Young life with family

When i was very young, I knew we were different from most people. I regarded these differences in terms of tangible things, like food, toys, etc. While all of my friends were eating froot loops and cocoa puffs, we were only allowed cereals with little or no sugar, no preservatives, and no artificial colors or flavors. The raunchiest breakfast cereals in our house were rice krispies or cheerios. Mostly I ate kasha with yogurt or fruit compote. While my friends had Star Wars action figures and guns, I had only stuffed animals and other nonviolent toys.

There were the intangible differences, too. My parents had intellectual friends over all the time and they had very serious discussions after they thought i'd gone to bed. Usually the discussions included words like "manipulate" and "fascist" and "agenda". I had no idea what those words meant. Their friends thought I was great. Like everything i said was divine and fabulous in its childlike innocence coupled with precocious wit. At least that's what i thought.

I was different.

And yet, while I secretly worried about our family's weirdness all the time, I really enjoyed life with my family for the most part. I was the baby of the family and my dad's only, so really I was spoiled. David took me with him on his illicit excursions often because he knew i could keep a secret. My mom loved me from the ground to the sky, through the clouds to the sun, back down again and so forth. I danced around the living room every day singing at the top of my lungs "DA DOO DA DA DE DOO DEE DA DOO". Jason was the bane of my existence. Once he discovered that while it wasn't right to beat up a girl, he could torture her with psychological warfare: tickling, farting, namecalling, etc. It was a family.

Every Sunday we would have bagels and read the paper (I couldn't quite read yet until i was 4, but I would fight over the funnies with my brothers just the same, and then move my eyes side to side like i could see they were doing to pretend). I drove around a lot with my dad and played games, watched Saturday morning cartoons with my brothers, went to the beach with my friend Jesse, and lived a somewhat ordinary child's life within the realm of our weird family.

When I was 4, my mom discovered Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Before I knew it, she sent away to become a disciple. She got a new name, once Marci Strieker - now Ma Premrup (all women were Ma this Ma that, men were swami this and that). I immediately renamed her "prempoop". Not only that, but she started wearing all orange and a mala - a necklace of 108 wooden beads and a locket with Bhagwan's picture. My dad thought she was crazy at first, then slowly but surely came around. He sent away for his new name - from Donald Bluestone to Swami Sarvananda "sour banana", of course.

Our house was soon filled with orange dye, orange clad people, and tapes upon tapes of Bhagwan. When he spoke, his voice would trail off at the end of each phrase or sentence with a swooshhhhhy exhalation. We three kids went around the house constantly mocking him and applying this affectation to all of our requests: can pleasssssssssss have some macaroni and cheesssssssssh tonightssssss? Get your asssssssh out of the bathroomssssssssssssh alreadysssssssss! and so forth.

My mom went off to Pune, India to get up close and personal and do some groups. My dad soon followed, but not before i had a chance to beg and beg and beg to get a new name and mala too. Some kids ask for puppies or horses, but no, not me! I wanted to be a sannyasin! Please, can I, please please please!!! I wanted a new name and to run around in orange clothes. And oo that necklace! It all sounded like a lot of fun.

They promised to ask on my behalf when they went to India. I waited 5 weeks (staying with family friends) with bated breath. I daydreamed about what my new name would be. I invented lots of beautiful names for myself, mostly floral in nature: rosa, rosulie (my name was Julie), daisulie, and on like that.

Finally, they returned. They came with a message, that I could be a sannyasin, but that i had to be responsible and always wear the colors, now expanded to include reds, purples, and maroons - "shades of the sunset", and the mala and to use my new name: Ma Prem Hira. Hira. That was my new name. I think my brothers had the hardest time switching to my new name, but of course Jason came up with "hira there-a everywhere-a went to bed in her underwear-a".