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 "Imma" 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 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 the motorcycle racing photo. I couldn’t 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 Israel themes were very prevalent 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. Imma was the one who talked about Israel 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. Imma 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 Imma & Abba. They were certainly significant to me; my family and our 4 acre lot in the woods was my world and I loved everything in it.
The trees were always green in the woods behind our house and in the woods surrounding our house. I can remember looking at them from my crib when I was very young. I recall being quite upset in my crib and throwing things out of it. I believe I used to throw everything I could out of my crib when I was quite young. Mostly I remember being woken up by smiling faces which I smiled back at. There are a few times I remember sitting in there and crying because I couldn’t get out but I very much wanted to. Those blasted bars were always blocking my way and I was always trying to my best to climb up over them as I had discovered a flaw in the design to keep me jailed and confined to my bed. When I concentrate now those memories of looking at the tree’s and the odd feelings I used to have all seem like dreams which I can only remember bits and pieces of. As I focus on the bits and pieces that I have, there is something else which comes into my mind as well which is more of a feeling than a memory. Its a feeling that I even now I cannot quite explain but there is something about it which I’ve always been very much drawn to. For some reason when I focus on being that young and I focus on looking out my bedroom window into the woods and the green tree’s, I start to feel as though I’m being swept away somewhere special and magical where I feel absolutely amazing, as though I’m flying or floating in the trees. The best I can say at this time is that when I think about this feeling or the memories associated being young are combined with another memory or memories that I cannot quite put my finger on. In my mind, or perhaps in my dreams, I somehow I am in the woods and I am in the tree’s. Its almost as if I become part of the forest and everything feels like a green velvet of soothing softness in both my mind and in my body.
These feelings and dreams or memories bring up visions of grand flat forests and stone or concrete buildings that have been built in the middle of the forests, much resembling 1980’s modern architecture. When I see the scenes in Star Wars Return of the Jedi of the ‘rebel’ base on the planet Endor(sp), there is always a twinge of something in the back of my mind associated with those distant far off memories or dreams in my mind. Its not the forest itself, but the stone structure built in the middle of the forest on Endor. Its not quite the same thing as my memories or dreams from when I was very young, in fact the more I focus on the movie the less it seems like the same thing visually. Its a subject that is difficult for me to explain because even now as an adult its difficult for me to understand fully. Whatever it is, dreams, memories, or memories of feelings, it is something that seems to be equal parts a physical feeling and equal parts visual stimulation of some kind. I’ve always been very visually stimulated, and as a result I’ve assumed everyone is just as visually stimulated as I am by things. I simply like looking at things. Some things, and even some people, I’d like to look at longer than other things or people.
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 approximately 100-150 feet from our home’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 on top 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 on top of the water in our pond was a soothing light green color which was quite attractive compared to what it lay underneath. 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 millions of large and small animals. We had slithering wet and slimy looking moccasins, deer, hawks, owls, squires, rattlesnakes, a few bobcats, small black bears and rumors of escaped monitor lizards from the Galapagos islands. The monitor lizards were rumored to be somewhere in the swamps because a neighbor of ours had monitor lizards which had escaped their cages after a hurricane had swept through some years prior. Apparently it was quite the hubbub at the time complete with locals keeping their pets indoors while others roamed the streets and forests longing for something to shoot at. Even though I hadn’t met Mr. Offenberg(Sp) yet, I suspected he may have let some of those lizards out on purpose. I played out the scenario countless times, putting myself in some man’s shoe’s I’d not yet met. It seemed like it would be somewhat humorous or even fun to let these creatures out in swampy Florida just to see how they make their way in the environment. Monitor lizards from the Galapagos island are extremely adaptable can even produce young on their own if isolated with no mate. My parents told me that the cold weather would have killed them off any time I asked about the 1 or 2 which were never found. I was told that Mr. Offenberg, who once kept the lizards at his house, used to teach at the University of Florida and had even been on the PBS show National Geographic. Both the University and the PBS television show I was quite familiar with.
**CASTLEBERRY
We had a fort in our back yard named “The Castleberry”. It was named after a city in FL named Casselberry which of course sounds exactly like the word ‘castle-berry’ depending on one’s own vernacular. My father had constructed first and original Castleberry around 1979-1980*photo albums. It was made of large 4x4 pieces of lumber which were placed deep into the moist sand and thick wet black soil which lay underneath. Anywhere in Florida if one begins to dig they usually are first confronted with sand depending on the elevation. Different tree’s and soils can be found depending on the state of one’s elevation or lack thereof. As the elevation increases in florida so does the amount of sand you will find. The different types of soil found at the different elevations is what typically determines which tree’s will grow in that area. The higher up you go above sea level, the more pine tree’s you will find growing. The lower down one goes the more lush the vegetation gets. Anyone can see this for themselves by simply driving down I-75 which runs down the middle of Florida.
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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 activities I’d picked up from my older brother and I quite enjoyed them 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. When I was young, I didn't have very many G.I Joe's but my older brother had a significant amount 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.
