|
After my mom made the difficult decision to move us from Tennessee to California, we embarked on a road trip to our new home. I believe it took us about 3-4 days to travel by minivan, though the actual journey is a bit of a blur. What stands out vividly, however, is the moment we arrived at Grandma’s house. Mom barely had time to put the car in park before she ran up the porch and through the front door. The five of us kids followed timidly, crossing the lawn and climbing the porch steps. Walking through the door of that tiny house, I’ll never forget seeing Grandma in her sitting chair, with Mom kneeling at her feet, her head resting in Grandma’s lap. Grandma’s soft, joyful giggles filled the room as she lovingly stroked her daughter’s hair. For the first time, I truly understood that Grandma wasn’t just my grandma—she was also a mom, offering comfort and solace to her child. We stayed with Grandma until we found a house of our own. Grandma, Glenda Lucille Cowell Harwell, was a talented seamstress who ran a small but successful drapery business from her home. Her workspace was a large back room equipped with two sizable cutting tables and four sewing machines (including a serger). This was where I learned to sew. Grandma encouraged us to experiment with her machines and drapery scraps, and I delighted in trying to make pillows and clothes. While my creations were far from impressive, I discovered a deep love for creating. Moving to Bakersfield was particularly exciting because it brought us closer to family. We had cousins nearby—Michelle, Kristi, Carrie, and Amber. Carrie, who was just a couple of months younger than me, became my built-in best friend. She was the perfect companion, introducing me to her friends and making me feel welcome. Looking back, I realize how mature it was for an eight-year-old to embrace her cousin so warmly and help her fit into a new social circle. It was a huge blessing, especially as starting at a new school was intimidating.  Carrie and Cindi 1989 Shortly after our arrival in California, I began third grade at Norris Elementary School. Luckily, Carrie was in my class, along with some of the friends she had introduced me to over the summer. I loved Norris! The school was surrounded on all sides by cotton fields, and driving through acres of farmland to get there was a unique experience. Because of its location, we often had “fog delays”—mornings when the fog was so dense that students weren’t allowed on the playground for safety reasons. I remember arriving early on those foggy mornings and playing games like “smear the queer” (an outdated and inappropriate name, but that’s what it was called in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s). Those mornings were some of my favorites. Another highlight of this time was when my mom started an All-Star Cheer program. She invited students from across the district to try out for a new cheerleading team, which became a fantastic opportunity to make lifelong friends. Through cheerleading, I continued to pursue a passion I loved while bonding with new teammates. We participated in fundraisers, performances, and exhibitions, creating cherished memories and building connections within the community. The Kern County All-Star Cheerleaders eventually began competing, and the program grew into a thriving competitive sport in Bakersfield. Bakersfield was a wonderful place for me. I cherished the attention that came with being the daughter of a well-known and respected mom. Our family was warmly embraced by relatives and friends in the community. We found support through our church, school, cheerleading, and the close-knit relationships my mom formed at Dancers Workshop. We also enjoyed participating in the Melodrama. This time in Bakersfield was a period of healing for us as we navigated life after losing our dad, and I will always be grateful for the love and support we experienced there.
0 Comments
It is no secret that my dad, Jefferey Lynn Carter, died in August 1989. It’s not a secret because I talk about it often. Experiencing loss at such a young age caused me to reflect much on the topic of death. This tragic event in my life helped me come to some pretty mature understanding of mortality and spiritual well-being at a very early age. Though it was difficult to endure, his death has very much shaped my life in a rather positive way. There are so many things I have learned from this single part of my life. Of course, I didn’t sleep for the first year or two after he died and I had lots of fear surrounding anything or anyone who was “sick”… but eventually, through a very patient mother, counseling, and the gift of prayer, I overcame those fears and I think I’ve become a pretty well-balanced adult… I was born in Memphis, TN on a Wednesday evening. Other than my mom cleaning the house and doing laundry, my arrival was pretty uneventful even though my baby book has a picture of me, just moments after birth, with the caption “Prize fighter”. I was the third child born to Jeff & Jenny Carter. I had an older brother Ben and an older sister Jill. We were pretty close in age and my mom definitely had her hands full. My father was diagnosed with Epilepsy while my mom was pregnant with me (1981-ish). The Epilepsy started small but progressively developed over the years. I was young enough not to remember too much about what was going on as well as the hardship it was for both my father and mother. I did know that he was “sick” but I don’t think I ever realized how sick he was. I do know that when I was about 4-ish, he got better enough for them to have my little sister Terri and 21 months later my little brother Ty snuck in there. That’s when my dad started to get really bad. He had a few major surgeries in an attempt to correct the seizures. After the last surgery he never recovered. After he died, they found that he had a rare form of cancer that lined his brain.  We stayed in Memphis for about a year after Dad died. At first, my mom and us 5 kids were embraced and supported by our community but soon it became hard for my mom because her story seemed to be “too sad” for others. So she made the difficult decision of moving us across the country to Bakersfield, CA where her family lived.
