I’d like to tell you a story, one that my mother told me when I was younger about my own birth, one she told me it was true. But before I do, it’s probably worth mentioning that I once told this story (some time after my mother died) while my father was around, and he vehemently denied that it ever happened.
My parents were married in 1961. My mom wanted to have children, but by ‘65 or ‘66 it hadn’t happened yet. Doctors were consulted, and they ran some fertility tests on both my parents. The tests, so the story goes, indicated that both my parents had fertility problems and the expert advice was that the odds of them conceiving were so low that if they really wanted to be parents, they needed to consider adoption. With that advice, after a little while they chose to go through the adoption process and eventually became the parents of a nine-year-old boy.
This isn’t his story, though - but maybe some other time.
Then in ‘66, shortly after the adoption, mom became pregnant. Her doctor confimed it and congratulated her, telling her it was a miracle, encouraging her to count her blessings because of how unlikely it was. That December, she gave birth to a baby boy of her own body.
Not his story either; sorry.
My story, you see, begins just under ten years later. By this time, Mom was in her early forties. She’d started to feel like if she didn’t know any better she’d say she was pregnant again. Again she went to a doctor, again some tests were run, and again she was congratulated at defying the odds. It was time to get ready for another baby!
By this time though, she’d had much more life experience - mostly of the masculine variety. Married with two boys, then forced to move home to take care of her ailing father in the mid ’70s, she’d become fed up with living in what was still quite definitely a “man’s world” while perpetually surrounded by boys (of all ages). When she discovered she was pregnant again she just knew it was a little girl. Nobody needed to run any tests. She needed a little girl to bring a bit of balance to her life.
She even had the perfect name ready. As a teenage girl back in the early ’50s, my mom was enamored with a real-world fairy-tale princess story that made big news across the globe. The baby growing inside her was called Elizabeth. (Later in her life she would show me memorabilia from that time which she had held on to for so many years, including cards with photos from the coronation of the young Queen.)
In early June of ‘76, she went into labor, and it wasn’t easy. It dragged on for a very long time. (Yes folks, I was even late to my own birth.) Eventually hospital staff decided on a Caesarean procedure and Mom was given some pretty serious pain relief. The way she described it to me, I think the phrase “recreationally serious” might be appropriate.
Fast-forward: it’s mid-procedure, the baby’s safely extracted and the cord is cut. After a once-over to ensure that there were no emergency issues, a nurse presents Mom with her new child. And Mom, high as a kite (and maybe twice as desperate) cuddles the baby and coos “Hi Elizabeth…”
Around which time Dad gently reaches down and touches her, admonshing her. “No, Joanne. It’s a boy.”
“Uh-huh… I love you, Elizabeth… Yes I do…”
So there’s my story, as my Mom told it to me anyway; for the first five minutes of my life, my name was Elizabeth.
Except of course, my father insisted that no such thing ever happened.
Thing is folks, all the best made-up stories I know have some kernel of truth at their core. So maybe Dad was right, and it’s simply not true. Or maybe Mom felt like she had to exaggerate things and tell a silly, absurd, and funny story that didn’t quite actually happen as a way to try to explain a dead-serious feeling that definitely did happen. Something she couldn’t really talk about while being serious. A soul-crushing disappointment that no parent could ever try to explain to their child in honest terms, because of the terrible damage it might cause.
But here’s another thing: much as parents don’t always see it, sometimes, deep down, their kids just know.
Don’t call me daughter; not fit to be
the picture kept will remind me— Pearl Jam, “Daughter”