Le Djinn Arrive!

Can't say if the French is accurate. Djinns can be female or male, and I am female, but somehow a "La" in front of "Djinn" doesn't quite work. So for purposes of this introduction to my existence some 50 plus (I shall not give the exact date), I title it comme ca.

I was not born in a log cabin. It wasn't that long ago. But I was born in a now defunct maternity hospital, Mt. Eden, just off the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, let's see, I always say 9, but it was just shy of 8 years of my parents' marriage.

If one can become a citizen of a country by virtue of the timing of one's conception, then, I am Canadian, specifically, a Montreal Canadian.

Alors, a digression: My father had some army reserve thing to be accomplished north of the NY border. My mother, in what must have been a rare moment of spontaneity, agreed to go with him. And they were joined by her sister, Terry, and brother-in-law, Frank. They drove, likely in my uncle's convertible Buick.

There may have been some sight seeing, but mostly, it was nightclubbing, places like "Ruby Foo's". I believe I have inherited a swizzle stick from one such evening.

There are pictures, slides, actually, memorializing the good time had by all, my aunt, my uncle, my mother, elegantly dressed in black, her favorite color. Each time they were shown, I was reminded of my beginning, that very weekend.

Naturally, there was the question. "Why did it take nearly 8 years for me to 'come along'?" I asked my father this well into adulthood, with the follow up, "Was I wanted?". My father was a master at the ambiguous response. "You were not 'not wanted' in that sense." What? This double negative explanation was all I got, besides the intimation, more than intimation, that during the weekend in Canada, my mother experienced another rarity in her way of being. She was relaxed. Ok, 'nuff said. Well, truthfully, that's all I know, whether it is enough or not.

My mother, I am told, did not show. What that meant, practically, is that I had too little room in the womb and came out with a slightly twisted leg syndrome, easily corrected by special "shoe brace" type things worn for a few months.

My father told me that when he saw me, he thought I was pretty bad looking, a mass of black hair (all babies have black hair) and yes, I looked like the old man that they say babies tend to upon their arrival in the world. You can judge for yourself. That's me, above.

Home I came after my mother spent the then requisite week in the hospital (oh, the good old days when you could stay in the hospital after major things like child birth), to 1596 Townsend Avenue, the Bronx, New York 10452, CY9-7549. I would spend the next 16 years of my life in the little one bedroom apartment that resembled, more than anything else, a nightclub, with its browns, and ambers, and mirrors and bookcases.

And, it would turn out, that my father was more equipped as a mother, than was my mother. It was he, having read the au currant books on child rearing, like Dr. Spock, responding to my cries. My mother, damaged in some way that we'd never understand, had difficulty in the nurturing role. What she did do, from the moment I came into the world, was to instill in me that I could be whatever I wanted. No one had done that for her.