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I AmBy: Allie Alumbaugh

Dedicated to the ones who are still in my life

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Table of Contents

..........................................................................................................................My Name! 5

............................................................................................................The Neighborhood! 6

..............................................................................................................................Games! 7

..............................................................................................................Throwing It Away! 8

...............................................................................................................Husby Christmas! 9

...............................................................................................................................Kristy! 10

....................................................................................................................Snowy State! 11

.........................................................................................................Music for a Lifetime! 12

.............................................................................................................................Yelling! 13

.........................................................................................................................The Days! 14

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My Name

! Allison, the name given to me by my parents on October 29, 1997. Almost everyone I know calls me Allie, Allison is only used when I’m in trouble or when I try to sound very proper. My name means “Son of the noble one,” and was very popular in the early 1800’s in Ireland. When I was born it took my parents about 20 minutes to find a name that they both liked, and that they thought would fit well. When my mom said Allison Kathryn, my dad knew it had to be it. My grandmother was there at the time and when my father went to tell her my name she thought he had said Alysha instead of Allison. When I was in the nursery with all the other babies born that day, a group of kindergartners from a local elementary school were there and my Grandma told all of them that my name was Alysha. I was not named after anyone in my family, so I think my name is unique. I feel like an Allison, I feel like I have grown into my name very well. I do not think I would be suited to any other name because this is the one I was given and I have made it my own. I think we make the names that we are given as children, that’s why when I look at someone else I know I can never put another name to their face, voice, or personality.

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My Neighborhood

FriendsLoudLaughingFriendsMemoriesSummerLake nightsBonfiresColdWinter windsWhooshSnowSnowmenFirst snow fallPlaying in the snowSleddingSledding with the neighborhood kids

QuietShhhhhhFriendlyWelcomingEveryone knows everyoneSmall townCountryPrideUSASmall townLittlePetite

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Games

GamesLoud Fun

Running, Screaming, ScaringGhost in the grave yard.

Meeting

SunsetBeautiful beginningSlowly falling awayBring out the kids

Dusk

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Throwing It Away

I threw it away. Well, I didn’t throw it away myself. I had someone I trust do it for me. They threw it away. My life line for the past three years, in his hands ready to head to the trash. I knew it was for the best, but I felt part of me going with it. The only part of me that I knew I could count on. It was always there. Whenever I needed to feel anything. My best friend when no one else would be. He threw it away. I gave my other one to her, my best friend now. She took it and told me I would never be seeing it ever again. She threw it away. I should be happy, shouldn’t I? I am getting better. I am becoming a better person. I am thinking as best as my mind will let me. I am letting go of the demons inside of me. I threw it away. I never meant to let it get as bad as it did, I never meant it to become an addiction. I just wanted to feel something. Is that so much to ask? It was something I should have done ages ago, but never felt wanted enough to do. It wanted me, it always, always wanted me. It didn’t tell me mean things, it didn’t talk back to me. It whispered sweet things into my mind that were better than anything I had ever heard. I threw it away. I threw it away with the help of beautiful people behind me.

They threw it away physically, butI threw it away.

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Husby Christmas

Lights. So many lights. It’s tradition, it has been tradition for the past 50 years.Every Christmas my grandparents put up thousands of lights. All colors, and shapes, and sizes. Blue, green, red, yellow, orange, pink. The farm is my favorite place during the winter. The lights make me think of the best things in life; my family. They’re loud. They’re beautiful. They’re funny. And the best of it all, they are mine. Christmas morning is my favorite day, not because of the presents, but because everyone comes together. We forget the stupid and pointless arguments, and we come together to make each other happy. After the presents are opened we sit around the table, pray, and then devour the feast in front of us. Ham and turkey covered in gravy, mashed potatoes and warm buns fresh from the oven. The talk. The talks we have gathered around the table are my favorites. Some times silly, others serious. Politics, sports, family drama, and some times a death of a family member of friend because Grandma and Grandpa are old and getting older. I cherish the time I have with these beautiful people. The people who raised my mother, the parents who raised me, my brother and sister, cousins and uncles. The people I wouldn’t want to be with out at Christmas. Janet. Vaughn. Scott. Dean. Jared. Ryan. Jessie. Lukas. Jessica. These people are my family, and I know I didn’t choose them, but they were put in my life to serve a purpose. I love them with all I have to give.

