It had been five years since Mount Baker had let off steam, but all the hype had evaporated along with the plumes. I wasn’t worried about Mount St. Helens since Mount Baker was still standing.

Daddy drove us to Mount St. Helens on a Saturday afternoon. We loaded as many people as we could fit into our roomy van and headed for the mountain. It was an hour away as the eagle flies, but it took a couple of hours to get there.

The road to St. Helens was lined with signs. It seemed everyone had something to say. I read one handwritten sign out loud. “Mount St. Helens is alive and well,” and everyone in the van laughed. The idea that any of our sleepy Pacific Northwest mountains would wake and turn into a volcano sounded like a conspiracy theory.

Some signs warned people to stay away from the mountain, while others joked about old man Harry Truman who lived at the Spirit Lake Lodge. The newspaper reported he’d been knocked out of his bed by an earthquake, but he refused to leave his many cats and the lodge, which had been his home for decades.

The closer we got to the mountain, the slower the traffic. Lots of people were sight-seeing with us. We anticipated seeing steam or some sign of volcanic activity, but we ran into a roadblock long before we got to the mountain. Daddy stopped the van to read the warning sign.

“No entry beyond this point. This area has been designated as an unsafe zone. All unauthorized access is prohibited.”

I stared at a patch of wildflowers on the other side of the barricade. The purple flowers were a picture of tranquility—not even a breeze stirred them. The warning seemed out of place. I begged Daddy to drive around the barrier like we saw other cars doing, but he insisted on turning the van around.

“We need to get home–it’ll be getting dark soon.”

One week after our trip to Mount St. Helens, I slipped into the backyard to wander through the garden. I was pushing some raspberry canes back under the twine to hold them in place when Jake came flying out the back door, yelling:

“Jesus is coming! Jesus is coming!”

I looked up at the blue sky, half-expecting to see Jesus and his angels coming in a cloud. My stomach lurched, and my breath caught, while I silently screamed, “Noooo! I’m not ready!” I thought of all the nights I’d lain awake trying to remember my forgotten sins. And now, Jesus was coming, and it was too late.

Mara ran out the door behind Jake, “Mount St. Helens just blew up! It’s on TV!”

I tried to comprehend her words as I followed my siblings back into the house, leaving the garden gate wide open behind us.

We must’ve watched the replay of the mountain erupting ten times. Then came the stories. Only three people had died in the red zone–a scientist, a reporter, and old Harry Truman, who was obliterated along with his cats and the Spirit Lake Resort.

The rest of the people who died hadn’t even crossed the barricade. Many were campers. Later I heard of one family of four who recorded their conversation on the way up the mountain on a cassette tape. They were joking much like we had the week before. When the kids asked their parents if they would see the mountain blow up, the parents reassured them it was safe. They all died from hot ash filling their lungs. The only difference between their fate and ours was one week.

Daddy’s face grew serious. “We need to make things right with God.” For family devotions, he read a passage from a religious book and gave a long prayer asking God to forgive us for our sins. At the time, it felt like God was a dragon, breathing hot lava and ash down our necks. I went to bed before anyone else—mostly so I could sit up, rock, and pray begging God to save my soul.

A couple weeks later, when we moved yet again, we drove past what was left of Mount St. Helens. I’d seen pictures of it on TV, but seeing it in person was a shock. It was like seeing a disfigured friend for the first time after an accident.

We could smell the Toutle River long before we saw it. I pinched my nostrils shut and breathed through my mouth, but the stench of death was so palpable, I could taste it.

When Mount St. Helens blew on May 18, 1980, it forced the North Fork of the Toutle River to change its course forever. Pyroclastic flows of melted ice and snow created mudflows, washing away bridges on major rivers downstream. Thousands of animals died, and 57 people lost their lives. The stench was a disgusting soup of animal carcasses, mixed with houses, cars, trees, and boulders. A snow-like coating of ash whitened the landscape.

Looking out across the flattened landscape, I felt a kinship to the river. Just as the Toutle had to reroute and twist its way through uncharted territory, carrying the stench of death with it, due to no fault of its own—I had to reimagine my own life, and go with the flow, due to my parents’ stinking choices. As innocent bystanders, we were both forced to leave our comfort zones—and forced to forge a new path beyond the destruction of Mount St. Helens.