As difficult as that was, It was a great choice for our family. Have you ever had to move across state lines? What was that like for you? You know that kid that said, “I like to do hood rat stuff with my friends”? Well that is literally me. Let me explain… I had just finished my first school year in a new town when I learned that ALL of my new friends were attending a different Middle School than me. In our School district, we got to make a 1st, 2nd, & 3rd choice of school then the powers that be would sort the school population with, requests and the task of desegregating our schools. The school my parents wanted me to attend was our neighborhood school which most of my siblings had previously attended. Steinbeck Middle School consisted of 6th, 7th and 8th graders from all over our district. Every single one of my friends went to the Performing Arts Magnet, Castillero Middle School a good 15 min from home. Disclaimer: I do not condone violence of any kind, nor have I actually ever lived a life of crime, nor have I ever been in a physical altercation with anyone that was not a sibling of mine. First Day of 6th Grade at Steinbeck, I wore this maroon shirt I got at Red Eye. Haha. I was stressed about trying to make new friends. I met a girl in my first period class who was actually kind to me. Feeling insecure and out-of-place, there was nothing on my moral radar that said, “think this one through”. This friend (still can’t remember her name) was so much different then my other friends. She wore baggy dickies, Nike Cortez, super tight maroon shirts, very dark lips, and hair super slicked back and most days a bandana wrapped carefully around her ponytail. Obviously, I did my best to mimic this exact look because I was an insecure 12-year-old desperately trying to just blend in. Not only did I beg and beg for dickies and cortez’s, but I also started to mimic other behaviors as my new friend. I developed a pretty serious ‘tude as well as let my grades go to crap. After all, smartasses and not applying yourself in school were the latest trends. Naturally, if my friends asked me to jump of a bridge, off the bridge, I would jump… including the day I cut school with my friends and we were picked up by police at Kmart. (Did you know you can buy Dickies at Kmart?) Closing in on our first semester of 6th grade, one day my friends were talking “smack” about some other girls at school. You bet your buns I was all up in there saying things like, “I know, Right?!”. (For the record, I did not know, nor was I right.) By lunch time, emotions and tensions were high and the law was about to be laid down by my homies. The next thing I knew, we were out in the field and what seemed like the entire school was closing in and a major fight broke out between 2 groups of people. Guess who was right there in the middle?  Beginning of 6th Grade I asked my sister (who was in 8th grade that year) if she remembered the day I got into a gang fight at School. She said… “Yes, I was there. But you didn’t actually do anything from what I remember. I think you shoved someone? You were part of a circle surrounding a girl? My perspective is that it was embarrassing that my sister (who I could beat up in a heartbeat) was trying to act like a thug.” Shortly after the cutting of class and the fight, my parents transferred me to Castillero Middle school where all my elementary school friends went. I reconnected with my friends, met some new friends, joined the 6th grade choir, later joined the Show Choir, got really into the grunge thing and never saw my hood rat friends again. As a parent, I am mortified. I can’t believe I was so impressionable or so insecure. I’m sure all the moves I had experienced is what set me back but wow. On another note, I’m proud of my kids. I don’t feel that they are too desperate to fit in. They aren’t afraid to step outside their comfort zones. They make friends easily and they KNOW who they are. I’d like to take credit for that but I truly feel that my kids are just wired that way. Do you have embarrassing stories of trying to fit in? “You think you know… but you have NO idea.” Please tell me you wasted many precious hours of your life watching The Real World on MTV like I did!? Well, That phrase sums up any 30 something year old person reflecting back on their 20 something year old self. I didn’t mean to be so naive but I just