Read Raising Blaze for Free Online

parents often changed the parameters of the games to include some different concepts. We played “Clue” as a psychic exercise, for example. We would take turns selecting cards from the deck and psychically transmitting the images (be they Dining Room, Wrench, or Professor Plum) to another player. Masterpiece, a game where famous artworks are auctioned off, also got a few modifications. Nobody was allowed to play until they could identify, by artist and title, every one of the eighteen paintings in the game box.
    Of course, this wasn’t the only thing that made us different. None of my classmates had mothers who busted out a deck of Tarot cards or threw the I-Ching on a regular basis. For that matter, none of my peers had mothers who wore miniskirts and snakeskin platform shoes but who were also fluent in Yiddish and enjoyed a nice jar of pickled herring from time to time. None of the other dads knew how to cast horoscopes or listened to the Doors. And none of the other families moved around as often as we did.
    We moved regularly, sometimes as often as yearly, and not just across town. My parents moved across continents. We went from England, where I was born, to Brooklyn, New York, and back again a couple of times. We moved to South Africa for a year and then to Los Angeles. We ended up in the Catskill Mountains for a few years, but even then, we moved from town to town several times. By the time I graduated from high school, I had attended thirteen different schools in three different countries. My parents weren’t moving because of their jobs, because of schools, or to be closer to their own parents. When my classmates asked me if I was an army brat, I was baffled. I didn’t have any idea what the term meant. No, my young, freethinking, nomadic parents were looking for the perfect place to raise their own tribe. Every time we relocated, my mother would sew together several Indian-print bedspreads and stuff them with colored foam. Bits of green-and-pink foam flecks dotted our carpets for at least a decade. “The big pillows,” as we called them, functioned as couches.My father bought a giant redwood picnic table and benches while we were living in Los Angeles and that traveled with us for years as our dining-room set. There was never a feeling of permanence in the places we lived and we owned nothing that couldn’t be packed up quickly and shipped off to the next location.
    Friends were equally transient. There was never time to form long-term friendships with schoolmates and not much of an inclination to bring anybody home. When friends came for dinner or for rare sleepovers, they would inevitably be grilled, their eating habits criticized, their value systems judged. None of this was done in an overt, mean way. No, it was subtle enough to be missed by the guests but we would squirm under the light of that scrutiny on their behalf.
    Above all else, my parents stressed our connectedness to each other and reinforced our need to support each other in every possible way. This too set us apart from the other families I knew growing up. The results of my parents’ efforts can be seen in the terms we now use to classify anyone who is not a member of our immediate family:
    1. Not one of us.
    2. Could, maybe, with some work, be like one of us.
    It seems as separatist now as it did then, but this philosophy has resulted in an extraordinary closeness and affection among all the members of my family. I have lived with my sister Maya for over a dozen years. We share almost everything. Although the rest of my siblings live in other houses, we all eat dinner together at least once a week. We speak to each other daily in a sort of shorthand relay. There is always somebody to talk to if need be and there is always a burgeoning story of interest to share. Of course, there are a few odd little anomalies and we do have our idiosyncrasies. One of us doesn’t drive. One has a secret passion for the romance novels she keeps stashed