There was life on the other side of the volcano, but it was altered. I knew one thing for sure—Daddy’s rules no longer made sense. It was time to find my own true north.

From Chasing Eden: A Memoir

© 2025 Cherilyn Christen Clough All rights reserved.

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My mother in 1972 with her parents and children surrounding her.

The biggest bonus for me in writing my childhood memoir was the opportunity to honor the important people in my life. This chapter holds one of my early memories about watching my mother go from living like normal people in a house, to living with four little kids in a 16x 24 cabin on Whidbey Island without any plumbing.

The life of Laura Ingalls Wilder intersected with mine somewhere between Whidbey Island and the banks of Plum Creek. Even though we lived a century apart, I was able to make a smooth transition from modern life to pioneer living, because Laura’s books felt like a letter from a friend. Laura and I had a lot in common. Both of our families moved a lot, and we both knew how to cook over a fire. We adored our fathers and worked hard to help our mothers while exploring the outdoors with our dogs.

It didn’t take long for Daddy to get tired of tripping over four sleeping kids to make a fire every morning, so he made a lean-to porch along the front of the cabin. He stacked the wood on one wall and built a set of double bunk beds on the other. I thought Daddy was the smartest man in the world to make furniture out of plywood. Seven-year-old Mara and I slept on the top bunk with our heads in the middle, while four-year-old Jake and three-year-old Abby slept below us. It was nice to have a bed again, but the narrow path between our bunks and the woodpile meant we often shared it with an occasional spider.

If the Persuader wasn’t hanging in its place next to the stove, I felt jumpy about wherever it might be lurking. In the clutter and chaos of six people living in a small space, it often got lost. I knew from experience it could rear its ugly head in a pile of dirty laundry or under a stack of newspapers. I never knew when it might strike, but I was beginning to realize the Persuader’s rage was triggered more by Daddy’s moods than by something I’d done. At nine years of age, I was learning to stay alert, check the climate of the room, and escape to the woods until things calmed down.

Most of my life I’d stayed safe from the Persuader by being Momma’s right-hand helper, but island life brought new rules. There wasn’t much housework. Nothing to vacuum, only one floor to sweep. One window with no glass to clean. One port-a-potty, which Momma emptied. We had even fewer dishes to wash because Momma relied on paper plates and convenience foods.

The task that took up most of our time was maintaining a fire in the stove. A constant flame was required to keep us warm, along with heating our food and water. We were never through chopping, stacking, and putting wood into the firebox. We had to feed the stove every half hour if we wanted to cook and stay warm.

Despite the coastal dampness, which permeated our bedding and curled the paper in our books, the cabin felt cozy as long as we kept the fire going. The stove was the center of our life. The fiercer the winds outside, the more the fire’s warmth drew us closer toward each other. On rainy days, we hung around the stove long after we had savored Momma’s bread and vegetable stew. If the temperature dropped too much, we huddled in multiple blankets on the king-sized bed to stay warm.

One cloudy day, I was lounging on my moss carpet, next to the hollow log where I hid my treasures. While I read my book, I maintained my solitude by ignoring Abby, who kept calling for me to play hide-and-seek. Her calls were interrupted by the sound of Daddy yelling. I wasn’t surprised to hear him angry, but when my usually quiet Momma raised her voice, I dropped my book and raced up the hill to see what was going on.

As I rounded the corner of the cabin, I saw Momma chasing Daddy with her fists clenched. In one hand was a carrot peeler, which she used to jab at him, before running behind the VW bus. Daddy ran around the bus from the opposite side, but she took another swing at him and reversed her direction.

When Daddy came around and reached toward Momma again, I heard her yell, “Don’t you dare touch me!”

I screamed, “Stop it!” and started to cry.

Daddy jumped into the bus and backed out of the driveway. Once he was gone, I followed Momma inside the cabin. She sat down on a chair, and the other kids and I gathered around her like bodyguards.

Momma was still holding the carrot peeler as if it was a lit candle. She looked like an angel I’d seen in a Christmas book, but her lips were pressed together as if she was determined to set the record straight. When she finally spoke, her tone was intense. I paid close attention.

“As a grown woman, I will never allow any man to lay a hand on me. And I hope you girls, won’t either when you grow up.”

I’d never seen Momma cry about anything. She once told me she and Daddy had made a pact to remain a united front at all times—partially to protect themselves from us kids overpowering them, but also because her own parents’ constant bickering had plagued her childhood.

