Bowden

Bowden wasn't much bigger than the apartment, and it wasn't much of a home. It was still in the age of avoiding being home as much as we could in order to avoid Steve. The house it's self was three small bedrooms, a livingroom and a small kitchen. Off of the kitchen was a play room that we stepped down into. It just now crossed my mind that this room was probably an old converted garage. I was going into the third grade when we moved into Bowden. I was in the 5th grade by the time we moved out. Bowden was the first house I stayed in for longer than a year, in a long time.

Bowden was also the time when Aaron and Lindsey started to drift away. I don't remember Lindsey much at all during this time. I keep trying to conjure a image of Lindsey on the couch or of us playing in the snow, but I just can't. I'm sure she was around sometimes, but for the most part, at the age of eight, my big sister had little interest in spending time with me. Aaron was still around at this time. We played toy store in the play room and we did a lot of walking. Walking, is what I remember most about Bowden.

I was only seven, but I spent much of my time at Bowden wondering the neighborhood on my own. Steve's parents had bought all of us a pass to the recreation center, and they had a pool there. I wasn't old enough to swim by myself, but sometime if I didn't have Aaron to check in with me, I would walk the mile or so to the rec center anyway. I would always try and get into the pool first, and often if worked. If not, I would sit in the snack room and people watch.

If Aaron was around, we also liked to go to the beach. I remember the beach being pretty far, way too far for a 7 year-old and a 13 year-old to go on their own, but we went anyway. For years I thought my memory betrayed me, but now that I have gone back to the area we lived in, I do think the beach was a couple of miles away. The nice thing about the beach was that my uncle lived just a few blocks away. Many days we would go to his house to wash the sand off with his hose and hang out with him before heading home. Going to the beach was an all day event for Aaron and I. Because of this, we went to the beach a lot.

See, at this time, mom was the one working while Steven spent most of his time home. He had slacked off on his asshole ways and was more into neglecting us all together. I don't know, maybe if we had been there more often Steve would have been just as bad, but at that time I had all the freedom in the world so it was easy to avoid Steve. When I think about it, while I had better times at other houses and we had more space at them, and cooler places to explore, Bowden was probably the most peaceful place I live in those years that Steven was around.

Bowden was the first house we moved out of on our own. Sometime around the time we lived there my mom decided to buy a sub shop. The sub shop was about half an hour away from Bowden, and it was a very successful business so my mom and Steve decided to buy a house closer to the sub shop.