INTRO
Two days ago, I began what will be a series of posts to the blog meant to explore and share my life's stories (or at least some particular ones), in the hopes that they will provide illumination and healing to any shame I still carry, as well as offering lessons and perspectives to others that may prove helpful. So, here is the first installment.
THE ENTRANCE WAS A ROUGH ONE
As far as I understand it, Catholicism espouses the notion that, from the moment we're born, we are sinners. We come into this life, as the infamous "they" say (at least the Catholic "they's"), already being damaged goods. Were I Catholic, this concept of Original Sin would have long ago helped me make much more sense of the pervasive sense of shame that I have grappled with as long as I can remember. I'd have been able to pin it all on the fact that – in God's eyes – I was screwed from the outset, thus absolving myself of any responsibility for true, damaging flaws that contributed to the high level of distress so common to my childhood and beyond.
Since I don't have that theological "out," it seems to have started pre-entrance.
My mother, Vickie, and my father, Jim, had been in what was most likely a pretty impetuous teen marriage, which began in 1956, when they were 19 and 21 respectively. I have no idea of whether or not I was planned, but what I found out in my mid-40s was that they had already separated and were heading for divorce when they discovered that I was coming along. In an effort to provide me with some sort of stable family life, they decided to move back in together and attempt to hold the relationship together. While my Mom seemed very clear about, and was somehow proud to share, the fact that I was conceived in the back of a '57 Chevy, to the connubial strains of Johnny Mathis, I never had a definitive sense that I was planned or wanted. I can certainly imagine that, at worst, my impending arrival was very inconvenient. I can only guess that, since my mom was so young, so self-obsessed, and extremely prone to a great deal of fear-laden anxiety, the pregnancy was difficult. I can imagine that a lot of the energy of her mixed feelings and fear was energy that I got to feel a great deal whilst gestating.
Back in the 50's, there wasn't yet the consciousness of the potential damage that could be done by smoking and drinking during pregnancy. My mother was a chronically lonely and needy person, and in her teens and early 20's, smoking and drinking were things she did a lot. There is no way I'll ever know if her smoking and drinking had anything to do with my birth defect, but my entrance into this life was extremely traumatic.
Birth is no picnic to begin with, if you stop to think about it; at least in 1958, it wasn't a picnic. Before the days of water births, after 9 months of having it nice and cushy, warm, wet, and on a 24-7 feed bag from your Mom, you get tossed and pushed out of your happy little home into a really loud, blazingly bright room, with your mother screaming bloody murder (unless she'd had an epidural, which my Mom didn't). How welcoming is that? However, I had an extra disadvantage. I was born with a bi-lateral cleft palate and lip. In fact, as my mother told me, it was such a severe cleft, there was minimal soft tissue around my mouth and nose, to the point where I had no visible nose…just exposed bone. Because of this condition, I was unable to nurse and wasn't placed with my mom on that first night. I was placed in the nursery, under constant supervision by nurses. The critical first moments of bonding that we now know are so essential to an infant's sense of well-being was not mine to have. Whatever trauma that that was for me, in and of itself, at the time, it was nothing compared to what was going to happen the following day.