“What about when Daddy uses the Persuader?”

As soon as I said it, I knew I’d spoken too fast. I could tell Momma’s anger was subsiding when, instead of answering me, she focused on a knothole in the wall. Her lips remained in a tight line while she put the carrot peeler away and stoked the fire. She slumped back into her chair before she spoke. “There’s a difference between punishing a child and punishing a grown woman.”

Momma didn’t say any more, but I could tell she wasn’t going to justify me defending myself against the Persuader.

Momma lowered her voice to a whisper. “Cherie, you can’t tell anyone about the carrot peeler, do you understand? Not Nana, not the kids at school, and especially not the pastor.” Her tone was serious and determined.

I nodded my head in agreement. When she paused, I decided to ask the big question on my mind—even though I was afraid of the answer.

“Are you and Daddy going to get a divorce like Uncle Joe and Aunt Bessie?”

Momma rolled her eyes. “What a ridiculous question! Of course not! That’s one thing you never need to worry about!”

I could tell she meant it. As if rewarding her for staying in her marriage, I tried to cheer her up. “Momma, I don’t mind living in a cabin. It’s fun to live like Little House on the Prairie.”

If I thought my words would encourage her, I was mistaken. Momma bit her lip.

“I’m the kind of woman who likes to have a place for everything and everything in its place, and it’s pretty near darned impossible to live like normal people in this cabin.”

Since we’d moved onto the island, Momma kept talking about normal people. We’d only lived in the cabin a few weeks, and I already knew all the things normal people did and didn’t do. Normal people have a refrigerator and cupboards and beds and sofas and a dining table. Normal people don’t move all the time. Normal people don’t take showers at the state park or heat water on a woodstove unless they are camping. By normal people, Momma meant her parents and grandparents. None of them had lived like this. It was hard for Momma, but she never spoke one disparaging word about Daddy.

Despite not living like normal people, Momma did her best to make the cabin look nice. As soon as Daddy brought the plywood counter inside, she’d opened her hope chest, pulled out a set of curtains with flexible rods and hung them across the edge to hide the pots and pans and food stored underneath. Those curtains gave a sense of order to the cabin, but they were not without one drawback–they also provided a place for spiders to hide.

Momma got up and shuffled through the boxes under the counter. When she screamed, I jumped out of my chair. Momma ran over to the kindling box, grabbed a piece of wood and frantically beat a spider into the plywood floor until it turned into a dark, greasy spot. She went back to the counter, found the box of food coloring, and opened the blue.

“What are you doing?” I knew the fire wasn’t hot enough to bake a cake.

Wearing a little smile on her face, Momma opened a paper sack and pulled out a long stick, and a pint-sized can with the words “latex paint. She motioned toward the unfinished sheet-rock on the kitchen wall, “I’m going to make some blue paint.”

Momma dropped a few drops of the liquid food coloring into the paint and stirred it. The color still looked white, so she dribbled a few more drops into the creamy mixture. Half a bottle later, the paint remained as pale as the sky on a cloudy day. Momma sighed. Blue was her favorite color. Ripping the lid off, she dumped the entire contents into the can of paint. When the paint turned dusky blue, Momma seemed satisfied—as satisfied as a woman can be when she’s about to paint her one finished wall with food coloring.

Momma pulled out a paintbrush and hummed a little song while she painted until she ran out of paint. It was a slight improvement over the unfinished sheetrock, but whenever I wiped the surface with a sponge, it always bled blue, causing the wall to fade in time.

For the first eight years of my life, I’d taken for granted Momma’s nurturing and hard work. She’d sewn my clothes, bought presents for my birthday, and insisted on my taking a bath every night. I’d never been hungry or cold because Momma had always provided whatever I needed. But island life had changed everything, including Momma.

She was stuck in a drafty cabin with a smoky stove and dirty floors and no hot running water unless she built a fire. She had nowhere to bathe her children unless she pulled out a metal tub and filled it and emptied it herself. She was forced to take one shower a week at the state park. If she wanted to use any appliances, including the sewing machine, she had to turn off the TV and lamp, and everyone knows you can’t sew in the dark. After every meal, if we had any leftover food, she had to put it in the cooler since we had no refrigerator. Even that had to be continually be fed more ice from Nana’s freezer.

