December 1999

Dear Family,
This letter describes the homes I lived in during my life:

I. Childhood -
A. Spokane, Washington - moved at age one week. I don't remember this one!

B. Bellingham, Washington a 2 story grey house with wooden siding, a big unfenced yard on the corner of a block that sat on a steep hill leading down the the bay. Apparently, so I heard, cars occasionally careened down that hill and into the yard. A dangerous location! I remember a large dining room, small kitchen and built-in hutch opening into both the dining room and kitchen. a steep squared off stair leading to bedroom upstairs. Anne Marie and I shared a room with beds under the sloping eves. (funny story about grandma). We moved away from that house when I was only three. Oddly enough, many years later, we were driving around in Bellingham (I had been there for a summer camp) - we pulled up by the house to look it over, for old times' sake. The owner stuck her head out the window, and said hello, asked us what we were doing. My dad told her we had rented there years ago. She asked, "Are you the Johnsons? You were the best tenants I ever had!" She invited us in, to look the old place over. It seemed much smaller then than when I was a child.

C. Portland, Oregon - this home is really the first I remember very well. It sat at the edge of Portland then, our street paved and filled with tract homes, but to the east and south were farms, fields and remnants of forests. It was a fun place to live, perhaps dangerous, but always something to do. We'd pet the horses across the meadow, or wander into the woods, where my friend Linda and I were sure witches lived. We found one's house! Right behind us was a farm with ducks and geese. Down the dirt road was more forest and field--we found a rope we could swing out into the air on. In the other direction was a field and decaying barn, where we sometimes climbed into the rafters. My sister often returned from these sallies with a garter snake or two, great for surprising mom. I was never surprised. I learned not to be, a skill that has stood me in good stead. I liked living there. That is the home we lived in when my brother Ward was born. Mother went to the hospital to have him, but did not return For the longest time! For one thing maternity stays were longer in those days; for another, we had all contracted mumps, so she went to stay next door until we were well.

D. Long Beach, California - 2908 San Francisco Ave. This is the home in which I spent most of my childhood, living there from age 5 to 17. At 17, I left home to go to University, and at the same time my parents sold this house and moved to Yakima, Washington. This was a middle-class home in an average neighborhood of the city. It was stucco, built in the 1940's (I believe) in an area then called the Wrigley District. It was originally white, with white and green striped awnings. At some point my dad painted the house yellow, yet left the awning green and white, which always looked odd to me. The house had a smallish prim front yard, driveway lined with tree roses, leading to a separate garage in the back. The house had 3 bedrooms, 1 bath-quite common in those days-how did we survive with only one bath and 4 women in the house? I don't really remember how we did it, but eventually my folks built an addition to this house which added a mudroom, family room/bedroom and bath. The back yard was huge and great for kids. Before the addition went on, the center of the yard was unbrella'ed with a huge Chinese elm. Great shade for summer. Even after the addition, we had plenty of space for a swing set, clothes line and fruit trees. The house was small by today's standards, yet it had some nice features typical then but hard to find now: hardwood floors, multipaned windows and and ceramic tile in the kitchen and bath. We had lots of pets while living in that house--many cats, several dogs, mice, turtles, rabbits, guinea pigs, even a desert iguana, which would get up on its hind legs and run. Not one of those pets was mine, except a brown-and-white rabbit my neighbor Becky and I found when we were in high school. He was beautiful, and did just fine eating the grass in the back yard. One day, I came home to find Becky and my boyfriend Ron in the back; they had found our poor little rabbit strangled in the board fence. He had tried to push through to Becky's house (behind) at a loose board, but when his head got stuck, he panicked and tried to pull back, strangling himself in the process. He was buried in the back, housed in a shoebox, company for a whole host of other family animals back there. The only other animal I remember with affection was Tiger, a striped male cat, who often slept at the foot of my bed. His demise was very strange-you won't believe it, but I saw it with my own eyes. One summer evening, I came around the house to find a circle of cats watching something--it was Tiger and a wild jackrabbit fighting viciously. The rabbit didn't surprise me--they often came up from the river, just one block over. But the way the spectators acted, as if they were watching a wrestling match. I found Tiger later with a serious bite through her tail. It became in infected, and finally killed her.