I was born on November the twenty-third, 1979, at Ball Memorial Hospital in Muncie, Indiana. I was too young to remember it at the time, so there’s not much I can tell you about that. All I really know about it comes from threats and insinuations my mother made over the years. Threat: “When you were born, you came out the wrong way-- face up. You gave me back labor. Just wait until you have babies.” Insinuation: I somehow did this on purpose to cause her pain. Threat: “The doctor said you had a head bigger than ninety-five percent of babies. Just wait until you have babies.” Insinuation: Well, I don’t know. Perhaps the thought is that my head is still bigger than ninety-five percent of heads out there; a thesis supported by the fact that ninety-five percent of pairs of sunglasses I try on squeeze my head unbearably. I think I’m getting off point.
My parents are not classical reminisce-ers. In addition to what Mom told me about my being born, Dad told me that he was surprised by me. I have an older brother, the advent of whom apparently convinced Dad that only male babies come out that particular chute. Thus, the introduction of a girl was of some small shock to him. I guess he got over it eventually.
It was actually my older brother who had the most adjusting to do. When I was brought home from the hospital, he was an eager two year old. “Can I hold it?” he asked. But I think he quickly found what a trial baby sisters can be. Perhaps the first time Mom took one of his toys away because he bashed me with it, he had some inkling of the difficulties of siblingdom, but I think the aggravation really set in when I was old enough to talk and insisted on calling him “Joelly” every time I addressed him.
Other than these few shared recollections, my first couple of years were largely uneventful. The usual diapers were changed, blankies were loved, smashed foods were gummed, and I grew. When I was about sixteen months old, my maternal grandfather succumbed to a heart attack, to the surprise of my family. He was quite young when he went, and my mother says that it was a comfort of sorts to have me toddling around, babbling at the funeral. But this, like other early events, is only an image in my imagination.
Somewhere in the space of those early years, I split my head open on one of Joelly’s toy trucks and had to have stitches. I also fell in love with my elderly neighbor’s miniature house. Not that they lived in a miniature house, but they had a miniature house full of miniature items that I loved to look at, to the point of venturing over there to look at them once when I was about three without first telling Mom where I was going. I guess you could say I ran away, but only next door. This is an incident I do have strange, waivery memories of. It seems as though I look at my small self through air that shimmers like it does rising off of the pavement on a very hot day. The living room ceiling in Jim and Treeva’s was textured with precise, swirled brushstrokes, and I have an impression of the room being blue. I recall the doll’s house in a small room off of the living room that may have had yellow walls. I was fascinated with the small house with its tiny chairs and little light fixtures, but I had a strong impression that I must not touch it. Instead I watched it with a hushed reverence that only very small children truly have. I also remember being aware that I might hurt Treeva’s feelings if I seemed to be there only to see the doll’s house, and trying to show interest in Treeva herself out of a sense of politeness. But I wonder where these memories come from. They don’t seem like thoughts of a three or four year old mind, and yet I couldn’t have been any older.
I don’t remember much about the home I lived in before the age of five. It was on the corner of Nebo Road and I-don’t-know-what. There was a mulberry tree on one end of the house. There was a garden with a small shed out back. A woods bordered the property. There were huge pine trees around the neighbor’s house, and I often saw dragonflies there.
My bedroom at Nebo road had Cookie Monster-Blue carpet, and was the first door on the right down the hall from the living room. In that bedroom, I used to have recurring dreams. One was a nightmare wherein I would walk out into the living room and suddenly from all angles giant donut-like objects would roll towards me and try to smash me. They were colorful, and always rolled in the same pattern in the dream. They seemed to emerge like ghosts from within the furniture rather than hide behind or under it. I would run away from the donuts in a set pattern, finally escaping from the living room to find Mom doing dishes at the sink in the kitchen.
Did I have these dreams more often when I was sick? I remember having what Mom called “adrenaline attacks” when I was sick as a child. Always during these attacks, the room seemed to distort. Suddenly the door would seem to be hundreds of feet away, and I unable to move. I lay disconnected from my body in my bed above the blue carpet feeling painful fear until Mom came and with calm in her very presence.
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