CHAPTER I:
WITH A BANG: THE BEGINNING
In 1968 Birmingham, Alabama was a harsh place for anyone who was different from what was considered the “norm”. If you were a race other than white, a religion other than Christian, a political affiliation other than Republican or a gender other than the one you were assigned with at birth you were a pariah and a monster. You were someone to be feared. Back then, and still today I imagine, Birmingham is a harsh place for a child that was different who did not conform to societies perfect cut outs.
June 19, 1968, one of those imperfect cut outs arrived on the scene with all the fanfare of a July 4th celebration. That cut out was me. I was born on my parents’ 3rd wedding anniversary around 5PM just in time for dinner and the evening news, literally. My mother went into labor around noon and this being her first pregnancy she was not really sure if she was in labor or not. For this reason, she decided not to call my father at work. When my father got home from work my mother was so close to having me, he threw her into the back seat of the car and sped off to the hospital.
When I say “sped” I mean he drove like a madman who had just entered an important NASCAR race of a lifetime and Bobby Allison was closing in. Needless to say all this commotion woke up most of the local yokels from their coffee & donuts and caused them to follow suite. We “arrived” at the hospital with Birmingham’s finest on our coat tails, a news crew in tow and the top of my head showing. My father hopped out of the car and ran into the hospital ignoring all the cops running up to him to ask him why in tarnation was he in such a hurry. “My wife is having a baby! My wife is having a baby!” my father yelled.
Nurses for the most part are really used to over hysterical first-time fathers, especially back in 1968, running in, screaming obscenities and voicing a baby emergency. In most cases the father is over exaggerating, and the baby will not grace the hospital with its presence for at least another 12 hours or longer. Most nurses know this and act accordingly. This was not the case this time. It really was an emergency, and the baby really was coming.
My father grabbed the first nurse he found on his way into the emergency room doors and literally drug her out to the car telling her, “My wife is having a baby!”. She was less than impressed and sloughed up to the back door of the car, looked in, screamed and ran back inside. She grabbed the first white coat that just happened to be walking by and drug him out to the car. They gave my father a sheet to stand there and hold as the doctor literally caught me in his lab coat. I arrived with a bang! Meanwhile the cops were trying to decide if they should press charges against my father or congratulate him. They decided on the latter. That may have been my 15 minutes of fame, but I personally don’t think so. It’s yet to come.
For obvious reasons I do not know much about what happened while I was a baby, so in the spirit of telling as much of the story as possible I will jump around to events that I know happened or ones that were told to me by other family members. I will try to manage to keep these events in chronological order as much as possible.
For the first 6 months of my life my mother battled with alcoholism. When I was 6 months old she stopped abruptly. She would not tell me why. She would only hint to something happening at my bath time and leave it at that. I suspect that she tried to harm me in some way, and it made her realize that drinking was not working out for her or me for that matter. I feel that it’s connected with my fear of having water splashed on my face, specifically in my eyes. As long as I can remember I will go absolutely ballistic when water is splashed into my eyes for any reason even if its medically necessary as we would all find out 11 years later. As much as it pains me, I feel that in my mother’s postpartum depression she tried to drown me in the bathtub that day.
In that first 6 months my father also made a decision. Like my mother my father also battled with the bottle but to a much larger degree. He was a full-blown alcoholic and had been for as long as I can remember. Faced with the possibility that I might not be his kid my father struggled with a decision to stay in the marriage or get a divorce. Under the circumstances I really don’t blame him. In the end he said he stood next to my crib one late night and made the decision to stay and to accept that he was responsible for me and I was his kid without any paternity tests. Given the events that happened in my life after that, I’m not really sure if I’m happy or sad about that decision.
My mother came from a strict household where she was burdened with being the oldest. Most people will tell you if there are siblings, parents slack off with each kid until you get to the baby and they are out of control. More is expected of the oldest child than the middle or youngest. This is just human nature because as a parent with your first child you want to do everything right and you want everything to be absolutely perfect. Then by the second child it’s like, the baby will survive if the dog licked the binky for 20 seconds. By the third kid they actually share the binky with the dog and so on. You get the picture.
Just to clarify, abuse of all kinds plagued both of my parents. Honestly, they probably were not fit to be parents at all. My grandmother (Mee Maw), according to my mother, was an abusive alcoholic. She could be mean, stubborn and judgmental. She was verbally, mentally & physically abusive. My grandfather (Paw Paw) back then worked a lot. He was not home like most fathers back in the 1940’s & 1950’s. My mother told me once that my Mee Maw beat her with a hairbrush because it’s what she had in her hand and my mother had worn her nice Sunday dress outside to play. My Mee Maw did not believe in a “young lady” having play clothes, therefore my mother was always getting into trouble when she tore or soiled her “nice clothes”.
My father grew up in a slightly different type of abusive situation that also involved neglect and sexual abuse. My father had a younger sister who is 9 years younger than him. Every night when his father would come home from work my grandmother would round up both kids and rush them into their bedrooms for the rest of the night before he came inside the house. My grandfather did not want to see them, talk to them or have anything to do with them. She would feed the kids before he got home. My grandmother would step and fetch for him and cater to his every whelm ignoring the children completely until the next morning.
My father was sexually abused by his paternal grandmother. I’m unsure on how many times it happened because according to my mother he did not visit her very often, but once is one time too many in my opinion. When I was 3 years old something happened that my mother would not go into. It involved me & my father, and it was the reason she took me everywhere with her and rarely left me at home with my father unless she had no choice.
My father was a stingy, abusive, narcissistic, asshole. When I was a baby, I had a few medical issues that plagued me one being my allergy to milk and formula. I had to have a special kind of milk that you could only buy by the case back then. The case would usually last the entire month, but it was a costly $30. One morning before my father went to work my mother asked him for the money to get my milk. He knew how much a case was. He also knew that you could only buy this milk as a case and not single units. He left $1 on the dresser and left for work. When my mother found it she went into hysterics and called my Mee Maw. My Mee Maw came to the house, picked me & my mom up and took us to the grocery store. She bought the formula & groceries for the house.
