The Day I Lost My Innocence

I’ve previously mentioned that my siblings and I suffered physical, emotional and verbal abuse - mostly from our own mother. However, that abuse never prepared me for a new kind of abuse, a kind I had never even heard of and had no idea was classified as abuse. To be honest, none of the abuse I experienced as a child felt like abuse at the time - it was just the way life was, and it was expected that I would take it and deal with it.

Because most of the abuse we endured came at the hands of our mom, I never thought our “dad” could do anything terrible to us. And I didn't consider anything he DID do to be really all that bad.

If you have been reading my blogs, you know my siblings and I were adopted when I was 8 years old. After the adoption, I was always looking for ways to truly feel like part of the family.

About a year after the adoption, I thought that moment had finally come! Every morning before chores, we would all sit as a family to watch the news, mostly to see what the weather had in store since we would be working in the elements. I remember perfectly how things changed on this particular wintry day. We were all watching the news like normal when my “dad” saw I was cold and put his blanket over me, so we were both covered by it. After a few minutes of sitting under the blanket together and warming up, he took my hand in his. What happened next shocked me and made me feel weird and a little wrong.

He put my hand on his penis. Then, he proceeded to use my hand while masturbating. My hand was under a blanket on my “dad’s” penis, which I had never seen, let alone felt, before! When he was finished, there was weird, slimy goo on my hand. At the time, I wasn’t aware of what that was. It was his semen. There wasn’t a lot, so he kind of wiped it on his underwear, put his penis away and then took the blanket off of us. It was time to get dressed and start our morning chores.

This was the first of many times this happened over the next year. I never told anyone. A part of me finally did feel different - special. I now had this secret that connected only me to my “dad” and helped secure my spot as “daddy’s little girl.” I was 9 years old and had officially lost my innocence.

Having a Cow

Growing up on a farm is definitely hard, and it takes a lot out of anyone, especially a child. But there are some good parts about it, too. One of the coolest things about living on a dairy farm is that there are cows everywhere! Plus, new calves are born regularly. 

As dairy farmers, we would keep only the female calves and would send all the bulls to the Marlette stockyard, where they would be sold. We would also send females to the stockyard if they were no longer producing enough milk. Running a dairy farm is all about having milk, so we couldn’t keep those that didn’t produce, even if we liked them.

Speaking of liking cows, we would give every new calf a name from a baby book. It was fun to come up with names and mark them down in our records. Eventually, all of us kids had a cow named after us, too! It was incredibly cool to share a name with a cow. Since Fred was obviously a boy, and we got rid of all the male calves, the cow with his name was actually Frederica. 

There was this huge chart where we would keep track of the cows that were fertilized to monitor when they should have their babies. A veterinarian would come out to the farm on a regular basis to help keep track of the cows and make sure there weren’t any complications. He could also let us know if a cow was going to have twins. Usually, if a cow had twins, both calves were sent to the stockyard to be auctioned off, no matter what their sexes were. Generally, a calf that was born as a twin didn’t produce enough milk to keep. 

However, we did get to keep some of the twins. Tracy and I loved when we got to keep twins! One particular set was born early, and they were so tiny that they both fit in a wheelbarrow together. We kept them around because they were both females and because they were so tiny we wanted to nurture them to see if they would be good milk producers when they got older. They actually turned into some of our best cows, but when they were babies they were just super cute! They were so tiny they could slip right under the gates that kept in the others, so we created a straw pen that prevented them from escaping. I remember spending a lot of time hanging out with those little girls because, for a while, it was touch-and-go as to whether or not they would survive. 

