Coveted & Cursed (a live written novel) CHAPTER 3

NOTE: I believe I am going to jump around in the time line, for now this is the beginning of chapter 3 as it were. I just got a new computer and I am able to type 65-100 words per minute so I hope to start covering some ground soon. It is VERY hard for me to write due to the large amount of daily harassment I get coupled with my own issues which I will not address at this time LOL

LINK TO NOTION WORK: https://www.notion.so/Coveted-Cursed-a-never-ending-story-8bce443674474eae849421c49ecb6fab?pvs=4

By the grace of the good Lord on September 25th 1980 at 5:32pm EST at the University of Florida’s Shands Hospital, I was born unto the surface this Earth. My conscious mind cannot recall the weather on that day but I have always assumed it was beautiful; sunny with a cool pleasant breeze that has made its way through the thick humidity & heat of my home state. This is what the weather has been like in my home state on September 25 practically every year; it’s one of the things I like most about my birthday. My memories from early childhood are happy; brightly lit & dream like with a comforting haze over them. They’re not as clear and sharp as memories that came later in my life. I’m not sure anyone remembers taking their first steps and I doubt most can recall the last time they sucked on their pacifier before finally giving up the filthy addiction. Mostly what I recall are the feelings or energies associated those blurry long ago years.

My older brother, Daniel & I always used "Ema" and "Abba" to call our parents in Hebrew, instead of the typical American "mom" and "dad". Apparently, they had lived in Israel on something called a 'Kibbutz', where my brother was born in Feb 7th 1977. Our family photo albums contained a substantial number of photos from any period in time and this included 2-3 albums from Israel. There were words and phrases Emma would say sometimes, but English was her first language and the one she lead with.

I would look our old and new albums often, trying to learn what I could about life before I came along. There were so many pictures of me in the 1980 album. Pictures of me being born, smearing food all over my face on my first birthday & doing other baby things which I didn’t look at too often as I didn’t have a reason to Mostly I looked at the pictures of my parents from when they were younger. There was an amazing photograph of my Abba on a motorcycle cutting around the bend of sharp turn on a race track. His knee was so close to the ground it looked as though it was touching and he was looking straight ahead, going fast. Abba looked like a total bad ass in motorcycle racing photo. I couldn’ entertain the idea of me being that awesome one day. I knew it was likely my father and my brother would always be better than me at most everything and they certainly would be much larger than me always and forever, I was sure of it.

The isreal themes were very prevalant when I was growing up. I knew how to say “I want ice-cream” in hebrew which was one of my go-to actions for show casing my knowledge and personality around that time. Ema was the one who talked about isreal the most and would say things to suggest she missed her life and her friends there. She was starting to become fluent in hebrew and she enjoyed the culture. We had a Sesame Street tape at one point that was entirely in Hebrew. My Ema told me that when I got older she would begin teaching me to speak Hebrew which I very much liked the thought of. I already knew how to say “I want ice cream” in Hebrew, I was confident I was doing great already. I could feel that I was very important to my Ema & Abba. They were certainly important to me; my family and our 4 acre lot in the woods was my world and I loved everything in it.

Many of my early memories are of playing in our yard around our house. In my early years I didn’t go tromping off into our pond or our woods by myself. I didn’t have a desire to. In addition to not wanting to I can only assume I wasn’t allowed to.

*** POND /

We had an overgrown unkempt pond in our back yard which was aproximately 100-150 feet from our house’s back door. It had sticks and tree’s growing up through it and was covered with duck weed. The green duck weed which sits ontop of more stagnate water in Florida is common place and one can usually infer some things about any water in question by the abundance or lack of duck weed. The duck weed that sat ontop of the water in our pond was a soothing light green color which was quite attractive compared to what it hid underneith itself. The brown and black silt of hundreds of years of leaves & dead animals was under the duck weed. The woods and the ponds in them were home to countless slithering wet looking moccasins & rattlesnakes

**CASTLEBERRY

We had a fort in our back yard named “CastleBerrie” or “The CastleBerry”. My father had constructed it and even though it was torn down and redesigned a few times, the name never changed. I was usually playing in or around the CastleBerrie with my GI Joe’s or digging up sand & dirt, both of which were passaged times I’d picked up from my older brother and I quite enjoyed the habits especially the GI Joe’s. My favorite was a character named “Tunnel Rat”. A name I didn’t fully comprehend, but he was my guy. The wooded yard of our house held and kept my attention, my imagination didn’t drift very far from that place save day and sleeping dreams of Stepping Stones or the church we went to occasionally. I hadn’t figured out the schedule to either and I wasn’t convinced there was a need for such unnecessary trifling concerns. I had GI Joes to play with and holes to dig.