I Was Born a Poor Blue Child

See also: A companion reflection on Jindai.us.

There are a lot of fours in this origin. Nothing mystical, as far as I know, but Grandma Kucharski was born in 1894, Mom on June 4, 1924, and me in 1964. Mom was 24 when she had my eldest brother, 34 when she had Ray, and 40 when she had me.

I was born a poor blue child.

My mom and dad met while she was working at some soda fountain of some sort, it’s unclear to me now, but I’m sure mom told me the name of her boss and maybe even the store. I don’t remember what he was doing as a professional at the time. He was a couple years her junior, but anyway, she was born in 1924, and I think he was 1926, but that might be just imagination and I don’t know for sure.

I suppose you could make up a typical story of love and two people getting together, but what I do know for sure is that he wanted 12 kids, and mom, well the way she told it, she was never really on board. But at the same time she did her best.

But what happened to her? Well, she was on a sort of 3-year cycle, somehow. She only got pregnant seven times total, over a 20-year span, and only had five children successfully.

She lost her first baby. I don’t know if it was stillborn or it was a miscarriage, but “lost my first son” was the phrasing that she evidently used. After Walter was born, he’s the oldest living kid, there is a story about how she used that phraseology so much that at some point Walter was lost in the woods because he was looking for his “lost” brother.

Three years after Walter was born came Barbara, and then there was another lost baby, stillborn, I think. That story was clearer this time. And then three and a half years after that was Raymond. Three years after that was Ginger. And three years after that was me.

So you can see mom was kind of trying to meet dad’s vision, but just not on his schedule. And by the time I was born, mom was 40, which even today is called geriatric pregnancy, and back in the 60s it was unheard of, and very unhealthy according to most doctors.

And somewhere between Ray’s birth and Ginger’s, there was a significant issue with her reproductive system, and the doctors performed a partial hysterectomy, and in this case one ovary was removed, and on the opposite side a fallopian tube was closed off and removed. So as you could imagine, an ovum would have to travel kind of freeform, outside of the ovary, all the way across the body into the next fallopian tube and then go in, unless something magical happens, like it just goes through the womb wall, which I think is doubtful, in order for her to get pregnant.

So Ginger was a miracle, frankly, and you know she loved that status. She enjoyed that status for the next three years. And in that time, dad evidently had a health scare of his own and was told that he could not father any more children. So imagine everyone surprised when mom got pregnant again in 1964. (Dad tried to yell at mom about infidelity, once, that I do have a small memory of. But mom simply pointed out how much I looked like him when he was a boy, and dad never brought it up again.)

And I was a long term baby. Evidently I went 10 months. She evidently got pregnant in February and I wasn’t born until late December. And mom even tells a story that she went into labor just before Christmas but refused to spend Christmas in the hospital, so just grit her teeth. And when she told the story she’d make this grunting noise, you know, with the face, and say, “No, not till after,” and so stopped the contractions, and I was born on the 27th.

And when I was born, there was a lot of concern. The umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, only not completely constricting my neck because it was going under one arm before it went around the neck, but I was a most decidedly unhealthy shade of blue human. And another story that came out of this was that color photography existed in hospitals, even in Rock Springs, Wyoming, in late 1964, but they chose to use black and white because they didn’t want everyone to have recorded for all time this unhealthy looking blue child.

Plus I was born with an abnormal amount of hair that you see in that picture, probably because I was a 10 month baby and none of it fell out. I didn’t have any teeth, which I somehow expected I did, but I asked mom specifically about that. She said no.

But they were concerned about the pallor. I seemed to be healthy. I was evidently quiet, did not scream a lot, except for the traditional slap-the-butt/cry thing they still did in the 60s. A priest was called in and mom pretty much waved him off because she’s been Methodist since forever, and the priest was unwelcome in her mind.

And I stayed that blue child for about four days, and then on the fifth day I started pinking up, and by the time mom left the hospital I was a healthy pink child. And this is, I don’t know, maybe an indictment on the medical system that nowadays pregnancy and birth is an outpatient procedure, but mom was in the hospital for five days. It might also be that it was a very difficult pregnancy. Mom actually never detailed that, but thinking about it, it must’ve been difficult.

Later in life, when I was about eight or nine, mom had a full hysterectomy. That was health related. Mom wasn’t worried about getting pregnant. It was some other issue. Very possibly related to my birth and the difficulty of it, but mom never said, and I don’t need the bad karma on me, so it’ll just stay unknown.

But there I was, I was literally blue when I was born, literal in the human sense, and I managed to make it through. Mine was an unlikely birth, medically difficult at best, and mom treated me as a miracle. I was the only one of the five kids that mom got to name herself. Dad named the others, and so she insisted on naming me. And to top that off, she named me after two kings, which she, of course, told me later. No pressure.

And let me tell you, Ginger was upset. She previously had been the miracle child, but then I came along and I was a miracle from both parents. I was the one named by mom. I was mom’s favorite, mom even said it out loud one time. I just got beat up for it. Ginger was aggressive, but that’s how I started my life, pretty much a miracle, but it wasn’t easy. A lot of obstacles had to be overtaken before and after, and that’s how my life has been. I will get there, but it might be tough.

Years later, I tried to make sense of this memory:
I Was Born a Poor Blue Child — essay version