It was always amazing to see new life when a calf was born. I’m sure it would gross out some people, but it was always awesome to experience a birth and to be there to help deliver a calf if the mom was having trouble. We would put chains around the ankles of the calf while it was still inside the mom, and then we would pull. If the mom was standing up, we would have to be extra careful and have someone to help make sure the calf didn’t fall to the ground and get hurt when it came out. There were also times when a calf would start to come earlier than we had planned and we wouldn't have time to get the chains. We would just have to hold onto the legs and pull. That mostly happened when one of us kids saw a cow going into labor and wanted to be the first one to see the new baby and bring it into the world without the adults knowing. Some calves were born with a lot of goop in their mouths and noses, so we would have to pull all of that out. Sometimes, we even had to do a sort of mouth-to-mouth with a calf. But the minute the little baby mooed, we knew it was going to be OK. The miracle of a baby being born is just magical,

and it made all the issues of farm life seem insignificant for that brief moment. 

Just Beat It

As a kid, I thought my siblings and I had a pretty normal life, and I believe others thought so, too. At least from the outside looking in, it seemed to be normal. My mom would beat us if we lied or lost something, but, “Didn’t all moms do this?” Since she began beating us when we were very young, it seemed normal when other adults treated us the same way. This was all we had ever known, and so we thought that every kid must have been experiencing the same things in their own homes.

After moving to the farm and developing routines, we would get beaten or punished if things didn’t go according to routine. It seemed that Fred would get the most beatings and punishments, but that was mostly due to the fact that he would talk back to the adults more frequently and the adults absolutely hated that. We were also constantly told to respect our elders, which meant we always had to abide by what the adults said. Fred sometimes would act all high and mighty around Tracy and me and tell us to respect our elders because he was a whopping 14 months older than us. It was that kind of language that landed him in harms way more often than not.

But none of us were immune to trouble. Even the smallest lie could result in a beating. Our tiny single-wide trailer wasn’t the most well-built house in the land, so things tended to break pretty easily. Once, the toilet paper holder in the kids' bathroom broke when Fred was in there and was kind of hanging on by a thread. We knew it was broken, but we were all afraid to tell our parents, so we just acted like it had never happened. Eventually, they noticed it was broken and asked who had done it. No one wanted to fess up, so we acted like we had no idea it was broken and no idea when it had happened. Because no one would take the blame or point a finger, we all received beatings with a wooden paddle. We were each hit at least 10 times on our butts. It was not the first time we had received beatings like this, which was why we all had been afraid to say anything. Unfortunately, our silence meant we all paid the price.

We went to the flea market up by our grandparents' house often in the summer months. While there, our mom would come across new paddles and would ask us which we would like best for our next round of beatings. There were plain wooden ones and wooden ones with holes. Mom liked to point out that the ones with holes would actually hurt more because they could catch wind before hitting us, so of course, no matter our preference, she would end up purchasing one of those. But she wasn't limited to paddles when beating us. She would use basically anything lying around the house if she couldn’t get to the paddle she had bought. So there were times we were beaten with a fly-swatter or belt along with our chosen wooden paddle.

One time, our mom misplaced her knitting needles and insisted one of us kids had taken them and needed to return them immediately. It turned into this frenzy, with all of us searching the house frantically to locate them so we wouldn’t get beaten, because we knew that was coming next. After searching for a while, we still hadn't located the damn needles, so we were all lined up, and we prepared to get our beatings. If we knew a beating was coming, then we might be sneaky enough to pad our pants with a shirt or something inconspicuous so it wouldn’t hurt, or at least wouldn't hurt as badly. We all got hit another 10 or so times. Shortly after receiving our beatings, we located the knitting needles, and they were exactly where Mom had left them. She never apologized for beating us, even when she had to have known she was in the wrong. That’s just the way it was in our household. You got a beating and understood that it was always your fault.

When Tracy and I were still relatively young, I’d say around 6 or 7, we were doing one of the “easy” jobs on the farm. We were holding the cows' tails so the adults doing the milking wouldn't get slapped. Suddenly, the tail Tracy was holding slipped out of her little hands and hit our “dad” in the face. He was not impressed by this so he took the tail and swatted her HARD across the face. She had a nice-sized gash across her cheek for several days and had to go to school looking like that. I don’t remember anyone asking her about that mark.

