The Yellow House

My first memories of learning about nature and learning to love it began in the yellow house. We lived there until it was time for me to start kindergarten. My memories are that of an innocent child and I am sure my family would remember them differently, but these are the tales through a child’s eyes.

The yellow house was in Kenosha, Wisconsin

Lake Michigan

Some of my earliest childhood memories are from the time we lived in the yellow house. We lived near Lake Michigan and I remember going to the lake with my parents and older brother. It was fun playing in the sand with my brother. He would bury my legs in the sand and make them look like a mermaid. The thing I liked the most though, was walking into the water when the waves were rolling in one right after the other. My dad held one hand and my mom held the other. Each wave pushed my feet out from under me as the water surged past and my parents lifted me up a little each time. I remember laughing and giggling the whole time. Such a short memory, but a happy one. I laughed a lot when we lived in that yellow house. I have loved going to the beach ever since visiting Lake Michigan and the waves bring back happy memories no matter what beach I go to.

Bees Verses Tulips

Not all the memories at the yellow house were good, but I always ended up laughing anyway. My older brother and I played outside with the neighbor kids for hours during the warmer weather. They were all older than me, but they did not mind me tagging along. There was a field of wildflowers behind the houses, at least that is how I remember it. I loved the bright colors of the flowers in summer and would often feel the softness of the petals. One day we were playing outside in the field, and the boys wanted to climb a tree. Climbing trees was not an unusual thing for boys to do. I was too little then, but I did it quite frequently when I was old enough.

This tree, however, was not a good idea for anyone to climb. The next thing I remember is the boys shouting run for the house as they all caught up to where I was playing. I took off running without looking back but could not keep up with the boys. I never looked back but ran as fast as I could to try and keep up. Turns out there was a beehive in that tree and one of the boys had disturbed it. The next thing I remember as my arm swung back, is feeling what I thought was the petals of a tulip wrapping around my finger and then a sting. I made it to the neighbor boys house and their uncle was holding the door open for us all to rush in. I showed him my finger and he remover the stinger and put a band aid on it.

I told the story of the tulip stinging me while I was getting my band aid on.  The boys laughed, their uncle said it was all okay now, but none of them argued with my tulip story.  After that we went down in the basement where their uncle had a movie projector set up and he played Popeye The Sailor Man cartoons for us the rest of the afternoon. When we went home, I showed my mom the band aid and told her about the tulip. She told me it was not a tulip it was a bee. I did not believe her and kept telling her it was a tulip. They were soft like the legs of the bees were, so I was convinced that was what stung me. The tulips had little things inside the petals that looked like stingers to me.

Mom had a book with pictures of insects, another with pictures of flowers and another with trees. She got out the book with pictures of insects and showed me the picture of the bees. I had not looked back and seen the bees when my brother said run, so I still was not convinced. I went and got the book with the pictures of flowers to show her the picture of a tulip and showed her the pistil and stamen in the center. Of course, I did not know that is what they were called but I was sure they could sting. There had been lots of tulips in the field and my fingers had brushed against several of them while I was running. Eventually I learned that tulips cannot sting, and bees can, but it was not that day.