Time Warp Wrap

     When I was 12 years old, my mother was the same age as my oldest child is now. 


     I was the age that  my oldest grandchild is now.  I felt grown up then. I'd had the responsibility of a daily "job" for more than a year.  I didn't think of my parents as taking care of me, unmindful of their supplying food and shelter for us.   Laundry was minimal, as we owned few clothes, so my sister and I often washed by hand our own socks and undies. Except for the school bus, which we took to Schaghticoke for grades 5 to 7, no one drove us anyplace---there was no place to go that we didn't walk to, except for trips to my grandmother's house every 2 weeks or so.  But I had stopped going anyway because I had to work, and toward the end of that year my grandmother died, so the visits there became fewer and stopped altogether the next year when the old homestead was sold.  That  pretty much signified the official end of our childhood.