Ok…I know I said I would write about puberty next, but I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about when I was 3.  Yes…I do remember that far back…not every detail, but I have highlights.

I was watching my mom paint a huge painting. It had a purple background and a large black cat amidst a fantasy land of flowers. We lived in Los Angeles then… My mom worked for the animation industry. Hanna-Barbera, Filmation and Walter Lance. I’m not sure if it was all at the same time or one after the other. She also worked at a bar, but that story is for another day.

Before I get too involved here, I must preface this with this statement.  I love my mom! We have become closer recently and I have a new found respect for her. What I write about here may seem harsh at times but I am expressing my feelings from a specific time in my life and those feelings were colored with my age and level of understanding at that time. Yes I do still harbor some negative emotions and thoughts but life goes on and we grow and learn and sometimes even find out our parents were human too.

Back to the painting of the cat and flowers…We were sitting on the lawn in the front of the apartment we lived in. It was warm, the sun was bright and my mom had red hair…It was long and shiny and draped her shoulders as she reached across the huge canvas. I picked up a paint brush I saw laying on the ground next to a big bucket of purple paint. I asked if I could help. My mom grabbed the brush from me and told me “No!! you’ll ruin it!” I sat back, held in the tears because crying wouldn’t change anything, and watched my mom paint. I loved the colors but never liked that painting…maybe it was sour grapes, but it always seemed like a huge reminder that I wasn’t good enough.