Looking back, I realize that our “dad” rarely ever beat us or made us afraid that we would get a beating for doing something wrong. He always seemed to be the more nurturing parent. However, there was one time when he got really pissed at Tracy and me. We had to have been pretty young, like 6 or 7, when we thought it would be fun to stand on the roof of his car. Apparently, this car was his pride and joy - some kind of fancy make or something - and he was NOT happy to look up and see us. He’s a big man, over 300 pounds, and we had rarely seen him move quickly. However, that day, he ran pretty fast and chased us around our trailer until he finally caught us and gave us each a good beating. Outside of that one instance, though, I don’t remember him ever being the enforcer of beatings. If he did seem unhappy with something any of us had done, he would just threaten to tell our mother. No one wanted that!

Our new "grandpa", who never even cared to learn our names, loved to beat us and took joy and pleasure in finding new ways to hurt us. He didn’t use the paddles that our parents bought. Most of the time, he would just use his own strength and force over us. I remember one specific time I was on the receiving end of his abuse - and it was not fun. Usually, it was Fred whom he targeted, because Fred would talk back to him and our new "grandma" a lot. Our "grandpa's" favorite way to punish us was to slam our heads into a cinder block wall. In this instance, I was slammed into the corner of the wall so that the sharp, protruding portion went into my head. It hurt a lot! Since I had long hair, it wasn’t noticeable, but there is still a small bump on my head from when this happened. Fred got his head slammed into the same cinder block wall or another wall countless times by this man. As we got older, our "grandpa" would try to find new ways to hurt Fred. One of the worst things he ever did was hold Fred up by his neck and choke him! Fred couldn’t really breathe, but our "grandpa" didn’t care. He was mad that, once again, Fred was mouthing off to him. After that particular incident, Fred had actual hand-prints around his neck! I don’t remember the timing of when that happened, but I think it was over a summer break. All of us kids tended to get in more trouble and fight more frequently over the longer breaks from school because we were expected to do so much more of the farm-work during these breaks.

We were constantly walking around in a state of fear, wondering what we would do wrong next to incite another round of abuse - be it physical, verbal or emotional. Looking back on all that we went through and all that had to have been apparent as abuse, it’s a wonder our school-teachers never got involved to call the authorities. I know, that today there would definitely be more questions and concerns from teachers and school staff. It just goes to show how much things have changed in the past 20 years.

The Perils of Farm Life

When you work and live on a farm, you’re bound to experience some hardships. Most of them seem manageable, but there are some that are so bad they land you in the doctor's office or emergency room. I already shared the story of getting kicked in the nose when I was 5, but that was not the last time I would end up in the emergency room.

Being on the farm gave us kids ample access to things that were dangerous - and some things that really shouldn’t have been dangerous but that we made dangerous in our quest to make things interesting.

When I was 9 or 10, Fred, Tracy and I all decided it would be fun to stick soybeans in our ears. However, I was the only one that really stuck them in there deep. Fred and Tracy kind of placed them on the edges of their ears, so when our parents called us for something they shook them out. I wasn’t able to get the beans out of my ears and we were afraid of being late - so I just ran with them in there hoping they would eventually fall out. Well they never did.

A couple of days later when my mom asked me a question I said “What?” one too many times and she got mad at me asking what my problem was. Fred and Tracy were kind of snickering of to the side so she snapped at them, too, wondering “What is so funny?” They proceeded to tell her that I had soybeans stuck in my ears. Mom looked into my ear and tried to get it out only to realize it wasn’t coming out and was concerned because it looked as though it was sprouting inside my ear. So off to the emergency room I went with Mom!

Once we got to the emergency room the doctor asked what ear had the soybean and I replied “Both” at the same time my mom was saying “The left ear.” At that moment, my mom looked at me, completely perplexed. When it was one ear it was bad enough, but to be stupid enough to get beans stuck in both ears...! The doctor tried a couple of different methods before finally settling on a suction device that was able to break the beans free and suck them out of my ears. Once they were out, it was clear to see that they had, indeed, sprouted and started to grow inside my ear!