I hadn’t thought about how much Momma’s life had changed until she pulled out that blue food coloring. Momma, who had once loved to decorate, was stuck with knotholes for décor. She had no space to bake or entertain, and most of her tools were in the shed. When I thought about all the things she couldn’t do anymore, I couldn’t blame Momma for sleeping late every morning.

I wondered how I could stay safe from the Persuader. Momma often complained about her feet hurting, so I sat down on the plywood floor, next to the dead spider and rubbed her feet. We didn’t have any lotion, but I massaged her toes through her socks.

“Don’t worry, Momma. I’ll help you! When I grow up, I’m going to buy you a house so we can live like normal people.”

I said it to cheer her up, but also because I figured that’s what Laura would say.

© 2025 Cherilyn Christen Clough All rights reserved.

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The year was 1976, and The United States was celebrating its bicentennial that summer. I was turning 13 and a “Bible thumper.” That’s what they call Christians who knock on doors, handing out literature to proselytize other people.

The pastor who baptized me earlier that year was big on evangelism. He believed every member of the church should be a witness. My father, who took theology in college, wholeheartedly agreed with him.

That summer, we had a great incentive to convert souls. A Christian was running for president. You might think a Christian candidate was good news for other Christians, but that wasn’t the case at our house. Even though we were going door to door to convert others to the cross of Christ, we rejected Jimmy Carter because he was “born again.” For some reason, many in our church saw him as a dangerous zealot who would ruin our country.

Even now, I can feel the chills running down my spine as I remember my dad and the pastor discussing all the terrible things that would happen if Carter was elected. They discussed how he was from a no-good family with a drunk brother and a sister who was—heaven forbid—a woman pastor. However, his family’s black sheep set aside, the worst fear was that Jimmy Carter would force his Sunday-keeping religion on those of us who kept Saturday for our Sabbath. Many in our denomination believed this would bring about the end of the world.

Since I feared the world was about to end, and we were racing against time to save souls, I threw myself into being the best witness possible. And no one was more faithful than I was when it came to knocking on doors. I had no fear of strangers.

Very few people took us up on our offer to visit our church or come to a Bible study, but I was mindful to smile and wish them a nice day anyway.

The evangelical efforts of my family brought a total of two and a half converts. The two were a set of twins in their early 20s, who were in the Navy. When we knocked on their door, they had books from almost every denomination on their table, but they had never met someone from our church before.

The twins immediately started Bible studies with my dad and came to church the next week.

My mother, who once dreamed of being a pastor’s wife, took her role as hostess seriously. She prepared gourmet vegetarian meals that even the most diehard carnivore swooned over. My sisters and I began a long season of helping my mom prepare delicious meals, while we had the twins and their friends over every week after church.

In time, the twins got baptized and merged into our family and church. They seemed like thoughtful young men. After weeks of dinners where we had only a small table and a couple of camp chairs, they showed up in their 1950s Cadillac with a furniture store truck that delivered an entire dark wood, colonial dining set with six chairs.

My mom was excited to have a real table, and my dad was thrilled to have two baptized converts—stars on his crown. Stars on all of our crowns, the pastor said, because we’d all had a part in their conversion.

Now, when I say we had a half-convert, I might be stretching it a little, but that’s what we thought at the time. The half-convert was a man in his sixties whose wife was a Christian doctor. He was not a believer, but he loved his wife and supported her humanitarian work on missions around the world. Despite not being a believer, he seemed interested in the Sabbath, so Daddy reasoned there must be hope for him.

When we knocked on this man’s door, he and Daddy talked for hours. He and his wife lived in one of the first fisherman cabins built on Whidbey Island. The location was on the east side of the island and protected from the strongest winds, but it had a wonderful view of the sound and overlooked a small spit where we often walked and collected rocks.

We became friends with “Uncle Herman and Aunt Beryl,” as they asked us to call them. Herman loved Volkswagens, and my dad was a Volkswagen mechanic who often bought old bugs and rebuilt the engines before selling them.

Uncle Herman ended up buying one of my dad’s VWs. It was bright orange, and he frequently came by with questions about the engine. Was it supposed to make that vibrating noise? Daddy reassured him that a good Volkswagen purred like a cat.

After several surprise visits to our house to ask about a new concern, Daddy told Uncle Herman he was like an old lady who worried too much. Looking back, I suspect Herman was lonely and wanted an excuse to visit us. He often brought a tin of Aunt Beryl’s homemade peanut brittle.

