The moves, the many middle of the night moves of my childhood

This month I am giving trainings to law enforcement officers as part of their annual in-service training and one of the aspects I talk about in in the training is how one develops a Substance use disorder. One area  you have to look at is environment. Humans develop a lot of habits from the environment they were raised in. 

Today I’m gonna talk about the moves. One aspect of my environment growing up, that also had many other layers to it, that had a direct effect on mine and my siblings lives. My siblings and I always kind of laugh because moving is what we did as kids...it's simply what we knew to be a normal thing. So as you’re reading today about my moves and you might have the response "wow, no way, I can’t believe you moved that much".  It's important to note that nearly all of these moves were not planned moves. They were not a situation where mom or dad got a new job, or a promotion, and we were moving up in the world. These moves were not because of some corporate or military job or parents had. 

No, these moves were in many cases emergent moves, middle of the night moves, we were being evicted moves. These moves were mom running from one of our biological fathers or a "dad of the week" who was being violent drunk or whatever craziness was going on in that moment. Literally, some of these moves were us be woken up in the middle of the night, told to get in a vehicle, and we were gone. So I’m gonna try to do it in the decades of my childhood but I have to split it up because there were a lot of moves in each decade.

I was born in 1967. I have three siblings each of them born in each of the two years prior; '65, '63 and '61. I’m gonna go from about '65 to when I moved out in ‘82 when I was 15. As I was thinking about this writing I was thinking about Alaska because that’s where I was born. I don’t believe my sister Cheri, who has the same father biological father as I do, was born in Alaska and she was born in '65. So at some point between '65-67 we moved to Alaska from the Tacoma area. While I don't know the exact number of moves I can easily count at least three in that three year period.  

We made an emergent, mom running for her life move, when I was a baby in 1967 from Cordova back to Tacoma.  My biological father had put a gun to my moms head.  Mom's ex, my brothers biological father Gerry Emmerson came up to Alaska and brought us back to Tacoma.  Mom and Gerry moved back in and gave their marriage another go. 

I can't help but note that mom's picker of men was broken. Mom rarely picked a man that was good for her or us. When she did find a healthy and functional man, she never kept them around long.  She was drawn to the drunks and abusers. Neither of our biological fathers were anything to desire.  Both abused our entire family in all ways.  Emotional, physical and sexual abuse runs through all of us by our own family and from dads-of-the-week.  Each of us has seen our mom abused in scary domestic violence situations throughout our childhood. The environment we were raised in with all the moves I am describing was chaotic to say the least. It was interesting because mom always kept a clean and tidy house.

We would move, one of the middle of the night moves, and mom would have the entire house in order within a day or less. From an outsiders view one might thing all is well in our world with how clean and tidy our house was kept. This was a massive facade.  I think about mom's smile.  For most of her life her smile masked the pain that was not far behind that she carried on a near daily basis. It was something we were used to, but as adults, we look back and see how odd it really was.

We moved back to Tacoma, mom is back with Gerry Emmerson, and I am told of memories of houses in the Tacoma area when I was really young from '68-71ish.  We lived with our Grandma Turco for a bit and than had our own house for a while.  I don't have any memories until we are in Ocean Shores, WA. 

We lived in Ocean Shores from about ‘72-75.  Just in Ocean shores I can remember several places.  With Gerry we lived in an A-frame house on Frigate St.  I remember that house well because I remember seeing my mom get hit by Gerry.  I remember hearing the fights regularly; Late night and a lot of violence. Mom left Gerry and moved into a motel she managed while she also worked as a waitress at the original Ocean Shores Inn. There was another place where we lived in an apartment right next to the airport. Just in the short three-ish years we lived in Ocean Shores we lived in three places.  

In about ‘75 we moved back to Tacoma...I think.  We lived in Portland for about a year somewhere in this time period. Mom was dating a cop. I don't remember if we lived with him or not.  He must have been pretty healthy because we didn't stick around long. My memories of that period are fuzzy at best. Somewhere in this period we moved back to Tacoma and rented a house from a family friend. Mom met another man, Jonnny Revell (he was a good one), they got married, and we moved from Tacoma to Arizona.  Mom did this more than a few times. Met a guy, very short dating period, and got married. Boom, new dad!  Mom would always say to us "call him dad, it will make him feel good". It grosses me out thinking about this as I write that. 