I was not the only farm casualty. When Tracy was about 8, she was playing around with a milker and stuck it on her face. That may sound innocent enough, but the milkers had a pretty good suction on them - kind of like a vacuum. So next thing we knew, she had a quarter-sized mark on her face! The mark looked kind of like a bruise, and she had to go to school looking like that. We all still kind of laughed because she should have known better by this time. We had stuck the milkers to ourselves previously, but only for a few seconds. This time, she had left it on too long and had to pay the price.

A few years later when Tracy was 10 years old, she had another incident. After morning chores we usually had a coffee break, where we would eat some kind of sweet treat and drink milk or coffee. Because we were still in the barn, we didn’t really have seats, so most of the time we would stand around or find an old 5-gallon pail with a lid to sit on. Most of the old pails around the barn were from this strong soap mixture or from acid that was used to clean the milk tank and keep it sterile. Well, one of these pails had some excess acid sitting on top of the lid when Tracy sat down. We had sat on it before and never thought anything about it. However, this time the acid seeped into her pants and through her underwear. Within a few hours, it was apparent that the acid had done some damage. Tracy’s butthole was in a lot of pain, and she had to spread her cheeks for Mom, “Dad” and so many other people to see what was going on. Eventually, she went to a doctor, and they confirmed what we thought had happened. The acid had burned her butthole and was causing intense pain. So the doctor prescribed her a “donut” to sit on, which is basically a small inner tube. She was pretty embarrassed to take the donut to school and sit on it while in class, but it was better than being in pain. She was in fifth grade at this time, so it was not a good time to bring this kind of attention to herself.

When Fred was a kid, and even to this day, he became obsessed with plants and agricultural stuff. He has always had a green thumb and could make anything survive, whereas I would kill all plants. On the farm, he especially got into marigolds and black soybeans. When we would open the pods of soybeans there would be black ones intermingled with the normal white ones. Well, he did an experiment and planted several black ones, and sure enough, we soon had a ton of black soybeans. Even though he truly had a love of black soybeans, he also was insanely obsessed with marigolds and would save the tops of them in Mason jars so he could plant them the next year. I never got the obsession. To me, marigolds smell really bad! He would plant his marigolds around the front of the barn and would be in charge of maintaining them. One summer, when he was 11 or 12, he was especially proud of how his marigolds were doing when it was suddenly jeopardized! There was a thunderstorm rolling in, and our Australian Shepherd, Ace, was not a fan of storms. In fact, he was downright terrified of them. So he went to the place that seemed the safest in this situation - a corner in front of the barn, right on top of Fred’s marigolds. Fred saw this and turned furious! Tracy and I watched as he walked up to Ace and hit him HARD on his stomach. Of course, Ace was not pleased with this treatment and was already terrified of the storm, so he retaliated the only way he knew and bit Fred on his forearm. The teeth went in deep and Fred was bleeding pretty badly. So once again, Mom was off to the emergency room with another child. I can’t remember exactly, but Fred may have received a couple of stitches for two of the cuts that were deeper, but he was mostly just bandaged up and told to keep an eye on it. From that day forward, we all knew to keep our distance from Ace when he was frightened.

A few years later, Fred would be rushed to the hospital again, this time for something that seemed much more severe than a dog bite. By ages 14 and 15, we kids were basically running the farm, but there were still a few things that were best left to the adults because of their dangerous effects. Well, one day Fred went out and wanted to get a jump start on the chores, much like 5-year-old me had the day I was kicked in the face. One of the longest and most tedious jobs was cleaning and sanitizing the milk tank. It had to be kept up to standards that would allow our milk to be picked up and later sold in stores - so that whole soap and acid mix that Tracy had sat on was a very important part of running a dairy farm. Fred started the process of cleaning the tank. It started with a cycle of the heavy-duty sanitizing cleaner, and then the acid would get added and run through its own cycle. Well, apparently he didn’t wait long enough between the cycles or didn’t rinse thoroughly enough before adding the acid. The effects were bad. He inhaled the mixture and immediately started coughing and having difficulty breathing. So off to the emergency room again. It turned out that when he inhaled the chemicals his lung had collapsed! This resulted in him being put on inhalers and getting medical treatments to help him heal from getting these chemicals deep into his system. That was one of the scariest things I ever saw on the farm, and I was pretty worried for Fred.

