Free Funyuns for the Younguns!

On a Greyhound bound for Pasco, a kind stranger offered me and my big brother a giant bag of Funyuns. Children of the 70s, we grew up with the specter of tainted Halloween candy, so we only took, and ate, the chips after confirming the bag had been unopened. The stranger was a fellow passenger on that bus ride from Spokane to Pasco, Washington. He was college-aged, but back then all I registered was his kind face and generosity. He said that we were the nicest brother and sister he’d ever seen.

Yeah, that wasn’t always the case. Garth and I fought like cats and dogs at times. My favorite backseat pastime was yelping in faux-pain to get him in trouble with Mom. She fell for it a couple of times before reciting the story of the Boy That Cried Wolf. I deserved more punishment than she doled out.

At times, Garth and I were sent on a Greyhound to Spokane to spend time with our grandparents. I think it was Mom’s way of wriggling in a break without kids, while also remaining in touch with the other side of the family. You see, Grandma and Grandpa Riley were Dad’s parents, and truth be told, which I felt hell-bound to crow at the top of my lungs, if I was to go on a visit, I’d rather it was to see Dad, not them. I didn’t understand the expense and time involved to travel from Pasco to southern California back then. I wasn’t sensitive to the fact that my grandparents probably didn’t want to hear my complaints.

If Mom had been honest from the get-go, she might've told us that she needed a weekend to herself, would we mind going to see the grandparents? I’m certain I’d have given her an earful, told her what she already knew, I wanted to live with Dad. If she needed time to herself, I could give it to her by the year-full.

Keeping that truth to myself would’ve made life better for everyone. I was angry, though, and energetic. I remember being so frustrated one time that I dismantled my full-sized canopy bed and dresser and moved them into the hallway. I was running away, dammit, and I wanted to bring my princess furniture with me.

It had to be rough on Mom. I’m more like my dad than her. I have his sense of humor and quick to boil temper when I sense someone’s wronged me. She plotted often to send me to boarding school, but her boyfriend at the time, later her life partner, said, “You can’t afford boarding school, Sue.” Which was true.

When the perfect report cards came in, my mother shook her head. “Just look at these glowing comments from your teachers. Why aren’t you like that at home?”

“I use up all my nice at school,” I said. Which was true. Often, I came home with a screaming headache. They were migraines, but I didn’t know that word then. I would close my eyes against the pain and wake up with a head that was tender to the touch.

As an adult, others have told me I shouldn’t judge myself harshly. I’ve learned to meditate and send love and compassion back to my younger self with some effect. Those times don’t hurt as much today.

There are two memories that still haunt me from my childhood. Three, actually, but I will not share the third. The first was of my Grandma Riley. She stood in the kitchen and shook her head saying, “When I pictured a granddaughter, she was nothing like you.” I was a disappointment. I guess the lack of filter is a genetic trait and I was staring at the origins of that DNA. It took a long while to get over that comment.

The second was listening through my bedroom wall to my parents fight. I heard them argue over who would get custody of Garth in the divorce. Shouts. Threats. Pleading. During that fight, my name was never mentioned. How does a kid take that? A budding fiction writer, I rewrote this scene in my head so I could go on. In the revamp, Mom assumed she would get custody of me because I was the youngest and her only daughter. Dad assumed I was strong enough to remain true to my spirit no matter where I lived. I told the lie to myself over and over but it never fully stuck.

It's been my goal as a mother to not permanently scar my kids. I have messed up and apologized in real-time as it’s happened. There are probably other memories that will bubble to the surface for my kids as they continue through life. I promise now, no matter what, to own up to my actions.

When we spent time in Spokane, Grandma always cooked amazing meals. Grandpa drove us out to The Office; a property where he stored his contractor equipment and old cars and such. My favorite visits were when Auntie Joyce came over with my cousins Blaine and Kyle. We’d run amok, pound on the player piano in the basement. Jump in Grandma’s piles of denim jeans, and sometimes use the pickax to slam away at the basalt on the other side of the sauna. Grandpa told us we were adding value to his property, and square footage. Looking back, I can’t believe we survived.

As Grandpa dropped us off at the bus depot in downtown Spokane, Garth and I looked for two seats together for the long ride to Pasco. It was a milk run of tiny towns and by the midpoint, Ritzville, I felt as dried out as the sagebrush landscape out the windows. Garth and I were closest on those journeys from Point A to Point B. We were the only constant in each other’s lives. That’s the sweetness that stranger sensed. It wasn’t so much kindness as desperation to feel anchored to something that wasn’t going anywhere.

I’d never heard of Funyuns, but by the time we emptied onto the Pasco bus depot, the bag was empty. Our sour, salty breath was the only evidence we’d accepted, and devoured, food from a stranger.

Even before the car doors were locked, I told Mom. I don’t remember taking the Greyhound to Grandma’s again after that.