Here we go, off to Arizona.  We lived in the Arizona for a total of about three years. About '75-79ish is the time period. I am 7-10years old.  Yes, the math isn't completely accurate, but mostly this is where we are with it. We first moved to Phoenix. I remember a nice apartment in Phoenix. I don't think we stayed there long before moving to Casa Grande which is where we lived most of three-ish years we were in Arizona. I only remember one place in Casa Grande. A double-wide mobile home. My memory of this time period is mostly positive. For me, it felt like we were a real family.  Unfortunately it didn't last.

Johnny had an accident at work (he drove heavy equipment) and everything changed. We moved back to Tacoma in '79.  We rented a house and in a very short period of time Johnny's illness turned to death. He was diagnosed with cancer and within six months he was dead. I will never forget this time period.  I was in 7th grade at Stewart Junior High, I was doing pretty good in school and I had a strong bond with Johnny.  He had been the first positive adult male role model in my life to that point. When he died, in that very short time period, it changed me inside.  I can easily say what propelled this change in me was my moms reaction, and, more moves, after his death. 

Within six months of Johnny's death mom remarried our Uncle Tom. I know, it sounds weird. Imagine being a kid and this happening.  It was super odd, and me, being in massive grief about Johnny's death, took this as my cue to check out. 

We moved; again. Mom and Tom married, we instantly had two step brothers (cousins) move in and we all crammed into the small house we were currently in where Mom had been with Johnny when we moved back from Arizona.  We moved to a bigger house by Lincoln High School on L Street.  We filled with our family, extended family, and others. I think we had 11 people living in one house.  One of those people was mom's ex, Gerry Emmerson (Tom's brother). Yeah, that was odd.  My sisters were beginning their lives with their first marriages and my oldest brother had long moved out and was on his own. 

We moved from that house to a mobile home out in Parkland. And if memory serves me right, we moved from one mobile home to another in that same park. This was all in about the period from '80-'83 ish. We ended up moving from the trailer park to a big blue house across the street.  I remember it being a nice house. In this time period all three of my biological siblings had moved out.  They married and started their own lives. It was me, my step-brother/cousins Terry & Kenny, mom and Tom, and for whatever weird reason, Gerry (Toms brother, mom's ex) was living with us again in the blue house. 

I don't remember why, and really, I don't know the why of most of the moves; it's just what we did, we moved from Parkland back to Tacoma in about '83. By this time Terry and Kenny had moved out and Gerry had also moved out. It was just me, Mom and Tom.  We moved into an apartment in Tacoma on 46th and Portland Ave.  For the first time in my life to that point, I had my own room, and, it was just me and mom and Tom.  Tom was a good man, he really was.  He and I got along fine, but for me it was always just odd to have someone who I had known as my Uncle now also be my dad.  

The moves of my childhood ended when Mom and Tom said they were moving to Bremerton. I was 15 at the time this happened. I said i didn't want to move to Bremerton and stayed in Tacoma when they moved. Just typing that is kind of odd.  I don't remember my mom ever really fighting this decision. I moved in with a friend of my brother/cousin Terry's who had an apartment by where he was living in Tacoma. That was it.  I moved out of my mom's house. 

In total about 20ish moves between my birth and when I moved out at 15. 

A child's environment plays a massive role in how they develop in their lives as adults.  It should be no surprise that the moving thing became something I did myself as an adult. It wouldn't be until I found a life in recovery and changed my unhealthy habits that I would learn to be in one place and be ok with that. I have just touched the surface of all the chaos that was within our homes throughout mine and my siblings youth. In each of these moves, yes, there were some positive memories, but the reality is there was also massive trauma. 

What were the resources I and my siblings had to help us through the many moves:

- Grandparents tried to help by visiting when they could find us

- School gave me some respite from the chaos

- My siblings were key to me surviving 

I have to be real honest and say me and my siblings were left in scary and traumatic situations and had no one to save us.  We were left to our own devices on a regular basis when mom was at work.  We all have scars left on us from our own fathers and the men mom would bring in and out of our lives.  We truly did not have a lot of resources to save us during our childhood; we just didn't. 

Pictured below is from one of mom's many weddings. Johnny Revell was one of the few good ones who was ripped from my life due to cancer. Mom would remarry within six months of his death and that was when I gave up being a kid.