Yes.
Yes, as a matter of fact someone did drop me on my head as a child.
“There’s something I’ve always remembered and I don’t know what it is. It’s black and there’s something very cold in my throat?,” ” I asked in my early twenties.
“I didn’t know you remembered that,” my mother said. (link 2 maren Name) “ you almost died.”
“I don’t really remember - I just remember something very cold in my throat and black-”
Nothing but black. And warmth. Not the type of warmth that is about or at all concerned with temperature . Nor was it the warmth of good manners. No the not at all frightening while all encompassing black was accompanied by a very particular warmth and quiet.
Quiet, not all quiets are the same. There is the so quiet you could hear pin drop-
-because you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And too the quiet of absence, the absence of any man made mechanized sound. The near absolute quiet of being under water. The roaring quiet of tension so thick it is as if two conch shells were placed over ones ears. Absolute waveless stillness- it was that kind of quiet in the black warmth but a lump of cold in my throat?
I always wondered but hadn’t bothered asking until my early twenties. For just like my name the question might well be a secret Martha had been keeping and had recently been purging.
“It was summer very hot, unusually hot for Minnesota” my mother said over the phone “we had just moved, no air conditioning - so I gave you an ice cube to suck on. You choked, turned blue -the phone hadn‘t been on yet- we had just moved…”.
‘That explains the lump of cold,’ I thought finally being able to place this odd recurrent sense memory.
“I was three months pregnant- couldn’t call an ambulance, the neighbors were an acre away so I couldn’t run for help.“
I eventually did the math, both sets of tabulations. I was twenty months old and M(om/artha) was three or four months pregnant with my younger sister .
“So I picked you up by the ankles and shook you up and down hard until the ice cube came out or you would have died.”
That last part was more information, more information than even she knew was telling me and much, much more than I need to know.
For she had been so proud and self congratulatory “I did the can- can with you till I was eight months pregnant,” Martha had said. The conversation had been about eth benefits of exercise and the recent medical research announced and being disseminated: better for baby and moms to stay active during pregnancy. Martha had sat in the driver’s seat of the Volvo and patted herself on the back. For she had done just that, stayed active, did the can-can into her eigth month, until she could do it no longer when she was pregnant with me. Even though that went against her doctor’s advice. it wa sthe opposite of what she and most women were told. She hadn’t rested and taken it easy. On the other hand 20months later while I turned blue choking the acre was too far, too much exertion, too much of a risk. But Martha had shared these two truths so far out of range of each other, six years or more that I know she never really knew what she’d said, revealed.
Was the child in her already more valuable than I? Yes. Did she follow the rules and medical advice when it cam to that child? Yes, for running to the next door neighbor just at or after her first trimester was far too great a risk. Whereas with me doing the can-can into her third trimester , until she just couldn’t manage it anymore had made perfect sense.
I was the middle child though most records will tell you I was the eldest but there was another who came before me. Him she drowned in alcohol, by her own account. Me she drowned in milk and tried to shake loose. By the third pregnancy I guess she’d decided to give motherhood a try.
“You almost died,” she said of that re-current memory of death and ice and peace “You cried…stuttered for a couple of weeks- because you’d been scared.”
Except I wasn’t scared. I remember how I felt in the that black warm blanket of quiet.
I’m sure I did cry but I suspect it would have been being back that frightened me. Back to quiets that weren’t quiet at all, frightening darkness-es and lights, scalding warmths and cold- but not in my throat.
The contrast would have been what made me cry. The contrast.
SO yes someone did drop on my head as a child.
After which I had evident speech difficulties(stuttering) and balance problems for several months but children are in a state of neuroplasticty. There was a hold over was in the visual center, the same center which would again be bruised but this time by the force of a baby grand landing on my head, twice. A visual problem involving tracking and (essentially) aperture/depth of field adjustment. Worse because it wasn’t the first time?
I do the eye-brain exercises I did as a child again? Yep, and hope that maybe, maybe some day I’ll get to be like all the other kids.
