I was born in 1976, the oldest of four children, in a small town in south central Illinois. My parents and I lived in a tiny apartment in an old house that has since been demolished and replaced by an overpass. We lived in that apartment for about the first year or so of my life. I don’t remember it, but my mom says our neighbor ran an illegal cable line from his apartment to ours so my mom could watch her soaps. We had cable until we moved to the house in the country that would be my home until I moved out on my own at the age of twenty-one. After leaving that first home, we wouldn’t have indoor plumbing again until I was about five years old. I didn’t have cable television again until I was twenty-one and married.

My dad worked at a building supply company next to the railroad tracks in Effingham, IL for most of my childhood. From what I understand, he gathered the occasional extra scrap lumber from work and scrimped and saved his money for windows and other amenities. When he had enough money saved up, he bought ten acres of land near his parents’ house and built our new home himself.

We started out small. The new place had no running water. The largest of our three rooms was half kitchen, half living room. The other two rooms were bedrooms. I was sharing my room with a baby brother not long after we moved in. Two additional siblings would soon follow. We (by “we,” I mean my parents) had to draw our water from a pump over our well outside. My grandparents had a two-seater outhouse, but my dad had plans for adding indoor plumbing, so he didn’t waste his time building an outhouse at our place. We had a portable sickroom toilet that had to be emptied somewhere. I don’t remember where we emptied it. I’m not sure I want to know.

I did, after all, grow up in an era where it was considered okay to burn your garbage in a couple of old barrels at the edge of the property. Whenever the barrels were full, my dad would load them up on the back of his truck and haul them off to dump them. There were a couple of different dump sights on my grandparents’ property. The one I remember most was nothing more than a gigantic hole that had been dug in the middle of a field. The whole family used it. Once the hole was full, my grandfather covered it up with dirt and planted crops over it. There’s no telling how many of these hidden dumps exist on the old family farm. My family has been there for several generations. My dad owns it now.

My dad hates debt. A few years ago, he told me that the biggest loan he has ever taken out in his entire life was for $18,000. That loan was used for the addition to our house that would include an upgrade to indoor plumbing. I remember my parents, grandfather, and some aunts and uncles all working together to build on that new addition.

We lived in the middle of a construction zone for a good while. My brother, who was a toddler at the time, couldn't stay out of the way. He was forever climbing into places where he shouldn't be. One day, he climbed a ladder to the roof of the two-story section of our new split-level home. Another day, I tried to give him a boost from the old section of the house up to the second story of the new section through an unfinished hole in the wall. He slipped, and we both tumbled to the floor of my parents’ bedroom where I gashed my head open on their bed frame. My brother was the rascal, while I was the careful one who always ended up getting hurt. I still remember the green washcloth I pressed to my forehead to catch the blood from my wound on the drive to the hospital. I still have a scar from those stitches.

The day we finally got indoor plumbing was exciting for everyone. I remember playing “king of the mountain” with some of my cousins on the huge mound of dirt that had been dug out for our walk-in basement.

My Aunt Erma came outside, grinning. “Come see Frank and Sarah’s new toilet!” she said.

We all ran inside to watch the water run through our new toilet on the second floor of the addition. My days of bathing in a blue plastic tub in the kitchen were over.

I guess we were poor by a lot of people’s standards, but it never really felt like it. I didn't particularly care for wearing hand-me-downs, but we always had everything we needed. Even if we never did have cable. I watched a lot of PBS growing up. My parents taught me how to work, so by the time I was old enough to really start wanting things, I was also old enough to make my own money and buy them myself.

When I was in the eighth grade, I got a babysitting job working for a family with six kids. I was technically only babysitting for the three youngest, as the three oldest — all boys — were supposedly old enough to watch themselves. But they were a bunch of hellions, and I couldn't in good conscious sit back and allow them to kill themselves and each other just because it wasn't my job to watch them.

Anyway, I rode the bus home with them after school every day. I would get there just in time for their mom to run off to her second shift job and stay until eight or nine at night when their father came home from work (he was self-employed and worked long hours.) At any rate, I was already working about twenty hours a week at the age of thirteen. I got used to having my own money and decided that’s what life should be like.

The times I have had to rely on other people for money since then have been hell for me. I was brought up in a time and place where many young women still thought only of marriage and kids when they made plans for the future. I’m glad my parents didn't bring me up that way. Although, sometimes I get the idea my mom wishes I would have found a husband who would take care of me as well as my father has taken care of her all these years.

Instead, I stayed at home with my parents for as long as they could stand me. I couldn't really afford to go to college, so I just got a full-time job after high school and lived at my parents’ house for free. Then one day, my dad finally said, “Well, you’re about to turn twenty-one soon, so I think it’s about time you started paying rent.” That’s when I decided to join the Air Force and get out on my own finally. I had saved up about $10,000 by then. Too bad I couldn’t live with mom and dad forever.

The first time I went home on leave, I expected that everyone would be all impressed that I had made it through boot camp. I was in the best shape of my life (I was able to do more pushups than most of the guys in my flight at basic training.) I thought everyone would “oh” and “ah” over me in my military uniform. After all, that’s how the men were always treated when they came home from the military.

Instead, I heard things like, “I don’t know why you would want to live anywhere but here,” “Still an old maid?” and “Are you ever going to get married?” It seemed like nothing I did for myself would ever matter. Why couldn’t I just get married and have kids like I was supposed to? Why did I always have to be different?

Maybe that’s why I went and married the first asshole I met when I stepped off the plane in Hawaii a few weeks later. As my sponsor, he was supposed to just show me around the base and make sure I got to where I needed to be the first few weeks after I arrived. Instead, we got married two months after we met, and that was that. My life would never be the same. But that’s a whole ‘nother story right there. (You can read about it here if you like.)