I don’t remember much of my childhood, which is a little unsettling to say out loud. Not in the way some people can recall exact outfits or the smell of their first classroom. Mine is more like a mosaic with missing tiles. What I do “remember” are stories that I’ve heard so many times I’ve created them as true.
Two scenes stand out — two moments that seem small on the surface but built the architecture of how I related to people for years.
If every superhero has an origin story, I somehow ended up with two. Spiderman had the spider. Batman had the alley. I had… a front porch and a bathroom door.
Origin One: The Porch
Our house had a front porch, where I spent most of my time as a kid chatting with anyone who walked by. Neighbors, dog walkers, total strangers… I greeted them all like I was the unofficial mayor of Santa Cruz.
My parents joked that they were always worried that I’d wander off with a stranger, and honestly, they weren’t wrong. I loved people. I trusted easily. I felt safe reaching out.
That porch was my first imprint: connection feels natural, people are good, the world is open. Looking back, it was the purest version of me — curious, friendly, unguarded, and comfortable taking up space.
Origin Two: The Bathroom Door
The second imprint was very different.
My mom loved me and my siblings, that was clear. However for her love was a difficult emotion. Her father died when she was still a child, a loss that shaped her in ways she didn’t talk about then, but that lived in the background of everything.
We don’t think of kids as noticing these things, but we do.
We absorb the unspoken.
We adapt.
One of the stories she’d tell was how she couldn’t even go to the bathroom without me. She’d try to close the door, and I’d immediately be there, pressed against it, having a meltdown. She told it like it was cute but I heard it differently.
I hear a little kid who sensed that love might be conditional.
Who felt the echo of her childhood loss.
Who didn’t know what to do with that, except to stay close.
This is the second imprint: love can feel uncertain and closeness can disappear.
We talk a lot now about generational trauma, but living it can be subtle. It doesn’t always arrive as drama or big moments. It shows up in the tone of someone’s voice, the tension you feel around conflict, the way a parent’s fear becomes your responsibility before you even have words for it.
My mom’s sorrow wasn’t visible, but it was present.
And without knowing why, I adapted
I learned to keep watch.
I learned that losing someone is a real possibility, even if you never consciously think about it.
The Blueprint These Two Moments Created
Put the porch and the bathroom together and you get the foundation of my adult relationships:
• open, social, comfortable with strangers but at the same time
• guarded with the people I actually needed
• independent to a fault
• secretly afraid of losing closeness
• the kid who talked to everyone and the kid who panicked when the bathroom door closed
Two early experiences that shaped everything that came after.
I didn’t understand any of this at the time. I just knew the porch felt expansive and easy, and my mom felt like everything — which meant her absence, even for a minute, felt bigger than it should have.
We inherit more than we realize.
Sometimes it’s eye color or mannerisms.
Sometimes it’s the places where our parents never got to heal.
This was mine.
The beginning of how I learned to reach out
and the beginning of how I learned to hold back.
This is part of an ongoing series about my own emotional development. Writing it is part of my own healing — returning to moments I’ve spent decades trying to understand.