“So…My Childhood…

Got Wiped Like a Bad Hard Drive”

Let me tell you something I wouldn’t wish on anyone: trying to remember who the hell you were when your whole childhood is floating around in some cosmic junk drawer.

I lost my dad when I was 9. He was 57.

I lost my mom when I was 21—just one day before her 61st birthday.

Neither of them suffered, and for that, I’m genuinely grateful. But let’s not pretend that makes it easier. There’s no cashback reward for losing both of your parents before you can legally rent a car.

And just to spice things up, right after my mother died in a car accident, I had a seizure at the scene. Like full-on dramatic, on-the-side-of-the-road, paramedics yelling kind of seizure. The kind that makes you wake up not just traumatized—but missing entire chapters of your life. I was later diagnosed with PTSD and “massive memory loss.” Sounds clinical and tidy. It’s not.

So here I am, blogging about a life I can barely remember. Cute, right?

I’ve forgotten “most” of my childhood and young adulthood. I’m not talking about the typical “oh I forget my locker combination” kind of stuff. I’m talking about people walking up to me like, “Deborah! It’s ME!” and I’m standing there blinking like a hostage, trying to decide if I should hug them or call security.

And before all that—before the loss, before the seizure, before the brain decided to unplug itself—I grew up in Billerica, Massachusetts. Yes, “that” Billerica. The one that smells like fall leaves, rusted swingsets, and wet mittens. We didn’t have money. Like, not even pretend money. But our house? It always smelled like food that could’ve brought a grown man to tears. My mother could take a box of government cheese and a can of whatever-was-on-sale and turn it into something that tasted like it came from the back kitchen of an Italian grandmother’s dreams.

We had half a floor. I don’t mean metaphorically—I mean literally. Half of the flooring in the house was just…wood. Like RAW plywood. The kind that gives you splinters if you’re not wearing socks. One side had carpet, the other side looked like someone gave up halfway through a Home Depot commercial.

Our shower? Oh, you sweet summer child. We didn’t have a shower. We had a sheetrock box that may or may not have once been a shower. So we took baths. In the tub that was ice-cold metal, then random boiling hot water poured from the spout which then turned the ACTUAL  tub scorching hot.  No mixing dial—just two separate old-school faucets, one for hot, one for cold. You learned the art of speed and balance real quick. It was a dance: one toe in, one scream out, Mom swishing around the water, trying too hard to make it tolerable, and the promise of a future where you’d one day afford a normal damn bathroom.

The bathroom sink was a similar disaster. You had to pick a side: hot or cold. There was no meeting in the middle. You either left the bathroom with numb fingers or third-degree burns. No in-between. It built character, or trauma. Still debating. We had a toilet that Mom felt needed like a carpet around the base of it, and a carpet on the lid, and if we were lucky, carpet that covered the entire tank. She changed the color themes of our house like it was her literal job but I do remember the toilet paper MATCHING the carpet of the toilet decor. And I vaguely remember a quilted cover for the back-up toilet paper that was like a doll, and the toilet paper was her dress. (anyone getting the visual?)

My dad? A walking Home Depot, or to be more specific Grossmans (our local hardware store, and my most favorite place to be with my Dad) with a powdered donut or a Miller HighLife, or both.. A handyman with half-finished projects everywhere. One week it was a new wall. The next week, just…a ladder sitting in the living room like it was furniture. I can’t tell you how many exposed wires I walked past on the way to breakfast.. He had heart, and a stubbornness that made him a legend in our neighborhood. And if you gave him a six-pack and a Sunday, that man could make anything work. At least for a little while. 

We didn’t have a lot, but somehow we still had joy. We had the smell of onions sautéing in butter. We had sarcasm at the dinner table. We had loud love and louder arguments. And I miss it all, even the splinters. I remember my mom always wanting to have an Entenmann’s Raspberry Danish Twist thing in case “we have company”, cuz ya know, back in the 90’s, people DID randomly show up, for cards, coffee and Danish. 

Now, I write this blog trying to pick up the pieces of a life I barely remember. I’ve started reaching out to old friends from elementary school like I’m casting a documentary about a stranger who happens to be me. “Hey… do you recall anything about me? What was I like? Did I wear overalls? Did I bite people??” And surprisingly, they remember me. Better than I remember myself.

They tell me stories. Send me photos. Remind me I was real, that I existed before the gaps, before the trauma, before my brain started erasing things like an Etch A Sketch. It’s weird and wonderful and uncomfortable as hell. It’s like ghost-hunting in your own body. But I’m here for it.

So if you’re reading this and you knew me back then—feel free to slide into my inbox with memories. The good, the weird, the embarrassing (especially those). I want them all. I need them. I’m not trying to become who I was—I just want to meet her. Say hey. Maybe sit down with her and tell her she’s going to go through a lot, but she’s going to make it out with her hoops still on.

This is The Gold Hoop Diaries.

Not a pity party. Not a perfectly packaged trauma memoir.

Just a woman with missing memories, sarcastic commentary, and a heart that refuses to stay broken.

Thanks for being here while I try to remember my life out loud.

-D