Guess Who?

Yup, that’s me, just hours after I was born. I look confused and disoriented. “What the hay is going on?”

It’s my birthday today.

Actually it’s Mom’s birth day, after all she did most of the work. She always told Erva and me she remembered the days we were born as clearly as if the events happened yesterday.

My birthday story is this. Mom was prepared to have me. She’d already had one baby so she knew what to expect. When Erva was born all the people attending Mom in the delivery room were women. It was a very calm experience. When I was born all the people attending Mom in the delivery room were…men! Mom said there was a completely different attitude about how to get things done. Erva was born pretty much drug free. When it was my time to arrive, first thing Mom knew they’d given her a spinal. She said she felt like a fish flopping around on a table. Those men would tell her to push, but she couldn’t feel anything. “How could I push when I was basically paralyzed from the waist down?” she said. So, because she couldn’t push they had to use…yup…forceps. I am a forceps baby. So out I come and the doctor hands me over to the male nurse and he says, “Here’s a cute one.” And before Mom gets to see or hold me I’m handed around to all the men and goo-gooed over. If all of that wasn’t bad enough, Mom was given shots to stop the flow of milk so she couldn’t breast-feed me, something she wanted and intended to do, something that she was able to do for Erva.

Apparently I didn’t like baby bottles. By the time I was old enough to hold them I would drink what I wanted and then throw the offending object out of the crib. Now remember all baby bottles were glass back then. It seems I managed to break quite a few. Mom decided to teach me drink out of a glass to see if I liked that any better. I did. So I learned to drink out of a glass when I was pretty young.

And that’s it, the story of my birth.

Tomorrow I’m going home to the islands. I’ll be gone for two months. I don’t know when or if I’ll get the opportunity to blog anything. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read my meanderings. If I don’t “see” you off and on in the next two months, I’ll definitely, “see you in September.”