Jessica Dennis Adams
To whoever it may concern.
This the story of my life told in a casual way by a casual person. I
hope you find it informing, humorous and above all that you can begin to
understand who I am by what is written here.
I’m sitting here at a old desk on a chair that is too short and too hard
for the desk. With small children
running around my feet and I dedicate this to them. To Patrick and Madeline.
I was born in 1986 on the 23rd of June weighing
6lbs 8oz. My mother tells me I was born in the early afternoon about two
p.m. I was the first child born to Anne
and Steven Dennis, The first grandchild on my father’s side and the second on
my mother’s, I’m sure my arrival was met with much excitement and spoiling with
frilly little dresses. My Parents were
still in school my dad was working on his bachelor’s degree from BYU and my
mother was in school to be a hairdresser. I was a good baby didn’t cry much. I
walked at 9 months and talked in full sentences by 18 months and it has been
difficult to get me to stop talking ever since
When I was six months old my mother unexpectedly became
pregnant with my younger brother Braden, and had to drop out of beauty school.
Braden was born on October first 1987. Braden cried all the time because he had
colic. I was only 15 months old when Braden was born; I believe this is why I
became a fiercely independent child. My
brother and I were close as children; the first sentence I ever spoke was the
week he was born. I asked my mother while she was breast feeding “baby, eat?” she
replied “yes.” “NO!” and so began a long history of bossing my baby brother
around.
My dad graduated! We moved to
Seattle where he worked for EggHead Technologies. It was the late 10’s and tech was booming he
worked in human resources and we were poor really, really poor. My mother tells me we skipped Christmas one
year. This is where my first memories
begin living in a small apartment, playing with the neighborhood kids.
On my second birthday my parents threw me a small party in
our second story apartment, a few church friends and their parents. I remember my dad was cutting carrots and my
mom was doing something with a raw chicken. I was playing in my room with my toddler
brother. I remember all of this because of what happened next my brother
climbed up on our changing table to look out the window. The open window. He leaned up against the
screen and fell out. I ran to the
kitchen and told my parents “Braden is hurt.”
They didn’t hear any crying so they brushed me off “Come now Braden is hurt.” “I’m sure he will
be ok Jessica.” “NOW!!” so my dad followed me to our room saw the open window
and ran down the stairs cutting up his arm on the stair railing on the way.
They found him crying and bleeding from
his mouth. My mom rushed him to the Emergency room at the local hospital.
Amazingly he was fine, he had landed on the soft post rain grass and bit his
tongue. My dad was actually hurt worse than Braden, everyone made it home in
time for my birthday party. My dad still
has faint scars on his arm 25 years later.
Though this isn’t my first memory it is the clearest. Braden likes to
tease me about it “You pushed me! ” and I tease back “shoulda aimed for the
concrete” .
A few months later my parents
decided that their job situation just wasn’t going to work. They decided to
move back to their home town where my dad could go back to college at Utah
State to earn a master’s degree. My mom
was sent ahead with us to get our affairs in order while my dad slept on friend’s
couches for two months. I missed him so much; I thought that we weren’t a
family anymore. When he got home I
followed him for a week.
We moved into a cheap yellow rental
house that my parents slowly fixed up over the ears we lived there. Insulation
had been blown in after the house had been built, they blew it in from the
outside cutting softball size holes
every few feet, then plugging the holes with more wood, the effect was a lot like
Swiss cheese. We called it the yellow
house with holes. I loved that house.
There was a big apricot tree in the back yard, it was huge and my dad built us
a tree house in it, well not a tree house he never did get around to building
walls so it was more of a tree platform.
Along one fence were plum tree’s, when my mother wasn’t looking Braden
and I would climb the fence and eat plums right off the tree. ON the other side of the back fence was the
church yard, a big beautiful and in my mind perpetually green field. When we
were running late my dad would gently “toss” us over the fence and then hop
over himself and we would race to the church building.
For a few years that is how it
went, My dad went to school, worked at a nursing home and came home to study in
the unheated wing of the house which contained my dad’s office attic and my
parents’ bedroom. He studied in his
winter coat wearing gloves and earmuffs with 2-3 small electric heaters
attempting to keep the room from being below freezing. My mom worked as a hair dresser at KING HAIR
(yes in all capital letters) in down town Logan. When they both had to work at the same time we
went to my grandparents’ house Bill and Ellen Dennis.
My grandparents lived in a house
that was near Utah state university campus and most importantly they were very
close to the Utah State creamery. Both
sets of grandparents would take us there to get the best ice-cream. I always
chose bubble gum ice cream with real chunks of gum in it.
When I was about 4 and my brother 2
my grandmother had her mother living with her, others who knew my great
grandmother describe her as a loving and wonderful woman. But, by the time I
knew her she had dementia and was very mean to my brother and I. She was the
night mare of my childhood even now the thought sends a shiver up my
spine. She would go out of her way to
trip us, grab us, and pinch us. We did
our best to avoid her but she’d wait for us. My grandmother tried to keep her
mother separate from us but it didn’t always work. Eventually my great grandmother had to go to
a nursing home.
In 1991 I started kindergarten I
went to Adams Elementary school. The same grade school my mother had attended.
My kindergarten teacher was Ms. Saltern. She was a wonderful teacher who had a
sister my age with down syndrome. This is when I started to grow a love of
special education students though it took me longer to really figure it
out. For first grade I had Mrs. Peterson
she was very nice but unremarkable.
When I was in the first grade my sister
was born Cassie. Cassie was born March 2, 1993. These were the days before
ultrasounds were common place and I remember finding out I was having a sister
I danced around the kitchen of my grandma Dennis while Braden went for an
exaggerated Kahn style NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Because now I had an ally. Cassie
would actually turn out to be everyone’s ally as a very kind girl and woman.
When I was in the second grade I
had a difficult time with Mrs. Henniger.
She and I well I would say we had a personality conflict. That or she
was just plain mean. This is the year I was diagnosed after extensive testing
with ADHD but I was not yet medicated. Mrs. Henniger spent her time making sure
I was in class with her as little as possible. I was banned from every field trip
for various reasons. I was sent to a title one remedial reading class I didn’t
need and then bounced back to her because I was reading at a middle school
level they couldn’t help me. My mother
says that she should have had me removed from this class and had it been my
younger siblings she would have. But, I was her
first child and they just didn’t know how to handle the situation.
During the summer after second grade my parents were in need
of a larger home for their growing family.
So we moved into my now empty great grandmother’s house, the catch being
that all of the rent went into fixing up
the now dated home. This home had a
large yard, a play room and enough bedrooms that I got my own room. It was the
smallest room in the house but the first to be remodeled because the jungle
animal wallpaper and the lion pull on the closet door gave me nightmares.
The house had a large backyard, where I could play with my
dad’s cousins who lived right next door and despite being my father’s cousins
were close in age to myself. Actually this was the only home we ever lived in
where we could play with the neighborhood children.
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