Each of these short stories shines a little light on farm life and how difficult it really can be. Although not all of these directly relate to the work we did on the farm, they all tie into the dangers of working at such a young age and being around machinery and chemicals.

Master of Disguise

Halloween has always been a favorite holiday of mine. I think the combination of getting free candy and dressing up to be someone else has always appealed to me. As a kid, the candy part was definitely my favorite. I don't think I realized just how much I liked being someone or something besides myself.

You see, as was the case with most things in our childhood, we didn't do Halloween the way most kids did. When we were younger, we would go trick-or-treating with our church group around the neighborhood near the church. But as we got a little older, we were driven to houses by our mom. However, we didn't actually get to go out until after the normal posted trick-or-treating hours because we had to do our nightly chores first. After we did our chores, we would rush to the house and quickly change into costumes, usually the same costumes as the previous year, and then go around to the houses of family and friends to get our candy. The next day, we would go to school thinking we had gotten a lot of candy only to realize that nearly every other kid received twice as much as we did - which made us feel like losers.

My whole childhood I just wanted to feel like I was normal and like I was doing things other kids were doing. Halloween seemed like the perfect opportunity to disguise myself and fit in - even if just for a night. Instead, it simply highlighted how different I was - and not in a good way.

Daddy's Little Helpers

When you're 4 or 5 years old, there aren’t many things you can do to help out around a dairy farm - and there aren't many things you should be expected to do because they just aren't safe. Unfortunately for my siblings and I, life was rarely the way it "should" have been.

In order to have a lucrative farm, things need to be run a certain way. For the first year or so after moving to the farm, we kids weren’t required to do much of the farm work. Instead, our parents and newly acquired grandparents (who lived in a house next to our trailer) would handle most of the day-to-day operations. During the busy months of summer when we also had fields of corn, soybeans, hay and straw to maintain, they would enlist help from some of the other farmers who lived near us.

While the adults worked on the farm, Fred, Tracy and I were in the house with a babysitter. I don’t really remember too much from that time other than we liked her and we looked forward to the time our mom and “dad” would come back to spend time with us. We especially looked forward to seeing our new dad, whom we liked to call the “Tickle Monster” because he loved to tickle us and make us laugh so hard.

After about a year of living in our new house, we started spending more time going to the barn and learning to do chores. Fred started going out before Tracy and me because he was a year older. They wanted to get him started before us so he could show us the ropes. The first thing we were able to help with was sweeping hay. We had to keep the area where we walked clean and keep the hay in front of the cows so they could eat. Along with sweeping the hay, we were tasked with cleaning out the piles of poop from behind the cows by hoeing the poop into a gutter. This job was scarier because cows are big animals that like to kick, but it was one of the jobs we did like more. Our other main task was to hold onto the cows' tails while the adults milked them so the adults wouldn’t get smacked in the face. Out of all of these jobs, holding the tails seemed to be the hardest because the cows had a lot more strength than we did as kids and we didn’t want to upset the adults by letting them get hit in the face with a tail. But, sometimes it happened because those tails were just so fast!

We did this work for several months before we started to get any kind of compensation. But after awhile, we got paid for some of our chores which made us work even harder. Our first monetary compensation really doesn’t seem like much, but we were so excited to be getting paid anything that we didn’t mind. We were tasked to count each pile of poop that we cleared from behind the cows into the gutter, so it taught us counting as well! I would always try to get more poop than Fred or Tracy, and sometimes we all kind of fibbed the numbers to get more. It made it kind of a game for us to see who could get the most.

