1949- the Beginning

I was born in New Orleans in 1949. The weather was warm, though it was winter. I don't know if 1949 was unusually warm, but I know New Orleans had several Christmases in my childhood where playing outside in shorts was just fine. I was born on a Tuesday in December, to a woman I only met once- during the first days after I was born. I was about 7 weeks premature, and put into an isolette with 100% oxygen. there were no tiny IV lines, so, like they do with cats, they put normal saline with dextrose between my shoulder blades and let it absorb in. My birth mother, a woman named Sarah, was 5'3" tall and weighed all of 100 pounds. She wore a size 4.5 in a shoe. She was fine boned and had been frail all of her life. She was married to my father- a man I got to meet much later in life. But they had decided to go to the Volunteers of America maternity home and have my mother give me away. I'll never know if it was a good decision or a bad one. Eighteen months later, my mother had another baby, a boy named Greg. And 18 months after that, she had her last child, a girl she named Candace. She raised them in Florida. But she was told that I was frail- tiny and weak. That I didn't look like I would make it, and if I did, well, I might be handicapped. According to the records from the Volunteers of America, she wept. She saw me twice and cried each time. But she left anyway. I have no bad feelings over this because that would be pointless. She did what she had to do. And I survived. I left Touro Infirmary's nursery at the age of 32 days- one day for each week I had been inside my mother. I was put into the Volunteers of America's nursery for what was to become six months. And the last note in the record before I left says "She has made remarkable progress. She has grown into a pleasant and happy baby who eats well and seems to have surpassed all the maturational milestones despite her prematurity". Someone there loved me and I will never know who. I had none of the signs of being an institutionalized infant. I slept well, ate well, and laughed a lot. I wish I had known the nurses who loved me for 6 months. They were the best mothers I had. And I thank them.