Hannah Montana at Four

Hope is the daughter of our kids' godmother, Aunt Christina. She had her fourth birthday party at McDonald's Sunday night. Christina made an enormous cupcake as her birthday cake. We were rushing back from Owasso and forgot to bring her present. So the next day we went to see them. Hope loved the Hannah Montana wig. She put it on and immediately had to have her Hannah Montana guitar. She started rocking out in the living room with her friends dancing around her.

Afterwards we all went outside to see the chickens that Aunt Christina and Tanti Glenda are raising in the back yard. The smell of chicken feed as we entered the barn almost stunned me with the memories it brought back. From the ages of about six to 10 we lived on a small farm. My parents raised pigs, goats, one horse, and of course my step-dad's special chickens. He bred fighting roosters before it was banned in Oklahoma. My job was to feed and water them and to clean out their water dishes. There were cows, too, but we weren't responsible for them. I had a strange mixed up childhood. When I was Hope's age I lived in what now would be called the ghetto in a slum apartment complex with another family sharing the small space in Virginia. I've been a city girl and a country girl, but I think that my favorite place is suburbia.