From the first day we met him, Daddy discussed the Sabbath and his worries about Jimmy Carter winning the election and forcing Sunday laws on everyone. Uncle Herman shook his head at my father’s fears. When Carter won and was preparing to become president, Daddy shared his concerns with Uncle Herman for the umpteenth time.

“What makes you think Carter would do that? Have you got any evidence?”

“We have a prophet in our church who warned us about this.”

I could see Herman’s shoulders drop in exasperation. He had no more faith in our prophet than he had in Jesus.

“I don’t understand how a law can keep anyone from worshiping God if that's what they want to do—after all, you don’t have to worship in a church or with other people.”

Daddy seemed a little annoyed. “Herman, you’re not a believer, so you don’t understand how much the Sabbath means to us.”

Herman shrugged his shoulders again, and that was the end of it.

Even though my father’s teachings seemed to fall on deaf ears. Uncle Herman sometimes sent my dad mail and addressed it to “The Reverend.” Daddy felt Herman respected him even though he disagreed with him.

When Aunt Beryl went to Turkey to do some healthcare for a humanitarian aid organization, Herman went with her. They were gone for a few weeks. When they returned, they brought us some Middle Eastern sweets and several postcards from Turkey. I kept mine in a photo album for years.

I would've been in seventh grade that year, but due to my parents ending my education at that point, I had lots of time to Bible-thump.

I’d also like to go on record for throwing teenage fits for no longer being able to attend school—at least until my protests met up with my father’s belt.

Our missionary zeal had complicated our lives because it was against the law for us kids not to be in school. If Uncle Herman came over during school hours, we kids had to hide in our bedrooms. If we were outside, we had to hide in the shed and not make a noise until Herman left—which might be hours.

By the time Thanksgiving came around, Momma was looking forward to having a crowd around her new table. Of course, only six could fit around the table, but the rest could sit on the sofa and other chairs. Daddy saw it as our spiritual duty to invite and engage as many as people in discussions about the end of the world. No one knew what the new year would bring.

A few days before Thanksgiving, Daddy invited the twins, then he invited Uncle Herman and Aunt Beryl. Herman was walking around a red Volkswagen that Daddy was working on and kicked at the tires before looking inside.

“How much are you asking for this one?”

“More than you want to pay.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you always try to jew me down.”

Uncle Herman glared at Daddy with his beady eyes and made a snorting sound.

“Some reverend you are—using a term like that. If you call yourself a Christian, you shouldn’t put any group of people down.”

Daddy excused it by saying that Uncle Herrman was so liberal-minded from all of his travels that he didn’t have the capacity to understand an innocent joke.

Uncle Herman and Aunt Beryl did not come over for Thanksgiving dinner that year, but the twins came and brought several young navy men who were all homesick and grateful for a home-cooked meal—even if there was no turkey at our vegetarian house.

In the new year, life moved on in a surprisingly normal manner. The twins were deployed to another base. Uncle Herman continued to stop by from time to time. And Jimmy Carter was sworn in as president and never once threatened a Sunday law.

I grew up, got married, and traveled across the country for my husband’s education.

One day, we sat in horror to see that Timothy McVeigh had blown up the Oklahoma Federal Building. In the days that followed, I was shocked to hear the name of one of the twins in the news as a possible accomplice. He later ended up in prison for sending a bomb to another government building and injuring several people. It turns out the twins were members of Ku Klux Klan when we met them, and they later joined multiple white supremacist organizations. There was nothing Christian about these guys—they had infiltrated our church and led out in our youth group to learn as much as they could about our denomination. Sure they bought us a dining set, but that was only because we were white and they didn’t like sitting on the floor.

My father and the rest of My family were sick to discover the truth about these people we thought were friends. We many questions and feelings about it.

“But they seemed so nice.”

“Did the Bible mean nothing to them?”

“It just goes to show you never really know a person.”

Not long after I got married, I eagerly traveled to Whidbey Island to show my new husband my old stomping ground. We stopped at Uncle Herman and Aunt Beryl’s to say hi. I’d come alone a couple of years before, and Uncle Herman had given me a ride in the orange VW bug, which was still purring along.

Beryl opened the door alone and explained that Herman had recently passed away.

I asked if she was okay, and she said yes—that her faith was stronger than ever.