think as 20 year olds, we just haven’t gained enough life experience to know any better. Sure, I had hard times, made dumb choices, but nothing compared to the trials I had to conquer in my 30ies. When my father passed away, my mom found herself a widow, not enough education to sustain a career, all the debt you could imagine a young mom with a very sick husband might have, 5 young children, at 35 years old. The very thought gives me painful chills. I admire my mother for many reasons but mostly because of how hard she worked to provide not just a good life, but a GREAT life for me and my siblings. Nothing glamorous at all, but as a kid, I never felt deprived of anything. I’m sure she spent many a night trying to figure out how she would put dinner on the table the next night, but she managed mothering, working, serving at church, coaching cheer (which if you’ve ever been a cheer coach you know it doesn’t pay squat!) AND going to school.  Carters Circa 1991 As I grew older, I often thought about if I were in her shoes, what would I do? How would I sustain a life for myself? My Kids? This question is ultimately what pushed me into the Cosmetology Industry. Don’t be fooled, it wasn’t a totally practical decision. I was also very excited to explore my creativity through hair styling and the added bonus of helping others feel good about themselves… all very appealing to this . The goal was to go to hair school and work as a stylist while I went to College. I met a guy and got married 6 months after I finished hair school (2002), never once stepping into a College, and plans of a short career styling hair and then many years of raising babies. Flash forward 10 years (2012), I found myself isolated from family in a new state, crippling anxiety/depression (they tend to be a package deal) and going through a very difficult divorce with 4 young children at my ankles. Oh CRAP, doesn’t even do it justice. When I moved to Arizona a few years before the divorce, I was so overwhelmed by my 4-year-old, 3-year-old, 2-year-old and an almost 1-year-old, that I didn’t even tell anyone that I did hair. It wasn’t that I didn’t love it, I just didn’t want to get myself back in the position of never telling anyone “no” and cutting hair that would fall on my babies faces while they stood, sat, laid at my feet, screaming for my attention. However, with a fresh new divorce, I hopped on the internet, bought a hydraulic chair and started taking clients out of my home.  Fall 2012 It was the perfect job for me during that time. It allowed me the flexibility of pretending like I was a stay at home mom while helping to supplement a tiny bit of income. I would only take clients when my kids were at school, napping or with their dad. I wasn’t rolling in the dough by any means but it helped ease the financial burden a bit. I still have a small clientele of friends that I get to see regularly but over the past 5 years I’ve dabbled here and there with other ventures that could have been great for me but were too difficult for me to balance family life, work, and mental/emotional stability. I really wanted to be the type who could do the single mom thing and start an at home business and just be Successful in all the things. Boy did I reach my limits fast! Guess what, it turns out that I can’t do it all. I just learned (the hard way) that I could just do some and that was going to have to be enough. It took a lot of trial and error and a massive amount of faith but we got through it. So many life lessons we learn amidst challenges. Sometimes we learn them quickly, other times very, very slowly. “THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU CAN ONLY LEARN IN A STORM.” – JOEL OSTEEN (I HATE THAT I JUST QUOTED HIM BUT I CAN RECOGNIZE WORDS OF WISDOM WHEN I HEAR THEM.) Now that my kids are older and am happily remarried, I’m ready to attempt a new adventure. I really love cutting hair and I think I will always do that but I’m looking to do something that can bring in a more consistent contribution… I know what i’m gonna do but I’m note ready to put it out there yet. Stay tuned. and FYI… It took my Mom 20 Years to graduate College but she did it and that’s pretty awesome! |
AuthorHi I'm Cindi! When I'm not chasing after kids or dogs... oh wait, that never happens! Archives
December 2024
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed