I Was Born a Wild Child...and I Still Am

If there were anyone still alive to ask, you'd find out that I was a wild child from before my birth. I made my entrance into the world about six and a half months after my parents' rushed teenage marriage, conceived, as they used to say, "on the wrong side of the blanket." They got married out of state, no less, an event hastily arranged by my dad's parents.

The ceremony was held at the fabled church named in the old hymn, "The Little Brown Church in the Vale." Yes, it is a real church - located in Nashua, Iowa. My paternal grandmother's family came from Traer (Tama County), Iowa, and there were still quite a few relatives in the state. I have very few memories of the details of this other than my mother's outfit, so it's possible that this church was where the family had gone. I'll probably never know, but I like to think so - it sounds so romantic.

It never occurred to me until I was much older that it was odd there were no wedding pictures of my parents. I never knew anything about their wedding - not even the actual date - until I was in high school. The first clue came when I was rummaging through the attic in a box of my mother's old clothes to find something to wear to our school's "Back to the 50's" dance, and I knew she had kept some clothes from high school. Those would have been appropriate - she graduated in 1954.

My eyes fell on a gorgeous satin skirt and jacket in a shimmery, opalescent shade of bluish-purple with streaks of deep pink. Its rhinestone buttons and the full skirt with its deep folds made it all the more elegant. Perfect for the dance! I ran downstairs to ask my mom if I could wear it. Looking alarmed, she grabbed it from me and asked where I got it. She had forgotten about the box in the attic I guess. She said no, I couldn't; she was saving it - it was her wedding outfit. And her tone let me know it was the end of the conversation. I don't know what ever happened to the outfit, because it never made its way back to the box. I know because I raided it from time to time for other costumes.

As I am writing this it occurs to me that to this day that purple is one of my go-to colors. And those rhinestones must have triggered something in me because I LOVE bling. Oddly enough, the colors of that dress are basically what my hair color is now - a rainbow of streaks commonly referred to as 'oil slick' or 'mermaid hair.' Even more uncanny is the fact that my half-sleeve tattoo (that will eventually make its way up the rest of my arm) is dominated by those colors.

Very little about me was 'normal,' even from birth. When I was born the bones in my feet had not yet completely fused, and my little soft little flexible baby feet could be bent completely in half. Because of my underdeveloped foot bones, I was unable to walk until well past two years old. My parents regularly took me to an orthopedist. Dr. Dick Johnson went to our church and he had an office in the Lowry Medical Arts Building downtown St. Paul - I have no idea why I still remember that. Perhaps the numerous visits and the imposing hallways of that old building made an impression on my child's mind. At any rate, I think the visits stopped before I went to junior high.

I do recall having to wear 'special' shoes as supports. Those Buster Brown shoes (only available in multiple colors of saddle shoes) cost a pretty penny in those days. I think one of the reasons my dad took a part-time job at Homola's Shoes on White Bear Avenue was to be able to get my orthopedic shoes at a discount.

One of my forays into the attic unearthed the baby book my parents kept about me. Tucked into the back flap was a 'prescription' for baby formula given my mom at the hospital. In those days breast feeding was strongly discouraged, it being believed that regular bottle feeding was better for infants. I recall two things from that recipe - dry milk and corn syrup. Dry milk was something dairy companies came up with to market the low-fat and non-fat milks left over from making butter and cheese. But if you know anything about infant nutrition, fat is crucial to good development. And I shudder at the thought of corn syrup.

My mom talks about how even though I couldn't walk, from the time I could maneuver myself around on my bottom or my knees, I was trouble. Of course! Without the brain being consumed with the complicated process of walking - and fueled by excessive sugar from the corn syrup formula, I expect I was a terror.

One particular story I recall her telling (often to a guy one his first visit to our house) was how after a particularly constipated event in my diaper, I fished out little brown pellets and made a design on her new white chenille bedspread. She was already half out of her mind with stress because my brother Tommy was also in diapers and not yet walking. I can almost imagine the scene.

Apparently not being able to cope with me while she cleaned things up, she set me on the basement stairs and shut the door until my dad got home. She said it was about 15 minutes later, but in my memory I was there for hours. The basement was unfinished and there were cobwebs everywhere. This is etched in my mind - it must have been a major mental trauma. To this day I am terrified of spiders.