Always trying to compete with Fred and Tracy and trying to impress the adults with my willingness and ability to do the jobs given to me did have some drawbacks. I vividly remember one unfortunate experience that took place when I 5 years old. I wanted to prove that I was ready to get the work done and went out to start chores early, all by myself. Once I got to the barn I got a hoe and started my normal task of cleaning up the poop behind the cows. There was one cow, #9, that was very skittish and quick to react; all the adults told us kids to be careful around her. Well, that fateful day of trying to get things accomplished for the adults went awry. As I was busy cleaning up, I didn’t pay much attention to which cow I was behind, and before I knew it, I was cleaning up behind #9. She was not OK with me being there and hauled off and kicked me right in the nose! I went flying across the aisle and to the ground.

I jumped up as quickly as I could, but by that time, I was freaking out and crying and the blood was down to my feet. It looked as if I had been in a terrible accident. The first adult to see me that day was my grandma, who raced to get my mom and clean me up. My mom rushed me to the emergency room to see what kind of damage had been done. It turned out that it wasn’t as bad as it looked, just a lot of blood and tenderness. Cows have holes in the bottom of their feet and that was where my nose went, so it wasn’t even broken. However, to this day, my nose is still pretty tender.

Trying to do the jobs of adults is no joke, and it's not all that fun. This was just one of the many times my siblings and I were injured because we were expected to do adult work as kids. And it was one of many proofs that our lives were far from normal.

The Unwanted Ones

Being as young as we were when we moved to the farm, it took me awhile to realize our lives weren't like other kids’ lives, that they weren't how they should be for a child.

The moment I stepped foot on the farm, I began losing my identity. The fact that Tracy and I were twins made it automatically hard to tell us apart. Our new "grandpa" - a man who saw us literally every day once we moved there - NEVER learned our names. This guy always gave me a weird vibe, and I never really liked him - but he never even tried to learn our names, let alone tell us apart! Granted we had similarities for sure, but we are fraternal twins! This means we are technically no more alike than any other siblings. But because most people didn’t want to take the time to get to know us we just became “the girls.” There were so many times on the farm when we were called to do something and it was just, “Fred and girls, come here.” Of course back then it annoyed me, but I never realized just how much that made me lose my own, personal identity. I was constantly in need of having Tracy there with me because when she wasn’t I didn’t feel whole.

When our mom met our “dad” and moved to the farm, I was excited to have more family because my mom's family is pretty small. However, the large family wasn’t as exciting as I had hoped. From the day we became part of the family I felt like an outsider. It was like because we weren’t blood we were never truly accepted. We would attend family functions and events, but it always felt like I was on the outside looking in. Not to sound petty, but as kids, you notice things like gifts and personal attention. These are things that say to a kid, "Hey, you're important." And yet on birthdays and holidays, Tracy, Fred and I always got fewer gifts than our cousins. It was even worse for Tracy and me because there were two birthdays at once, and no one ever wanted to buy gifts for both of us; so we would just get less.

After living on the farm a few years and feeling really disconnected from the family, I found myself hoping something would change to make me feel more like a true member of the Ludwig family. Sometime between 7 and 8 years of age, I got my wish. Mom approached Fred, Tracy and me to see how we would feel about being officially adopted! This meant we would have the same last name as our mom and “dad” and could be a member of the larger family. We were beyond excited. We never knew our biological father, so we didn’t care if we had his last name or not. All we knew of him was that he lived in another state (Wisconsin) and that we went there once to see an aunt and cousins.

The Wisconsin family that I did know I mostly knew through packages I received in the mail. The sister and brother-in-law of my biological father were my godparents, so they would send me things periodically for my birthday or holidays. It was one of the times that I felt like I actually was someone special. I had to make a decision about losing these people as my godparents if we went through with the adoption. My mom wanted to cut off all communication with that family once the adoption was complete. I would get new godparents (the brother and sister-in-law of my new "dad”). Since I never saw my Wisconsin aunt and uncle anyways, I figured it would be fine to make this transition. Plus, I was hoping that being the godchild of an aunt and uncle who lived closer would mean I would get even more presents! It didn’t work out that way. These new godparents treated me the same way they always had. I was no one special to them.

