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By Root 345 0

few sessions with my therapist to get me to see that it was okay to make the decision I did. That it was better that I went despite some advice that it could be dangerous because it was a public place, because if I had not gone and heeded the advice I was given, I would never have truly known if it was safe or not to go and would have resented the advice. So it was better to have made the decision I did and learn from it. Also, not all choices are black and white. We all have the right to make up our own minds about stuff, but it’s better when you have all the facts and go in to make an informed decision. Looking back, I should have researched where Sly Park was and asked some questions about how public it was before I made the decision to go.

Milestones

Even though I was closed off to the outside world in the backyard, the outside world did find a way to touch us. I remember 9/11, the day the terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers, killing all those people. I remember exactly where I was when Phillip came running outside to tell me. He yelled in his sad voice, “Allissa, did you hear? Someone just crashed a plane into one of the Twin Towers!” I was outside going to pee in my pee hole. My outdoor toilet was full and Phillip didn’t like to empty it very often. I made myself a pee hole outside, so I was out there when I heard the news. I rushed back in the studio and the news was on channel three. They were showing pictures of the buildings smoking and helicopters circling. It was so scary. I kept on thinking, I wonder what else they were going to bomb. And who had done it? Then the news reporter started talking about all the people that were trapped inside and I started crying. Phillip and Nancy were crying, too. Phillip said the “angels” made those terrorists do what they did and that’s why he had to expose the “angels” to the world one day. It made more sense than anything else in the world did at the time.

Other than 9/11, there were no real “events” in my life to recall. I didn’t really have any of the typical milestones that other kids enjoy. Like first crush, first date, getting my driver’s license. I remember, I think I was twenty-one or twenty-two and I had gone with Phillip for the drive to the paper place where we got our paper for the printing business in Concord. We got stuck in traffic coming home. Traffic always makes me feel sick. I felt like I was going to throw up, so he pulled over for a minute. He said it was too bad I was sick because he was going to teach me how to drive that day. I was feeling too sick to say anything, so I just shrugged. On the inside I was so disappointed. I wonder if he really was going to teach me to drive that day. I always wanted to learn how to drive. My girls always thought it was weird that I didn’t know how to drive yet. They would ask me why, and I would say because I didn’t want to and maybe one day I would. What else could I say? They asked their dad, too, but he would say something like, “Allissa will be able to learn how to drive one day and I am really looking forward to that day.” Again I would wonder when that day would ever come. One time I was out shopping with Nancy and she said, why don’t you sit in the driver’s seat and give it a try? I was a little scared. I was probably twenty-five or twenty-six at the time and had never even sat in the driver’s seat before. It was a foreign concept to me even though I longed to be able to drive. I did get in the driver’s seat and she said to start it up, and I did, but I guess I hit the accelerator a little too hard and almost backed into the truck that was coming in behind us. Nancy got a little freaked out and that was the last time she let me try. So I didn’t learn to drive until I was twenty-nine and out in the real world.

I can’t say I remember turning sixteen. I was already a mom. My oldest daughter was almost two by then. I also never got the chance to graduate from high school (although I do hope to earn my GED one day).

I do remember, however, when my sister, Shayna, turned sixteen. I was twenty-six