Standing by my mother looking at Roosevelt-Wilson Elementary School, this is what I saw:  Sky.  So much sky the low building seemed irrelevant. I didn’t take to the tall trees and rolling hills of Pennsylvania, but the sky over Texas City in my memory is cast in bright blue all the time, with white clouds just for emphasis. The sky made me feel like my troubles rose up and drifted away, leaving room for whatever adventure would happen next.

Not too much time passed after our arrival in TC before someone thought of enrolling me in school, probably Aunt Jackie, and Roosevelt was the closest. As I stood outside the school, staring at the sky, I smelled the chemical odor from the plants, which I was already getting used to, but I also smelled the pungent aroma of the breeze over salt water in Galveston Bay, rotting fish, and old mud.  I liked that, though I knew it wasn’t roses.

The one-story school squatted on a piece of land so vast it seemed like a prairie, right there in the middle of town. Rows of neat houses lined the streets on both sides of the field, houses with swept sidewalks and grass lapping at the curbs. Even the children walking to school had a mowed look, scrubbed, tucked in, belted, flat-topped and pony-tailed.

There would be three marvels before the school year ended, two marvels of kindness and another more spectacular marvel concerning a pony, which I’m pretty sure I imagined. But to tell about these marvels, I have to tell about Roosevelt-Wilson School. My friend Lana recently said that everything in Texas City seemed perfectly normal until you said it out loud, and writing about it is the same way. It all seemed normal at the time, but it was much more fun than that.

My mother’s final advice as we approached the enrollment office was “be yourself.” I wanted to be Zorro, Scout Finch, or Annette Funicello. I had no idea who I was or where I belonged. I wasn’t even a Texan, as far as I knew.

Thanks to the research of a second cousin of mine, I would learn that my roots in Texas go all the way back to the Republic and beyond. I wish I had known sooner, but when I arrived in TC I thought I was from Pennsylvania and had lived in San Antonio before that for a while. In short, I was an alien.

I was installed in Mrs. Schleiser’s fourth grade. I scrambled to catch up academically, but it wasn’t too hard because I was a reading fool. I pestered for a library card as soon as we arrived. Pestering was effective with my mother (the Butterfly). She gave me what I wanted so I would be quiet.

I could read well because the first week of second grade a teacher in San Antonio told my mother I couldn’t read a lick. My mother understood all the up-rooting was having a negative effect on my education, and this bothered her. “Sit down,” she said one evening after the teacher ratted me out. My mother brought out a completely inappropriate book, Forever Amber, I think, opened the page, and pointed a red-lacquered nail at the first word. “Read,” she said.

We did this every night for what seemed like years. We read movie magazines, comic books, newspapers, and whatever she could get her hands on. Soon enough, I didn’t need her; I loved to read, and I would for the rest of my life. She breathed a sigh of relief, went back to what she was doing, and I was quiet for the next ten years. I learned a lesson. Everything has an up-side. If it hurt to have my parents tell me to go away, I had a place to go – into books, and it’s one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I started slow at Roosevelt, and right away my squinty eyes tipped off Mrs. Schleiser. I couldn’t see diddly from more than five feet out. She moved me to a front desk, but I needed glasses, and they were provided, though I don’t know from where (there was a limit to my aunt’s resources, if not to her generosity). Because I probably read at a college level, and now I could see what I was doing, I caught on to most things.

My clearest memory is that I was happy. Anger would surface later with regard to my father, but children trust their intuition, and mine told me the worst was over. People who have unhappy childhoods have a lot of company. Bad stuff happens. I hate clichés, but the truest one of all is “that’s life.” You have to cope, and I coped by reading and laughing. A sense of humor is a gift, and it hasn’t failed me often. My way is to laugh and stay centered. Things generally aren’t rotten or perfect. They’re somewhere in the middle, with a tilt one way or another from time to time.

For instance, when the great kidnapping caper occurred, we had to return to the bus for our things, and one of the passengers made me laugh, despite everything. The fellow had been with us on the bus all the way from Pittsburgh, and although I didn’t know anything about sex except there were two genders, I knew when men flirted with my mother, probably because it happened pretty often. Our fellow traveler, who had tried a couple of times to chat her up, chose just that moment to take another shot.

