About Holly Goldberg Sloan

two

My parents bought a house at the end of their first year in Palo Alto. It was a wreck and they fixed it up. This was the beginning of something that to this day is part of who my mother was. She loves buildings, and she loves projects. The Palo Alto house had fruit trees in the back and one was an apricot tree. Once I learned to walk, they say I loved to be outside in the garden. And when the apricot tree was in season, I could not be stopped from going out and eating apricots until I got sick to my stomach. They said I even climbed out a low window to get to the tree. Apparently, my mother would yell at me: “No, No, stay away from the apricot tree!”. This was my first sentence. A command to myself. I did not heed the warning. To this day I can eat a bag of apricots at a single sitting.

three

When I turned 2 years old, my little brother Randy was born, and we moved again, this time to Oregon. It is here where my first memories begin. My parents doubled down, investing the money that they’d made from the California property into a house designed by a prominent local architect. It was modern. And big. And way cool. It was on a really large lot in Hendricks Park, which is almost 3000 acres. We’d socio-economically jumped a level, which I didn’t realize until 16 years later. My parents never had a savings account. Nor any kind of college fund. Or retirement account. They believed in spending every dollar that came in the door. And they believed that one day my Grandparents in Chicago would die and solve any kind of potential money problem. The joke was on them. My Grandparents lived to be 98 and 97, respectfully. But the Grandparents did, bless them, pay for me to go to college, so the parents got that part right.

four

When I was four years old, my father went to work as a consultant to the Peace Corps. We moved to Washington DC so that he could work on the personality part of the entrance tests for the newly formed agency. We lived in Georgetown and I have some memories, but I think the memories are from looking at the old photographs….   

five

My dad gave me books all the time. Both my parents loved to read and even though we were in Oregon, we subscribed to the Sunday New York Times. It arrived two weeks late in the mail. I liked to look through the paper and imagine living in New York City. And one day I did.

six

My dad shaved his head way before it was a cool thing to do. But he had lots of hair on his back and my mom clipped it with dog grooming shears. Like he was a sheep. Both of my parents love good food and a good time. Those are key ingredients to a good childhood.

seven

For a long time the street we lived on in Oregon was a dead-end. We were close with all of our neighbors. Sort of one big tribe, with my family being the kooky-ones. Our next-door neighbors were part of our family. They were stylistically different from us in every way—and we loved them with all our hearts. Harry was a successful business person. A self-made man. He’d been in WWII and was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. But I only heard him speak about that once in my whole life, and that was when I was interviewing him in Junior High School for a paper. Harry was like a cheerful Clint Eastwood. He was ruggedly handsome and knew how to fix or do just about anything. He owned and operated the most successful gravel quarry in the County and I think he’d succeeded personally and professionally beyond his wildest dreams. He was incredibly generous. With everything in his life. And he was married to….

eight

Bertie. She deserves her own paragraph. Bertie was heaven. And now she’s in heaven, if there is one. Bertie was of Mexican American heritage who grew up in Los Angeles. Everything to her was about family. And she considered me part of her family. The greatest thing that happened to us in moving to Oregon was moving
next door to the Weisses.

nine

The other neighbors were life changers as well. The Coles. And the Goldens. Kathy Golden appeared the summer of fifth grade from Cleveland, Ohio. With five brothers and sisters, and her former-jet-pilot father who was now a brain surgeon, and her college beauty queen mother, they moved into the Anderson’s old house and the good times really rolled. Kathy and I ended up going off to Wellesley together. I never would have even applied there had it not been for her.

ten

I can remember teaching kids in kindergarten how to braid things.

eleven

I can remember almost exactly what all of my grade school teachers looked like and I can remember what the school rooms looked like. They posted what was for lunch right next to the door and this fascinated me. To this day I like menus a lot.

