Blank Page

I turned 33 this past Friday - January 19th. I’ve always loved my birthday, and this year was no exception. I expected that 30 would be the birthday where I felt myself coming into my own, but it turned out to be 33. Go figure. I mention all this so that I can start down the road to the past. I started, as all of us do, with a birthday.

Before my mother ever thought of having me, she was pregnant with fraternal twin boys. She lost the pregnancy at the beginning of her third trimester. One boy was born dead, the other died shortly thereafter. I’ve never heard my father talk about the twins, but my mother always let us know we were her second and third pregnancies. I don’t think she’s ever gotten over the pain of the loss. My parents were supposed to be this special couple, with this special pregnancy. And instead of the two babies they expected, they had none.

When we were little, my brother and I used to think about those babies sometimes. I must have been about 6 and Paul about 4 when he said “if mommy had the twins, you’d never have been born.” I was quick to point out that she would have wanted to try for a girl, and I would have still come along. The reality of the implication stopped him in his tracks - he was the “spare” child.

I was due on January 13th, and didn’t arrive until six days after that. My father had made several predictions. He knew I would be a girl, and on the night of the 18th he was certain I would come the next day. At the time, my parents lived at the top of a steep hill in the Bronx. My father parked at the bottom of the hill that night because snow was predicted and he knew he wouldn’t be able to get the car down that hill. He may have been right about the car, but that wasn’t the whole equation. When my mother went into labor early in the morning, he looked out the window to see what the weather was like. The first thing he saw was an enormous Great Dane sliding down that hill on his belly, all four paws out to the sides.

So, now the car is at the bottom of the hill, which is lucky, but my mother, and therefore me, are still at the top. My father did what he had to do - he slid my mother down the hill by holding on to cars parked on the street. My father was in the delivery room, and of course I came out all squished (stuck in a uterus and traveling down something that is normally the size of a baby’s arm has an effect). One of the first things he said was “how soon can we get a nose-job”.

The story goes that the day I came into the world, it was covered in ice, but the day I went home for the first time was warm and sunny - spring came in winter for one day. My mother always tells it so that it sounds like I brought the sunshine. She forgets that we both had to overcome adversity first. Focusing on the positive is the way to go, but the process counts. The moral of this story is that after suffering, death, loss and literal treks through the snow, my mother thought the sun rose when I arrived.

Before I head into my past, I want to confront my present. Today I am the woman I have always imagined I would be. I have a good career on my own terms. I get to a be a little eccentric while walking among the normals without sticking out. In six months I am going to marry the man I love, and he tells me that his love for me is unconditional. My family, while not having proved to be right about most things, have proved to be my most loyal supporters. My brother is the only person who always knows when I’m lying, even if he sometimes lets me get away with it. So many people have accepted my love and shown love to me in return. I don’t smoke, I barely drink, I stay away from saturated fat and I’m down to one fabulous steaming cup of black liquid joy every morning. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m happy. I don’t know when that happened. Isn’t that just terribly boring though? Interesting people aren’t happy, and up until recently depressed wasn’t a problem for me. Now I wake up happy every day. I’ve never been happy before. For a long time I accepted that I was meant to be depressed and that the best I could do was live with it. I still get depressed from time to time, nothing is perfect, and nothing stays the same, but what I have experienced for the last year is beyond my expectation of what my life could be. For 32 years I alternated between repression, anger and depression. That’s a much better story than the one I could tell you of my life today.

I’ve always said I would never be narcissistic enough to write a blog. On the other hand, I’ve always wanted to write, and part of the impulse to write is for others to read what’s written. Nothing’s ever just for the art of it - people say it is but inside they’re going “look at me”! I promised my brother that the first writing I would ever show the world would be my own story. It’s not high level stuff, really, to write your own story. Some people’s stories are more interesting, or better written, but basically it’s the telling of the past. I already know my past, or at least I think I do. I remember all the details. I’m good with words. I should be able to write this then. See - not high level stuff. Still, other people think my story is unique. To me, it’s not. To me, it’s just the making of who I am, and is very ordinary. I don’t know anyone else’s life; I know this one. I’ll tell you about it, if you’ll give me a while. There’s a lot to say. It’ll be 33 years next week. I’ll sum up.