“Hey. I thought you had two kids.” He chucked me under the chin. “Did you hang on to this one because she’s so cute?” I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. Not because what he said was funny, but because I was pretty sure this was an epic fail. My mother burst into tears, and I stopped laughing. We left, and the comedian slunk to the back of the bus, probably  to die of embarrassment before he got to Louisiana.

What did I know when I was introduced to the clean inmates of Mrs. Schleiser’s fourth grade? I could read. I could laugh. I had my aunt and uncle and my cousins Beverly and Ray (scary, but he was blood – kids feel the pull of that). I had my mother and my sister.

The next thing I learned was that I had no talent at all for making new friends. I’ve developed many friends over time, but it’s a family joke that I just don’t get that first bit right. My opening salvos at parties have been known to clear out whole rooms, I get it so wrong. I was at a party, and my friend Jo mentioned that her mother would be coming. In an attempt at small talk, I asked a person who looked a little like Jo if she happened to be Jo’s mother. The woman turned an icy eye on me. “I’m Jo’s college roommate.” The conversation group dispersed. I could tell several stories like that, but one’s enough to make the point.

I know people who make friends so easily I’m amazed. There’s Jeanie from TCHS; also my cousin Beverly, who met Prince Charles when she lived in England. He made a surprise public appearance and stopped to speak to her in the crowd. They exchanged stories, laughed like old friends, and he probably still sends her Christmas cards. If my husband Brian is with five people for ten minutes, two will want his e-mail address, two will ask if he’s free for golf on Friday, and one will come over and tell me how lucky I am to have him.

This does not happen to me. I make friends that last a lifetime, but it takes a while. Although I can’t fix it (I’ve tried), I understand why this is so. I was “poorly socialized,” as a shrink might put it. I arrived in TC never having had a friend. I never went to the same school for one whole year. I never went to anyone’s house. I didn’t know any children. The up-side: I know how to be content in my own company, and adjusting to change is easy for me. I also appreciate not having to parry overtures from people I wouldn’t like anyway.

But about the marvels. The first was the kindness shown in the Morris home, where my aunt in particular showed a gentle sensitivity in what she may have thought were small ways. To me, they were enormous. For instance, there was one TV, and I don’t mean one in every room, like now. I mean one TV. People had to work with that. My aunt realized the most important activity in my life (besides reading) was the Mickey Mouse club, and she made everyone stand down for half an hour in the afternoon so I could watch. The thought still thrills me! M I C K E Y – pause – M O U S E. Annette. Cubby. Darlene. Every day I couldn’t wait. Thank you, Aunt Jackie.

The whole time I was enrolled at Roosevelt-Wilson, I probably said a total of 10 words. I moved around like a phantom, quiet, because I didn’t know I was supposed to talk. Overtures were made to me, particularly by a girl named Renee, who saw something interesting in me. She invited me to her house. I found this troubling, but I went, and it was the nicest house I had ever been in. It had pillars across a front porch. I don’t know how I did. OK, I guess. I knew how to be polite, and that’s all the grown-ups of my acquaintance required. (I wish I had a picture of her. She moved away before junior high.)

I remember Dennis, too, because he was sweet as pre-pubescent boys can sometimes be. When I was moved up to the front because I couldn’t see, I landed next to him, and he spoke to me. I think I may have spoken back. But people have to come to me, not because I’m special, or because I’m shy or aloof. I simply can’t think what to say to someone I don’t know.

A person with a whistle came to the door of my class one day soon after I was enrolled. She announced: PE! I didn’t know what PE meant. Peanut energy? Pretty eagles? I knew about recess, but that was way more disorganized. I lined up and was marched to the gym with all the other fourth grade girls, and that’s where I met Dolores, who was so beautiful I couldn’t stop staring at her, and so I became even more confused at the activity. When it got warm outside we would have softball or kickball, but at that time of year it was dancing. All those little girls, including pretty Dolores, pranced around like care-free leprechauns. I wanted to laugh from the pleasure of the sight.

