Tilting

1982 My mother refused to tell people my due date because she thought babies should come out whenever they are ready. I was ready exactly when the doctors said I would be. The midwife, Lisa Goldstein, didn't have malpractice insurance because she saw no point. "What is anyone going to get?" she asked. "An old Volvo and a closet full of purple clothes." When I was a few months old, Madeline L'Engle signed a copy of A Swiftly Tilting Planet for me, which I don't remember. My first word was "book."
Me at 7 months.

1983 Greek Mythology is wonderful as a bedtime story. So is Dr. Seuss, of course. I learned how to walk at a hotel in Tennessee. Benny Bakes a Cake was my favorite book at the Greenville, TN library. My father read Goedel, Escher, Bach out loud. "What Papa talking about?" I asked. I watched Disney cartoons and called myself "Min-mouse." My mother was "Dong" and my father, of course, was "Goofy." He played the part well, building fortresses with wooden blocks and crying "You knocked my tower down" when I rearranged them horizontally.
October 1983.

1984 The first thing I did when we moved to Miami was get bitten by fire ants. My mother wanted to take my picture in front of our new house. "Stand right there on that little pile of sand," she said. Other than the fire ants, the only problem with Miami was that our house had no chimney for Santa to use. My father turned the background into a playground, complete with a rope swing and a hexagonal sandbox under the bottlebrush tree. My parents showed me how to kick the screen out of my window in case there was a fire and I had to get out of the house.
Miami House sandbox

1985 I got up early enough to watch TV before I went to school. Every morning I watched "Today's Special" while I ate breakfast. One of the main characters was a mannequin named Jeff who turned into a real person sometimes. I didn't like watching Scooby-Doo because the monsters gave me nightmares. Cyclops gave me nightmares too. So did earth machines. For a while I was afraid to leave the house because I thought bulldozers would get me. Even Jenny Wolf, my imaginary friend, couldn't save me from their monster-jaws.
no bulldozers here.

1986 I shocked Mildred, our neighbor, by announcing that the Indian food we were eating looked like horse saliva. I ate mostly sushi, especially salmon-skin temakis with raw quail eggs. I don't think it's legal to serve raw quail eggs now. I was the only kid in my preschool who knew how to use chopsticks. When I was sent to my room, I used my fire-escape window to get out. Once, while I spent the night at a friend's house, my parents painted my room pink.
Fourth Birthday Me with Popcorn

1987 The new floor in our Miami house was almost finished when my brother was born. My father and I worked on it every morning, barefoot, our shirts pulled off. At one point, I stepped in the glue we were using to stick the smooth wooden boards to the bumpy concrete. I sat on the bathroom counter as my father washed my foot off with lavender soap. We went to the hospital in the afternoons, where we hugged my mother and hoped my brother would live. When my brother finally came home from the hospital, my parents' friend, Jay cam to see him, wearing a surgeon's mask. My mother told him to stop being silly and take it off. I'm fairly certain someone explained it to me, but I can't be sure. Both grandmothers came to visit within a month of each other. That year I wore red Velcro hightops. I can't even find shoes like that now. My grandma Becky, the nice one, stopped at Toys 'R' Us on the way home one time and bought me a Popple because those were trendy in '87. I chose the purple one, "Shy Violet." At home, I stood outside and unwrapped it. I dropped it in the pool when I tried to turn it inside out. My best friend and I used to swim naked in the pool, never worried about perverts looking at us because there was a pink wall around my house, and Miami, FL was the safest place on earth.
Me with Grandma Becky, my brother (Correll), and the popple.
Jordana and me (in my princess dress)

1988 The program for my first solo violin concert, "Farewell to Florida," was printed on purple paper, matching the purple tie-dyed sundress I wore. I was six years old, too tall to wear my shimmery white princess dress. I played Twinkles and Bach; I played the minuets even though Miss Woodside told me never to perform my three newest pieces. My mother served angel food cake and strawberries and I hugged Rachel (my parents' best friend) good-bye three times, even though she continued to stay with me when my parents were gone for another month before we left. Jessica, Jordana and I had a sleepover party. Jordana's mother made us pineapple punch, which we drank out of glasses shaped like cats and Chinese ladies. Each drink had two little paper umbrellas in it, which I took and kept, pressing them between the pages of my new Unicorn journal so that they wouldn't break. We took turns throwing each other in the pool (Of course everyone had a pool. This was Miami.). We decided that Jessica's new pink velvet scrunchie wasn't supposed to get wet, and launched it onto the side of the pool, where it left a flourescent stain. The three of us slept in a tent that night, in Jordana's living room. I didn't even wonder why her new house was so huge or why their family had suddenly bought two new Mercedes.
After the concert
Jordana, Jessica, and me at our party.
drinking pineapple punch at the party
in the tent

1989 In Germany, we spent a month trying to piece together a puzzle of a white castle in the snow. Aunt Kathy and Uncle Phil visited us and finished it for us so we could finally stop eating dinner at the coffee table every night. In Germany, there wasn't a pool in my backyard because we lived in a yellow apartment building. I went to the neighborhood Catholic school. Class 2a had sport on Wednesdays, and from mid-December to the end of January we went swimming, changing into our flower-print one-pieces and pink swim caps in steamy shower rooms. TV was different in Germany. The commercials were all at the end of every hour, not interrupting the show every five minutes. There were no junky Saturday morning cartoons. I'm not sure why, but at one point someone who visited us was the cause of my father's spending several hours driving around looking for gay nightclubs, which apparently weren't very easy to find in a small German city. I'm sure this wasn't explained at the time, but I know about it now. The old lady across the hall told my mother that I wasn't allowed to play on the grass, I had to stay on the pavement. My mother told her, in particles of German, that in America children play on the grass all the time and it still grows, it's still green. "Not here," said the old lady. Even though my mother breastfed me until I was three and a half, my brother stopped nursing when he was barely twenty months old when my mother flew back to the States for Jay's funeral.
at the airport in Germany me milking a cow. yeah.

1990 I loved watching Pipi every Friday, but when we moved back to America I had a craving for the Care Bears and the Snorks, those wonderful cartoons that weren't as popular when the 80's were over. I begged my parents to order the Disney channel just so I could watch Care Bears. When they finally did, I realized that I was too old to enjoy such a nauseatingly moral show. New Kids on the Block were popular when I started going to the Anderson Montessori School. I was the only kid in my class who didn't want a Nintendo for Christmas; I still wanted books. I read Madeline L'Engle's book that year. She signed A Swiftly Tilting Planet for me when I was a few months old, but I don't remember that.