Yes, as a matter of fact someone did drop me on my head as a child.
“There’s something I’ve always remembered and I don’t know what it is. It’s black and there’s something very cold in my throat?,” ” I asked in my early twenties.
“I didn’t know you remembered that,” my mother said. (link 2 maren Name) “ you almost died.”
“I don’t really remember - I just remember something very cold in my throat and black-”
Nothing but black. And warmth. Not the type of warmth that is about or at all concerned with temperature . Nor was it the warmth of good manners. No the not at all frightening while all encompassing black was accompanied by a very particular warmth and quiet.
Quiet, not all quiets are the same. There is the so quiet you could hear pin drop-
-because you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
And too the quiet of absence, the absence of any man made mechanized sound. The near absolute quiet of being under water. The roaring quiet of tension so thick it is as if two conch shells were placed over ones ears. Absolute waveless stillness- it was that kind of quiet in the black warmth but a lump of cold in my throat?
I always wondered but hadn’t bothered asking until my early twenties. For just like my name the question might well be a secret Martha had been keeping and had recently been purging.
“It was summer very hot, unusually hot for Minnesota” my mother said over the phone “we had just moved, no air conditioning - so I gave you an ice cube to suck on. You choked, turned blue -the phone hadn‘t been on yet- we had just moved…”.
‘That explains the lump of cold,’ I thought finally being able to place this odd recurrent sense memory.
“I was three months pregnant- couldn’t call an ambulance, the neighbors were an acre away so I couldn’t run for help.“
I eventually did the math, both sets of tabulations. I was twenty months old and M(om/artha) was three or four months pregnant with my younger sister .
“So I picked you up by the ankles and shook you up and down hard until the ice cube came out or you would have died.”
That last part was more information, more information than even she knew was telling me and much, much more than I need to know.
For she had been so proud and self congratulatory “I did the can- can with you till I was eight months pregnant,” Martha had said. The conversation had been about eth benefits of exercise and the recent medical research announced and being disseminated: better for baby and moms to stay active during pregnancy. Martha had sat in the driver’s seat of the Volvo and patted herself on the back. For she had done just that, stayed active, did the can-can into her eigth month, until she could do it no longer when she was pregnant with me. Even though that went against her doctor’s advice. it wa sthe opposite of what she and most women were told. She hadn’t rested and taken it easy. On the other hand 20months later while I turned blue choking the acre was too far, too much exertion, too much of a risk. But Martha had shared these two truths so far out of range of each other, six years or more that I know she never really knew what she’d said, revealed.
Was the child in her already more valuable than I? Yes. Did she follow the rules and medical advice when it cam to that child? Yes, for running to the next door neighbor just at or after her first trimester was far too great a risk. Whereas with me doing the can-can into her third trimester , until she just couldn’t manage it anymore had made perfect sense.
I was the middle child though most records will tell you I was the eldest but there was another who came before me. Him she drowned in alcohol, by her own account. Me she drowned in milk and tried to shake loose. By the third pregnancy I guess she’d decided to give motherhood a try.
“You almost died,” she said of that re-current memory of death and ice and peace “You cried…stuttered for a couple of weeks- because you’d been scared.”
Except I wasn’t scared. I remember how I felt in the that black warm blanket of quiet.
I’m sure I did cry but I suspect it would have been being back that frightened me. Back to quiets that weren’t quiet at all, frightening darkness-es and lights, scalding warmths and cold- but not in my throat.
The contrast would have been what made me cry. The contrast.
SO yes someone did drop on my head as a child.
After which I had evident speech difficulties(stuttering) and balance problems for several months but children are in a state of neuroplasticty. There was a hold over was in the visual center, the same center which would again be bruised but this time by the force of a baby grand landing on my head, twice. A visual problem involving tracking and (essentially) aperture/depth of field adjustment. Worse because it wasn’t the first time?
I do the eye-brain exercises I did as a child again? Yep, and hope that maybe, maybe some day I’ll get to be like all the other kids.