Dolores talked to me, and I understood that she wasn’t only pretty, she was smart and funny. After fourth grade, I didn’t see her again until junior high, and by then the Big P (puberty) had descended like a fog, and everyone was loco. Still, I remembered Dolores. In junior high she was stunning and popular, and I was undistinguished. (Years later she would be among the leaders who brought the class of ’64 together again.)

I was even more hindered in the friends-making arena because I was the only kid in the Texas City Independent School District who had divorcing parents. This is certainly untrue, but it’s what I thought. Divorce was rarer by a zillion than it is now. Better socialized kids asked me things, like where did my father work. I didn’t realize this was only fourth grade small talk. They expected to hear something like Amoco, Monsanto, or down on Sixth Street at First State Bank.

My mind flew to the truth. He’s been on a drunk for two years, hasn’t worked in three, and I have no idea where he is or what he’s doing, and he’s got my baby sister, too.  I’d rather have died than say that.

So I said he was a Fuller Brush Man. At some point he had gone from door to door selling brushes. This seemed an honorable pursuit, so I said it, with no further explanation. I probably looked so stricken any sensible kid resolved on the spot never to talk to me again.

Although I fell in love with TC at first sight, sometimes such things trickle away. However, the final thud of falling in love came with the two remaining marvels. The mythical one first: Ronnie won a pony at the Roosevelt-Wilson spring carnival.

My state of mind by the spring of 1956 bordered on rapture. I always got spring fever – still do – May comes and I’m singing songs from Camelot, planting things that can’t possibly survive in my growing zone, and thinking I’ll win the lottery. Mix the anticipation of the carnival with spring fever, plus having my mother and sister safely back from Pennsylvania, and in fourth grade I must have been like a pig-tailed tomboy on a sugar high. Sorting out what’s possible about Ronnie and the pony has led me to believe I heard about the big win and embroidered the rest (if you know, don’t tell me – I like my memory just as it is). And yet, I see Ronnie in my mind, running down 14th Avenue with a pony.

I’m pretty sure Ronnie did win a pony, but in my memory, it wasn’t a certificate he could take home saying he could have a pony or $300, so his parents could call someone and say, “Keep the pony. Send the money.”

Nope. This was Texas City in 1956, and Ronnie bought a raffle ticket at the spring carnival. When his name was drawn, they handed him the reins. “Congratulations, kid! Here’s your pony.”

Can you imagine such a thing these days? Modern moms pee in their pants if a kid comes home with a goldfish. Someone has to FEED it for God’s sake! Ronnie lived near Bay Street, a few blocks from the school, and he ran home with the winsome beast trotting behind. And here’s how I remember Texas City moms. I’ll bet his mom took it in stride.

“Oh, a pony. Good for you, Ronnie. Take him around back and tie him to the tallow tree.” She probably rolled her eyes when he was out of sight and started sorting out what to do, but she wouldn’t have acted like someone should be sued.

The third marvel is real, though it took time for me to realize how marvelous it was.

By spring I was living on Fourth Avenue in the Danforth School District, but Mrs. Schleiser (who was known for owning the largest Tom cat in history) was adamant that I should not change schools. Transportation was the problem, as my mother wouldn’t own a car for a couple of years, so for no reason except kindness Mrs. Schleiser drove all the way across town to pick me up, every school day for the rest of the year.

And at the time, I thought this was odd, because changing schools in the middle of the year was my normal, all I’d ever known. Looking back, I see what a fine thing it was. That beautiful teacher drove down the alley by St Mary’s Church each morning, and she even thought to tell me not to mention it to the other kids, so they wouldn’t call me “teacher’s pet.” There’s a good chance it was against the rules of the school district, too, but what was important to her was the welfare of one little girl.

And maybe that’s why I believe Ronnie may in fact have gone home with a pony. Marvels like that happened in Texas City.

NEXT: The Butterfly and the Bombardier

PS: Mrs. Schleiser’s 4th grade . . .