“I would say this home was one of the larger homes in Belmont, California. It had survived the shocks of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. There were some cracks in the walls to show for it being about 25 miles down the peninsula from San Francisco. I lived there as a little girl in the early 1950s. This was kind of a grown-up looking room for a little girl, big and spacious, and the house had 16 other rooms besides this one. The house was over 50 years old when I lived there about 50 years ago. The walls would speak of the German spy that was hidden in the attic during the war, and of the trap door under the stairs, and the entire room dedicated to ironing, the walk in closet where I had a small children’s library. Playing the game of Museum we made up…being afraid to go inside because so much creaked…so I would wait on one of the back porches, holding my dachshund, until my brothers got home from school. I got out earlier than they did. Foolish of me to think of my brothers as security and a way to feel comfortable going inside, but they were what I had to work with, with parents gone to work so much. I can still feel the softness of the pink polished cotton spread. I could tell and will tell eventually, more stories, but the ones I would like to know are the ones before I lived there. Did they drive a coach around the circular drive-way? Why was there a little raised flower bed in the shape of a rowboat? Whose idea to put a buzzer, that could be pressed with one’s foot, under the carpet in the dining room? It would ring in the huge pantry and kitchen area, and summon the maid. We didn’t any longer have a maid at this time in our lives, but it was fun to press the buzzer and play that we wanted more rolls or dessert or something.
When I was a small child, even before Belmont, we lived for a time in San Francisco. I started out with a pink spread. I am not positive, but it may have been this same one. Then I wanted my headboard painted pink, and my nightstand and a pink lamp, and most of my favorite clothes were pink. I had a dolly with a pink dress. I even had a nickname. I was known as the “Little Pink Lady”. I sided toward pastel pink. My folks were interior designers; so they thought the nightstand should be different, and picked a pretty wild raspberry pink for it. From age about five years, I got a few concessions from them, but mostly my room looked how they wanted it to look, and not how I did.
Not in Belmont, but in San Francisco, one of my aunts, not my dearly beloved Aunt Dorothy, but one of her 3 sisters, came to live with us for awhile. Do not ask me why I was to share my bed with her, when we had a little guest room, but anyway, she became my roommate. I was a fairly compliant little kid, and I loved her, and she loved me (I thought) so we were pals. She would tease me about kicking her during her sleep, as I was a restless sleeper I guess. She would say I kicked so hard she would call me Maude the Mule. I much preferred to be called the Little Pink Lady. So I called her “The Big Pink Lady” and we giggled over that for years.
Little kids are so naive sometimes. I had no idea she was a drunk. My parents would get calls at bar closing time to come pick her up and she would be doing wild and crazy stuff. You know, on a parking garage, how they have a vertical conveyor belt, sort of one person thing for the attendants to ride up and down to the different parking levels. Well, she thought it would be fun to ride one, and fell off and broke several ribs. I had no idea why she arrived in my room at all hours of the night. She must have smelled of booze, but my parents must have too; so I did not feel offended by any smell. Maybe they didn’t want to make a special guest room just for her, because they didn’t want her to stay too long. She was gone as quickly as she arrived. What a bizarre deal that was. What grown woman would even want to sleep with a 5 and 6 year old?”
IMAGE AND TEXT VIA FLICKR, TAKEN FROM HERE; VIDEO OF TORI AMOS’ “PRETTY GOOD YEAR” FROM “UNDER THE PINK”, VIA YOUTUBE; VIDEO OF NICKI MINAJ’S “RIGHT THRU ME” FROM “PINK FRIDAY”, VIA YOUTUBE; “OLDER THAN HER YEARS” BY ARIEL PINK, TAKEN FROM “LOVERBOY”