twelve

When I was in third grade we moved to the Netherlands for a year. We rode our little bicycles to school and in my mind we rode for miles. I have no idea how long it really was. But I wore a dress with tights every day, even when it was snowy and the cobblestones had ice on them. There was a bakery three blocks from our house and I would go there for cookies and I can still see exactly how it looks inside in my mind. I became fluent in Dutch when I lived there and today I practice on the language apps. I love the sound of the language. It’s as if someone is constantly clearing their throat to remove a hairball.

thirteen

That summer, we traveled all around Europe and lived in a tent. I had two dresses, a pair of shorts and
a pair of pants and a swimsuit. My mom washed my underwear at the campsites at night in the sinks in
the bathrooms. They always dried stiff.

fourteen

My little brother pooped on a path on a hillside in Italy and that’s when they found out why we had such bad stomach aches. The next day we were de-wormed. We stayed in that campground an extra day because we couldn’t be in the car traveling.

fifteen

In Yugoslavia, we camped in a remote area and ran into a band of Gypsies. Real Gypsies. They totally freaked me out. But my parents kept saying how great they were and they made me take out my jump rope and play with the Gypsy girls who all had earrings and scarves and looked, well, like Gypsies. But what I remember most about the Gypsy girls was that they smelled like they hadn’t taken a bath in a year. I’d never smelled that before. And they kept touching my wheat-colored hair which I guess looked exotic. I gave them my jump rope after this terrifying play session. I remember wanting to give it to them so that I could get away from them and get them to stop touching my hair. But it was heralded as a great act of generosity by my parents when it was just the opposite. I was buying them off. My father got out his camera and tried to take some pictures of me with the Gypsy kids and then they asked for money and threw rocks at him. It got ugly fast and they already had my jump rope. I remember questioning my parents judgment. It wasn’t the first time. 

sixteen

When I was eight years old we crossed the Atlantic in an ocean liner. It took 8 days. They were magical. The ship had a bowling alley on board. We played bingo at night and they had contests where you would find the typo in the menu. I was eight years old and found the typo one morning and won a bottle of perfume. I still had it when I was in high school. That perfume only was used for very special events and grade school and junior high didn’t afford many of those.

seventeen

Our house in Oregon was heated by burning sawdust for the first ten years that we lived there. We had a whole room filled with sawdust and my mom shoveled it into the furnace about five times a day. Strangely, I have no memories of my father shoveling sawdust, but I know that he must have done this. Interesting.

eighteen

My mother is a great bowler because she was in the Navy, and also because she’s a good athlete. We went bowling as a family a lot. Once my father split his pants straight down the crotch after hurling a ball down the lane. We went home right away after that and he didn’t like how hard we were all laughing.

nineteen

We had a pet goat. He smelled horrible, but I loved him. His eyes looked like yellow marbles
glued into the sides of his smelly head. The goat’s name was Ernie. I think I loved him more than he loved me, but that can happen.

twenty

I went to school in Turkey at an incredible place called Robert College. I’m still in touch with some of my classmates from that time. They were all so smart and interesting.

twenty-one

I love my feet. I don’t think anyone else ever has. I have very long toes.     

twenty-two

Sometimes when I start writing I have trouble stopping. Anyone who knows me well has received email from me that looks like three pages from a book. Job hazard. I also have trouble with control when there is chocolate in the house. Or egg custard. Or spare ribs.  

twenty-three

I fell off a chair-lift when I was learning to ski at Mt. Bachelor in Bend Oregon when I was eleven years old. I landed in fresh snow and I was okay, but so scared from the fall that I peed my pants.

twenty-four

When I was in seventh grade and living in Berkeley, California, I had a wonderful teacher named Addie Holsing. She taught a journalism class and we put out a daily newspaper. It was one page, front and back. Sort of like a blog today. I will remember that class and Addie until my last breath.

twenty-five

I like to say that if you land in the spider web of Holly Goldberg Sloan, you never get out. And by that I mean that friendship really matters to me. I’ve kept childhood friends from Eugene, of course, but also from Istanbul, and from my time living in Berkeley. My college friends and my work friends are ever-present. If you knew me and we’ve lost touch, find me!