We had toast and tea with her. I showed my husband the beach. She shared some apples from the little tree I used to play under. We fed the quails when they came out for some toast crumbs.

Before we left, Aunt Beryl described how her father was one of the first settlers on the island and had build this fisherman’s cabin low to the ground to protect it from the winds, but the upper story had great views.

“Would you like to see the views? Go ahead. You can go upstairs and take a look.”

I noticed the steps were steep and narrow.

”My ninety-year-old legs can’t climb anymore, so it might be dusty up there, but enjoy the view.” Her voice faded as we entered the attic.

While my husband went to the window to take in the view, I stood in shock to see menorahs scattered on tables across the room like so many altars. Some were bronze, others looked silver and gold.

I could hear Herman’s voice scolding my dad and my dad’s voice raising fears about persecution due to our Sabbath-keeping and telling Herman he didn’t understand.

Backing down the stairs, I looked into Beryl’s eyes. They were watering like mine.

“Why didn’t Herman tell us he was Jewish?”

“Because he lost family in the war and didn’t know who to trust.”

Reflecting on that Thanksgiving invitation, I now understand why Herman stayed away. Looking back, no one that year was who we imagined they were—not President Carter, not the Navy Twins, not Uncle Herman—and certainly not myself. It turns out I’m not a Bible thumper, after all. But in memory of Uncle Herman, I will continue to insist on the freedom that all people deserve, no matter who they are or what they believe.

© 2024 Cherilyn Christen Clough All rights reserved.

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Photo by STEPHEN SHEPPARD on Unsplash

The following is a story from my memoir “To UnEat and Elephant”

Camping Near Disney World

One spring break, while we lived in Michigan, we decided to drive to Florida to visit Disney World. We took pride in our ability to travel on a budget. It was a game we played. Campgrounds were cheap, and we had to buy groceries anyway, so as long as we cooked food on our camp stove, gas was usually our biggest expense.

We’d explored to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Washington D.C. We’d even gone to the Smoky Mountains, but Florida was as far from our home state of Washington as we could get. We were drawn to it like a moth to the flame. We told ourselves that driving to Florida and checking out Disney World would be amazing.

Our trip through Indiana and then Tennessee was uneventful, with the exception of a little snow. We were delighted to warm up camping on the sand dunes at Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina. We also had fun driving through the garden district in Savannah, Georgia. So far, this spring break was everything we’d hoped it would be, and we felt smug about all the money we’d saved by camping.

When we got to Florida, we planned to stay in a State Park for three nights while we explored Disney World. We told ourselves that the exotic world of the Everglades with Spanish moss hanging from the oaks over our tent would show us the best of both worlds—natural Florida and the polished theme park experience of Epcot and Disney rides.

My concerns began when we arrived at dusk. New places in the dark always make me nervous. Dylan walked to the pay station while I ran my flashlight over the sign and read the campground rules. Dylan came back with a ticket to set on the car dash.

“Okay, let’s get the tent set up.”

“Um, not so fast. Did you read this sign?”

He came closer. “What’s it say?”

“It’s warning us about alligators, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and fire ants.”

“Fire ants? I’ve never heard of fire ants.”

“Me neither, but if they’re listed in that company, they can’t be good.”

“I’m tired. Let’s get to bed and worry about this in the morning.”

“Right, but since we’re pitching our tent in the dark, how will we know if any of these creepy things are in our campsite?”

Just then, two men walked out of the bushes. The reflective patches on their uniforms told me they were park rangers. They were close enough that we could hear their conversation as they stopped under a light next to the bathrooms.

“Hey, Jim, you have a tick on your arm.”

I stared in horror as they shook off their shirts and checked each other's backs. When they noticed we were watching them, one laughed.

“It’s tick season! Beware!”

I was going to ask why he thought it was funny when his co-worker asked, “Are you guys here to see the launch?”

“What launch?”

“The space shuttle’s taking off at dawn. Lots of people here heading out to watch it. We can tell you the best place to view it.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize we were that close.”

“Yeah, being this close is only a concern if it blows up.”

“So what are fire ants?”

After a short lecture, I was afraid to use the restrooms. It seemed the natural state of Florida was one huge creepy crawly mess.

Dylan set up our tent while I sat shaking in the car. He finally convinced me to come sleep on my foam pad inside the tent. Surely, we’d be safe as long as we zipped the screen.

