This is me, Jennifer Lea Langston, born July 19, 1967 to
Dale and Joyce Langston at Roseville Community Hospital in Roseville,
California. My middle name is a carry on of the family name “Lee” but my dad
decided to feminize the name, at least that’s the story. There were no
ultrasounds to tell my parents whether I was going to be a girl or a boy, but I
am sure they figured I would be a girl. Considering they already had four girls - Jacquie, Denise, Mary and Cynthia - waiting for my arrival! In fact, when they
brought me home, Denise, who is eight years older than me said “that’s not my
baby, she’s ugly!” Why did she say this? Because I was born with strawberry
blonde hair and Denise was not expecting to see the reddish color. She overcame
that thought and was soon spoiling me rotten.
Speaking of being spoiled rotten, because my dad was attending
university at the time of my birth, he was took care of me. My mom worked the
3-11 shift at the hospital, when she came home after her shift she would find
dad with me asleep on his lap along with a book. He would fall asleep studying
while holding me. He would dress me in those little dress like jammies that tie
at the end, so when I crawled around my feet would not come out. He said I
looked like the baby from the Popeye cartoon, so he called me “Sweetpea.”
We lived in a little house in Citrus Heights, it was on the end
of a road by a spacious field, there was a white picket fence in front. In the
backyard there was a massive graceful willow tree with sweeping branches that
reached for the ground like great hands. I remember running in and out of those
great hands, playing hide and seek with my sisters or just setting up house
under the tree by the great trunk. We had a great big playful black Labrador
retriever named Happy, with beautiful brown eyes who loved me unconditionaly.
He was my carriage horse, my protection, and my best friend.
When I was about five years old, my parents decided we
needed to move into a bigger house. My older sisters were teenagers and didn’t
need to be sharing with us little ones all the time. So they purchased a house
in Orangevale, California, which isn’t too far to the east of Citrus Heights. The
house was on Norway Drive, it sat on the bottom of a hill and I loved it. The
front and back yards did not have any grass, so dad put us girls to work
“picking rocks.” He put those rocks to good use though, in the backyard there
was a hill that went up to the fence and he terraced that hill with rocks,
stairways, and waterfalls. It was absolutely gorgeous in the backyard, an oasis
for us to entertain our friends.
I remember pretending that I was a princess walking up the
stairs with my trusted steed, Happy, by my side! Yes, I had quite the
imagination. At the top of the hill dad had made a nice grassy area where we
could have a picnic, it was so high that we could see over the tops of the
houses in the neighborhood. Sometimes we would take our sleeping bags up there
and sleep out under the stars. I started kindergarten the year we moved into
the house on Norway Drive. I went to Pershing Elementary, I remember walking to
school and making new friends. One of my fondest memories of kindergarten is of
the pumpkin push, we had small pumpkins and were to nudge them with our noses
across the grass to the finish line. It was a lot of good natured fun.
One day Mary, Cynthia and I were messing around in the
Backyard; Mary was lying on her back with her knees bent and I was sitting on
her feet, she would push me up, launching me into the air. I would laugh, with
the wind in my hair, landing in the grass. Mom yelled out the door on her way
to work for us to stop because someone was going to get hurt. As usual, mom was
right, about an hour after she left I was launched off of Mary’s feet only to
land onto a concrete block. My left arm was twisted underneath me and took the
brunt of the fall. I know I screamed, because my dad came running out the
sliding glass door. He called my mom and told her “I think Jenni’s arm is
broken!” She said “What do you mean you think it’s broken, it either is or it
isn’t!” Dad explained to her what it looked like and she drove home to get me.
Yup, my arm was broken, it was a greenstick fracture and I had a nasty cast on
my arm for what seemed like forever!
Each year we went to my mom's hometown of Lincoln, California
to attend the Holy Ghost Celebration. This is a Portuguese tradition that has
been brought over from the Azores Islands, the celebration commemorates the
patron saint of Portugal, St. Isabel. My mom’s grandparents immigrated from the
Azores Islands in 1907 and 1909, so we have a lot of family in Lincoln.
Whenever we went to the celebration it was like a mini family reunion. In 1976
we had a real family reunion, celebrating our Portuguese heritage. Just after
the family reunion, our little family sold almost all of our possessions, what
didn’t sell we put into storage, packed up our truck and trailer, and headed
east. Dad decided we were going to move to Arkansas, specifically Mountain
Home, Arkansas, this is where he grew up.
We took our time, driving across Interstate 80, seeing all
the historic sites that we could see. We drove up to the Grand Tetons and
through Yellowstone National Park. We saw Castle Rock, Fort Laramie, and
conestoga wagons. We washed our clothes in streams when we had to, which was
not so bad, until we had to wash my dads handkerchiefs! When we arrived in
Arkansas, I couldn’t believe the different hues of green found in the trees. We
lived in our little trailer and a tent on Lake Norfork, a gorgeous man-made
lake with sandy beaches and high cliffs, marinas and boathouses. Unfortunately
going back “home” wasn’t what my dad expected and just a short time after we
arrived, he decided we should move back to California. It took us three weeks
to drive from California to Arkansas, the return trip took us only three days!
We ended up settling in Lincoln, dad and mom figuring this
would be the best place to settle because of it being small and having family
within walking distance. This is where I was introduced to religion, I began
going to catechism with my cousins and mass with my moms sitter, Annie Airo.
After a few years I began to question the Catholic point of view, so some of my
friends asked me to attend church with them. I went from church to church through
out my teen years, searching for acceptance both from the people and from my
Heavenly Father.
In the middle of my senior year of high school my parents
decided to move to the mountains. I know this was a dream of theirs, as we
spent just about every weekend in the summer camping in the Sierra Nevada. I
didn’t mind the move, I was looking for myself and for a new start, my teen
years were a mess. I liked my new school, but I missed my old friends, so I
spent quite a bit of time on the weekends in Lincoln. When I started college at
Sierra College in Rocklin, California, I was still looking for acceptance. I
married near the end of my freshman year, much to my dad's chagrin. Dad did not
like Robert one bit, and told me that I was not marrying him. I think, deep
down, that’s one of the reasons why Robert and I eloped to Reno, Nevada.
Robert and I rented a small shack from a large family near
Grass Valley, California. I didn’t know what religion the family was, but
figured they were either Catholic or Mormon, having nine children and the tenth
on the way! I was correct, they were Mormon, and pretty soon the LDS
Missionaries were knocking on my door. Robert and I were baptized within a
month, I had found the acceptance I was looking for from people and from my
Heavenly Father. Three years later we were blessed with a baby girl that we
named Tiffany, she had curly brown hair and blue eyes. Then eighteen months
later another little blessing arrived, Stephanie, with straight blonde hair and
green eyes. Even with two beautiful girls, our marriage wasn’t working, and we
separated.
The girls and I moved to Silverdale, Washington, to live
with my oldest sister, Jacquie and her family. I was able to secure employment
and find childcare for the girls. I soon moved out to an apartment with the
girls and filed for divorce from Robert. This is about the time I met John. Which
is where this blog began, and where I will pick up again with the next post.
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| Jacquie, Mary, Denise (back row) Jenni, Cynthia (front row) about 1969 |
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