on Superbowl Sunday to a brand new 49ers T shirt on my pillow. It was ugly as sin and 8 sizes too big, but I loved it anyway. I wore that shirt with pride, all the way from California to Wyoming.

Needless to say, it was one of the stranger weekends of my life. A 13 year old girl and some 40 year old well-meaning women who were all looking for God in Anaheim, CA. I think I found God in a 49ers T-shirt.

homeschooled

the older i got, the more i realized that homeschoolers were wierd. socially awkward, prone to frizzy, wavy hair, white stirrup pants and large glasses, they frightened me with their pessimistic social commentary and a lack of knowledge of everyday things like pogs and teenage mutant ninja turtles. but the truth was, me and my sisters were also homeschooled, and in many ways we blended in seamlessly.
we too had lots of free time for various activities. i didn't have a childhood bursting with extra activities or lessons or sports, although we did all of those things. our typical days consisted of this:
wake up time.
doing our chores while mom went on a walk time.
bible time.
school work time.
lunch time.
a little bit of school work time.
whatever we wanted to do time.
dad coming home and dinner time.
family time.

depending on where we were living and how much money we had, sometimes there would be an activity in the afternoons like gymnastics or tai kwon do or ice skating or softball, or sometimes at nights we would learn how to make apple dolls at the library. wednesday was always awana night at the big baptist church, where we went and memorized verses to get jewels in our crowns and run around on different colors of tape, shrieking when some boy popped a balloon on purpose, which was annoying and exhilerating.
saturdays were do whatever we wanted days, and sundays were church days all day long.

homeschoolers were very religious, like us, and they were smart, like us. but they were afraid of things, and we weren't. they were political from young ages, but we never knew what they were talking about, really. most of them only knew other homsechoolers who were extremely similar to them. we knew lots of people because our mom and dad knew lots of people, and we were always with them. also, we were allowed to watch cartoons.

sometimes, all the homeschoolers in cody wyoming would get together and rent out the local roller skate rink. i think it must have been during a weekday morning, because everybody else would be in school and we would be assured of privacy and cheap prices. the roller skating rink had carpet everywhere, on the cubbys and the seats and the floor, except for on the rink, of course. on a good day, the shoes fit fine and didn't make my ankles hurt, and it felt so, so exotic to be on a smooth floor with loud music and flashing lights, my long hair blowing in the breeze that i was creating because i was going so fast. all of those ice skating lessons were worth it, because i was one of the best.

sometimes the guy who owned the rink would stop the music and come out on the floor with a big stick and two poles, and we would play the limbo. on skates. it was so, so hard, but i always thought i might be able to win. one time i was in the last four, but i wasn't good at gymnastics at all and so i always fell on my bottom near the end. my friend ashley, who was homeschooled but not totally homeschooled because she did gymnastics, was really good. she could do it so that her body was parallel to her skates, and she would slide through, holding on the ankles of her roller skates. i felt like i was friends with a celebrity. she was also one of the prettiest homeschool girls, and her hair was long and brown and shiny.

the guy who owned the rink and the lady who worked there with him charged us five cents to get a cup of water, which kind of outraged us. me and my sisters never really drank soda when we were kids, unless we were on vacation or had saved up allowance money or people came over for dinner and we had pizza, and so we always asked for water. skating fast is hard work, and the roller rink people took advantage of us. but there was nothing we could do, we had to work with the system, and we had to ask our mom for five cents, which was ridiculous. she didn't seem to mind, though.

one time during homeschool skate they played a song by geoff moore and the distance called "i believe in evolution". it was a popular song for contemporary christians, with a catchy beat and positive lyrics: "i believe in evolution, the changing of the heart, the renewing of the mind." i think it was about how god changes people, and other good things like that. some of the homeschool moms didn't hear all of the words, however, and obviously weren't contemporary enough to know that geoff moore and his band were christians, evangelical ones, and so they got really upset and had the song turned off, right in the middle. me and my sisters were singing along and we felt so cool because we could skate fast and knew the words to a good song. but the song turned off and the moms murmered to each other about "songs that talk about evolution", and we were annoyed because we knew it wasn't talking about monkeys, in fact the song made fun of people who believed in monkeys being related to humans.

but what could we do? they were homeschoolers, and so were we. we had to work with the system.