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Kristy

Kristy. My mom. Kristine Ann Alumbaugh. The strongest woman to ever walk this Earth. At least from my eyes. Diabetes, both when she was pregnant with my older brother and with me. Then it came again, this time the doctor told us she would need a transplant. “What’s a transplant?” My second grade self asks when my parents tell me. “It’s when someone gives someone else a body part that they really need. Pancreas, is what they say that my mom needs. Waiting list, is what they put her on. They say she is near the top. Because she needs one really quickly. Two weeks go by and there is call in the middle of the night, my dad comes in to my room and wakes me up. “We need to go, get dressed quickly.” I ask why, and all dad says is, “They found a donor.”

We were sitting in my mom’s room, waiting for the anesthesiologist to come in and put mom to sleep. I was doing well, until the doctor came in and told us that we should go in to the waiting room. Crying, I couldn’t see my mother’s face, but I knew she was crying too. “No, no you can’t take her.” I say and run to her bed, I can’t let her go. My dad pried me off my mom, and told me to say that we’ll see you in a few hours.

A few hours, what a joke. Twelve hours of pure agony. Twelve hours when I didn’t know what was going on, I just wanted my mom. And I got her, stronger, healthier, and still just as loving as she was when I left her. She is the strongest woman I know.

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Snowy State

The weather man says we should only get a few inches, but then again we live in Wisconsin. Snow is unpredictable. I wake up in the morning to a white out. No school, it’s canceled for today. Snow day. The day every kid loves, young or old it doesn’t matter. A snow day is a snow day. I look out my window again, it’s starting to pile up outside. And the weather man says it is not supposed to stop until two in the morning. What to do? Sleep the day away, make a snow man, get out the sleds and head to the interstate hill with the neighbor kids? The possibilities are endless. When it snows here, it really snows. One to two feet sometimes. That’s what I love about Wisconsin. You get the best of the four seasons. Buzzing spring, the wonderful warm colors of fall, the crisp white snow in winter, and the always eventful summers.

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Music for a Lifetime

The lyrics, the notes, the harmonies, the chords, the bass line, and kick drum. The things that keep me going through out the day. So many artists that are under appreciated. So many songs that people like for they’re catchy choruses, but no one ever picks apart the songs like I do. They never think about all the work that goes into making songs. The lyrics are my favorite things to pull apart, I can feel the emotions behind the words that they rap or sing in to the microphone. You know they have story, something that made them say that certain lyric or rhyme. I search hard for the songs that have true meaning. The songs that can bring a tear to my eye every time I listen to them because I can relate to them so much. Music is one of the few things that can turn my mood around at any second. I think that music is the one thing in the world that breaks down all barriers. It can bring people together from many different cultures and places and homes that other things couldn’t. Music is my greatest friend, always there to make me smile. My parents always listened to the best music, I grew up listening to so many different genres of music. They always had music playing on the radio in the car on trips to my grandparents houses and always in the background at home. They have opened me up to all types of music and all the things that come with the songs. Whenever my dad listens to the radio, and an old song comes on, he always has a story to tell, a concert he went, a place in his hometown where he heard that song. So many memories can be laced with songs. Almost all of my memories can be told with a certain song in mind.

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Yelling

My house is loud, all the time. We fight, we laugh, we talk. My mom says I get my loud voice from my dad, and when we’re in church on Sunday and I can hear him from all the way across the room, I know it’s very true. Some times it gets me in trouble, when I’m too loud for my parents liking, or when my sister has a headache and she asks me to be quiet. But why can’t I be loud when I need help? Why can’t I be loud enough to let them know that I am hurting. I can proudly say that I am the loudest person in my group of friends, but I can never be loud enough to tell them that something they said has hurt me. I have no back bone when it comes to things like these. I wish I could yell. I wish I could really scream and tell them. But as soon as I want to say something my throat closes in on itself and no words come out. I think about how if I were to say something it would hurt the feelings of the people around me. But do they not see how the little things they say hurt me? I wish they saw the way they made me think and do dumb things, I wish they could all take a trip in to my mind to really see how I really feel because I can never put in to words what I want truly want to say.

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The Days

Summer days are my favorite days. There is never a worry about what time I need to wake up or what day it is. I love that the sun wakes me up every morning during summer break. It radiates through my room and warms up my skin. Some days I might just lay in bed all day, others my family will take our boat on the Mississippi River and enjoy ourselves a beautiful summer day. Summer days turn into nights and all the fireflies come out and my sister and I try to catch some and save them from time to time. It seems like the days never end. There is always a new adventure to join in on, but the days flow together like the waters of Lake Superior. Some days last longer than other days, and some days go by so fast that I don’t always remember what I had done through out that day.

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