With that, the paperwork was drawn up, and we were scheduled to officially be Ludwigs. I found out later that my biological father knew about this and had to sign away his rights to being our father. I learned that he felt like this was the best thing to do since he had issues with alcohol at the time and lived too far away to truly have a relationship with us anyway.

Our name change/adoption didn’t happen until a few weeks into the school year. I remember meeting with our teachers beforehand and asking to change the roster to our new names for the start of the year since we knew it would be official soon enough. So when third grade started, I was officially Trudy Ludwig! It was so amazing to finally have the same name as the rest of the family! But that excitement didn’t last long. Sure, it was cool to feel like I fit in, but a name change didn't change where we came from. I was still not a blood relation, and I still felt left out. About the only person that ever made me feel like I was part of the family was my cousin Joey. He was the son of my “dad’s” brother (not my new godparent’s son), and he was very close in age to us - only a week and a day older than Tracy and me. As we got older, we continued to be close and even deemed ourselves the “Ludwig Trio.” We were lucky to have him in our lives because he accepted us and just wanted to be friends - no matter where we came from. Out of all the people who should have cared for us, it was this kid our own age who gave us what no one else was willing to - an identity.

I Got Myself a Dad

Have you ever wondered how your life would have turned out if you had a different kind of childhood? If not, then you're most likely one of the lucky ones who had a good childhood - or at least a decent childhood. 

I believe it's important for children to have chores and learn responsibilities, but I don't think they should have so many duties that they can't enjoy just being a kid. Childhood is a time for fun, a time to be carefree. Or at least, that's what childhood should be. Children should be able to experience life and just have fun while learning basic skills and developing into caring, sympathetic adults. 

As a young child I thought I had that life. The first few years of my life seemed carefree, fun and much like those of any other child. I lived "up north," as they like to say in Michigan, on a tiny body of water called Dodge Lake. I lived with my mom, brother (Fred) and twin sister (Tracy). We didn't live right on the lake but rather across the street from it, about a quarter mile from my grandparents' place, which was right on the lake. I remember making that quarter-mile trek many times as a kid and even after we moved downstate walking around the lake. That was always one of my favorite things to do. Walking has been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember - and it's one thing I still love to do.

Sometime when I was between the ages of 3 and 4, my mom started dating this man, Loren, whom I was nervous around at first but soon grew to like quite a bit. It wasn't until I was older that I realized my mom had met this man through a classified ad in the newspaper. That seems like a strange way to meet a man with whom you plan to spend the rest of your life, but I suppose it's really no different than online dating today. I never asked my mom how long they dated or when we actually met him for the first time because that never seemed like important information for a kid to know. Looking back on things, I wonder how long it actually took them to develop their relationship. 

I do know that this man was at Tracy's and my 4th birthday party because he brought the cake and I know that was a big deal. It was a Bert and Ernie cake. I think that was when he officially won me over. Even as a young child I had known I was missing out on something, but I wasn't sure what it was until this man came into our lives. Once we celebrated our birthday, I knew I didn't want him to leave. He made me feel safe, like he could always be my protector. 

Later that year, I got my wish. My mom married this man and I got myself a "dad." They were married on October 18, 1987. I don’t remember exactly when, but sometime around that same time, our family moved about two hours south to live in a single wide trailer on the land where my new “dad” and his family lived and operated a dairy farm. The farm was called Sky Light Farms, Ltd., and seemed MASSIVE to me.  

I thought it was pretty cool to be living on an actual farm, somewhere with so many cows! Up until that point I couldn’t even remember seeing a cow up close. Granted, it was also kind of scary because cows are ENORMOUS (or at least they seemed that way to me at the time). However, the "coolness" of living on a farm was pretty short-lived. Not long after moving there we were forced to start working and putting in our time helping do all the chores associated with running a successful dairy farm. 

The downturn of our happy, carefree childhood had officially begun...