When I was very young, my best friend, Kirk Spencer, lived two doors down from us on Utah Ave.  Even at that young age, preschool and Kindergarten, I managed to envy Kirk.   It seemed like he had it all.  His dad was a dentist and even though we lived in nearly identical houses, I felt severely out-classed.  In fact, I don't think envy is really what I felt.  I just felt rather dull whenever a Spencer was around.    

Kirk had the prettiest mom in our whole church, he was smart as a whip and outgoing, his older brother could sing like a bird, which I was constantly hearing about from the church folks.  The Spencers got a new Oldsmobile every year, while my dad had just purchased his first-ever new car, a bare bones Plymouth Valiant.  Everything they owned seemed just a little nicer than ours, despite the fact that we seemed to be doing okay.

One sunny day, Kirk was showing me the expensive new pocket knife that his brother had gotten for his birthday.  I'd never even thought about owning a pocket knife before but now I wanted one of my own.  I asked to hold it.  I wanted to feel it in my hand but Kirk was reluctant since we weren't supposed to have it at all.  I finally talked him into it and it was a fine piece of workmanship, hefty and smooth in my tiny hand.  Unfortunately, when I tried to close the blade, it slammed shut on my index finger.  Kirk, of course, had no trouble operating it but I was no Spencer.

The blade must have cut my finger pretty deeply because I still have a scar to this day, 50 years later, and I certainly remember it bleeding profusely.  We ran into Kirk's house, across the perfectly waxed kitchen floor and into the bathroom to wash it and try to stop the bleeding.  The perfectly dressed and coifed Mrs. Spencer burst into the bathroom and unloaded on us for dripping blood on her clean floor. 

She threw some toilet paper on my bleeding finger and sent me home to have it attended to at my own house, all the while chewing me out for getting my blood on her clean floor and making sure I didn't drip on the way out the door.  I distinctly remember the sound of her screen door slamming shut behind me.

My mother, of course, was horrified at my bleeding finger and quickly and lovingly attended to it, cleaning it and bandaging it and hugging me until I stopped crying.  What she didn't know was that I hadn't cried until Mrs. Spencer went off on me.  Suddenly, Mrs. Spencer wasn't the looker that made others dim by comparison and my own mother absolutely radiated real beauty.

It wasn't a year before the Spencers moved to the fancy part of town, into the big house they'd built, with their new Oldsmobile parked in the double-drive.  I visited once or twice after they moved but it was clear that Kirk had new, better friends now.  

I'd like to say that my feelings of inferiority died after the knife incident but that's not true.  They waned some but to this day, the Spencers of the world still get under my skin just a little.

Our 16 year old, Emy Army Bunny, has been dating a boy from a Spencer-like family for the last year.  I've grown weary and sometimes quite angry at hearing about “The Wonderfuls”.  Their house is nicer, cleaner.  They do things together (as if EAB ever wants to do anything with us), they have more money, more class, more standing in the community. Not only more everything, but better everything.  They adopted her as one of their own, even packing a school lunch for her take home after visits.  I guess they figure we poor, Onalaska losers can't feed our own.  

Despite EAB's expectations, the romance did not last forever.  In the end, Jr. Wonderful dumped her and she not only lost a boyfriend, but also her adopted, better-than-us family.  I don't know if she learned this lesson completely, but I hope that when she was crying on her own mother's shoulder, she may have begun to realize that in the end, her flawed, imperfect family are the only ones who are always there, no matter what.

My family, extended and immediate, is made of up flawed, imperfect, humans.  Flawed, imperfect humans who love each other and who are there for each other.  Never mind that we don't always agree, that we all have our own circumstances, religious and political views, that there are some who are prettier, smarter and wealthier than us.  

They are always there for me, my own flaws aside, and I know that they always will be, as I am for them.  That, my friends, is a lot.  A whole lot.