Growing Up with a Play House, Homemade Bread, and a Killer Swing Set

Last night I dreamt of the house on Woodford Street. And I woke up craving a cinnamon roll. Blame my upbringing.

My Gramma was always baking something—apple pie from our own tree, rhubarb crisp from the garden, bread without a recipe. And cinnamon rolls. Oh my goodness, the cinnamon rolls.

Gramma was a baker without a recipe. She’d haul out this big Rubbermaid tub and toss in flour and eggs, sugar and yeast, each in its own turn and heft—a pinch here and a handful there. Measuring cups were for amateurs. She was a one-woman bread machine, kneading and punching, shaping and panning.

My grandparents raised my brother, Ken, and me in that house on Woodford Street. It’s my home base still—the homing beacon of my heart.

Out back, behind the white Craftsman with green trim and maple trees in front, sat a little yellow playhouse, no bigger than a walk-in closet. Gramma stocked it with rummage-sale finery: dresses and hats, gloves and shoes, all purchased for twenty-five cents or less.

And among them was the crown jewel: a pair of alligator pumps.

They were elegant. Sublime. The most beautiful shoes I had ever or will ever see. They didn’t fit me, of course. But I stuffed them with tissue and clomped around in them, awkward and determined, waiting for the day my feet would grow into my dreams.

Being a kid in my grandparents’ world was pretty sweet. We had the best backyard of anyone I knew. Possibly of anyone, anywhere.

There was the swing set—welded together from scavenged pipes, Gramma’s bright ideas, and Grampa’s skill. If we pumped hard enough, Ken and I could almost tip the whole thing over.

There was the fire pit: a six-foot tractor tire filled with sand. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, our feet a little too close to the flames, aware—just enough—of danger.

There was the ice rink: One winter, after I saw the Olympics on TV and decided I wanted to be a skater, Grampa built an ice rink under the apple tree. Plastic sheeting, a garden hose, and nights cold enough to freeze it solid. Magic.

My grandparents had ingenuity. They also had what all grownups seemed to have: choice and knowledge. They could do whatever they wanted, and they knew everything. Being a grownup was going to be awesome.

But the day my feet grew into those alligator pumps never came.

By the time I became an adult myself, the little yellow playhouse and its treasures had been packed away as sweet, trivial memories. I had bigger shoes to fill. A bigger life to lead—far from Missoula and the white house with green trim.

But it seems as though I chased the perfect-fitting alligator pumps all my life.

Somewhere along the way, I began to feel less-than. It was as though, in the real world, being raised without parents was a grave shortcoming on my part. I carried on my back the secret knowledge that my parents had abandoned me, and that I was irreparably flawed.

If Gramma was a baker without a recipe, then I was a woman without operating instructions.

I clomped through my adult life with naïve recklessness—ill-fitting, uncertain, but stubbornly optimistic. I carried the confidence of that kid who pushed the swing set to its limits, believing nothing truly bad could happen.

Of course, bad things did happen. People died. Lovers came and went. Babies weren’t born. Of my marriage, little good survived.

I didn’t see the cumulative wreckage until much later. My feet had been too close to the fire for too long. I was running on hope, optimism, and an unreasonable amount of booze…

…until there was nothing left to do but make amends.

Through those amends, I sought to right what I’d made wrong, forgive the wrongs done to me, and seek the shape of my most authentic self. I wouldn’t be defined by my mistakes or by the mistakes of my parents.

I let go of a life that never properly fit, and found the turn and heft of my own heart…

…one awkward, determined step at a time.

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