Before we went to sleep, I prayed. “Dear Jesus, please protect us from alligators, rattlesnakes, scorpions, ticks, fire ants, and the Space Shuttle Discovery.”

As we snuggled into our sleeping bags, Dylan teased me for my fears by saying, “I hope you didn’t miss anything.”

The shuttle went up without incident while we slept through it. We enjoyed our day at the Epcot Center. On the second day, we had fun on the rides. Now that we had survived two nights in the park with no incident, we congratulated ourselves on how smart we were to camp and save our money for Disney World.

While we were riding The Haunted Mansion ride, they stopped it in the middle of the ride and told us to get off because a tornado was headed our way. Thousands of people were getting on the monorail. I was terrified to get on, but it was the only way back to our car. I’d never been in a tornado before and hoped to stay safe. Riding up in the air did not seem safe. The panic rose in my throat, but I moved with the crowd.

We were relieved to get off the monorail, but we were standing under a large metal roof when we heard a loud crack of thunder. Then the lighting began flashing, and hail the size of grapefruit fell. There was nothing we could do but huddle under the metal roof, listening to the sound of thousands of baseball-sized hail hitting it. If the roof was so hard hit, we wondered what was happening to our cars.

When the storm passed, we walked through melting ice balls, past car after car, with their windshields and back windows punched out by the hail. We were relieved to see our windshield was only cracked.

Glad to be spared, we headed to our campsite, where our tent had collapsed, and our sleeping bags were floating in six inches of water. I was preparing to sleep in the car when Dylan decided to call his mom.

She graciously paid for a hotel room so we could take warm showers and sleep in comfortable beds that night. Since we foolishly had no savings or backup plan, we were grateful for my mother-in-law’s generosity.

When we returned to the University, our windshield crack had taken off in several directions. We were dismayed to watch it spread with every mile until it resembled a giant spider web.

As we stared at the windshield, Dylan gave me some advice.

“The next time you pray about rattlesnakes, scorpions, alligators, fire ants, ticks, and the Space Shuttle, please add tornados, floods, and hail to the list.”

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Dr. Karyl McBride says truth-tellers are like giraffes who can see above the lies. (Photo by Daniel Argenal on Unsplash)

Since I was a little girl, I’ve remembered things my parents wished to forget. These things stood out to me because they gave me cognitive dissonance between what my father taught and how he lived. I was sometimes confused and other times downright depressed.

An example is being told to memorize the Bible verse that “Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord,” and then being asked to lie and tell bill collectors that my father wasn’t home. I was only five or six, but the contrast between those two requests confused me.

As I grew older and remembered more things my father was ashamed of, his response was to shame me. He would say, “Stop living in the past,” or “Can’t you ever learn to forgive and forget?” My mother backed him up by saying, “Boy, nothing gets past her elephant memory.”

As I grew older still, they would say, “Oh, you know how Cheri always embellishes things,” or “Too bad she has to exaggerate.” I noticed they never actually called me a liar because the truth is I wasn’t a liar. If they had called me a liar in my childhood, they would have to face the fact that they were liars because, at the time, we were too close to those events for them to get away with lying. There were often other witnesses in the form of my siblings or grandparents.

As the decades passed, my parents tried to peg me as being mentally ill and trying to ruin my father’s reputation. My dad lied to my husband once, telling him “that she makes up lies about her childhood.” Thank goodness my husband knew my character and didn’t believe him. It also helped that in the next breath, he said, “Now she’s gonna ask what we’re talking about, so let’s think of something. I know; tell her we were talking about the ballgame.” He hung up when I told him he didn’t have to do that because he was on speakerphone.

As you can imagine, I’ve been dealing with gaslighting and lies from my father, along with an enabling backup from my mother, for my entire life. I won’t lie. At times I have felt shame for remembering. I have been sad that they insist that I make things up. My memories, while not all good, are precious to me. They remind me of times, places, and people that I cherish. It would be painful to omit them because then I’d have to forget things that happened with my Nana, Grandma, and Grandpa, who were each very important characters in my development.

Ever since I was nine and read my first Little House book, I wanted to be a writer like Laura Ingalls Wilder and tell my story. (Never mind that grown-up me has now learned how Laura’s daughter, Rose edited the truth in her mother’s stories by reading the book Prairie Fires.)

I was only nine, but I was mesmerized by the idea of chronicling my life. I wanted to tell the world what it was like to live in a primitive cabin on Whidbey Island. I wanted to tell the world what it was like to take my weekly shower at the state park, which made it seem like we were always camping. And at the time, my mother said, “Seem like? We are always camping!” She said it with irony and annoyance because this was not her plan.

It took me years to write my first memoir because of the shame heaped on me by my parents and then my siblings.

I wrote on my blog once about a cat my dad threw against the wall when we were moving and how we never got to find the cat and make sure she was okay or take her with us. My sisters, who at the time were both angry about leaving that cat, declared publicly on facebook decades later that I was lying. They know the cat was thrown against a wall. They know we never saw that cat again. So why would they try to ruin my reputation with everyone we know? To protect my father.

My parents didn’t want my dad to look like a bad guy. And to be fair, my dad is kind to cats today. He even makes a hot water bottle for an old stray to sleep on that comes to their porch in the winter. It’s not that I am bitter about the sad story of my missing cats so long ago, I bore the pain of that loss ages ago, but it has made me who I am today. It is the reason I support people who rescue cats.

So what is a writer to do when your entire family labels you as a liar? Yes, my parents have progressed to calling me a liar. They wrote a letter to the judge in my brother’s divorce case a decade ago to say that I am a liar, religious fanatic, mentally ill, and that I make stuff up. They did this because they had the rest of the family state that my sister-in-law was a bad mother, while I gave an honest witness that she was a good mother. I find it ironic and laugh and say, “I sure can’t make this stuff up!”

Since I was a little girl telling the truth has not been something my parents valued about me. They will do everything they can to undermine my stories or books. They have enlisted the rest of the family to say I am a liar. Even some of my nephews and niece won’t speak to me. These kids are too young to know the truth, and I have done nothing but send them birthday presents and bake cookies for them. When most of your family has deserted you, it does give you the freedom to speak your mind.

But I’ll tell you what gave me permission to break the family rules. My Grandma fell and hurt her hip, and my parents put her in a home and took over her house. In that house, my Grandma had over fifty years of diaries. They mostly narrated the weather and how her cats and flowers were doing. She marked every birthday and if she called us. Somewhere in those diaries, Grandma wrote the truth about my dad. It must’ve been something he didn’t want her to say to the rest of us. She had repeatedly told us that her diaries were open for us to read if we wanted. While my Grandma was still alive, my father took away her voice by burning all of her diaries in a big bonfire.

At the time, my siblings and I agreed that this was wrong. I don’t know where they stand now. I would hope there is still some honesty left in this family somewhere, perhaps my favorite nephews will be truth-tellers. Telling the truth is not about getting revenge or even setting the record straight, it’s about being authentic. To tell the truth, we must first tell ourselves the truth, but some people are so ashamed of what they’ve done that they’ve stopped acknowledging it.

I’m a Hamilton fan, and I love the song at the end when it’s all summed up.

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

My sweet Grandma had no control over what people said about her. If I had her diaries, I might be able to say even more, but I can verify that she was honest. She was very spiritual and didn’t believe in lying. Sadly, my father had to find fault with his mother-in-law by saying she was mentally ill for liking the color purple or loving her cats and flowers. She wasn’t perfect. She had way too many cats to take care of in her old age, but that was her only crime. She didn’t lie or cheat or steal or wish anyone harm. She forgave even those who might lie about her or hurt her.

The fact that my dad put Grandma in a home so he could take her house and then burned all her stories in one big bonfire will never escape my thoughts. He can’t gaslight this away. In the past, I had trouble standing up for myself, but I have to stand up for Grandma, and I know she loved me and would support my memoirs.

If my dad were in charge of me, he would treat me the same as Grandma—or possibly worse because I have the deep truth of events to share, and he doesn’t agree. His treatment of Grandma gave me the courage to write myself back into the narrative. Like Eliza in Hamilton, I can’t spend the rest of my life crying over my losses, I will write, I will tell my story, and I will bless others along the way.

And when you're gone, who remembers your name?
Who keeps your flame?
Who tells your story?

The day I published my first memoir, I texted my husband to tell him I had pushed the button. His text back is my favorite text of all time. He answered—

“No one will ever take your voice away now!”

Then my eyes filled with tears to realize that I had hit publish and no one could burn all the copies.

How about you? Are there people who don’t want you to tell your story?

Then you must, by all means, tell it!

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