"Never mind now", Mother always said to any question that she didn't want to answer. I used to wish, just once, that she would say something besides "You'll understand when you get older". What if I never got any older?
I often tried to have imaginary conversations with my mother, which, honestly, were sometimes more satisfying than the real ones. My mother was a very hard person to get to know. I suppose, these days, she would be referred to as a "very private person".
I knew the date I was born because every year I would have a birthday cake and presents on that date, but I didn't know much else about how I came into the world. I spent hours looking through my "baby" books and pretending that my mother was describing all of the events to me.
"It was 5:01 p.m. on September 8th, 1927", she would say, "and I had gone to the hospital about noon. Mrs. Armstrong, the nurse, got me all ready for your delivery...".
"What do you mean?" I would be very puzzled. Who was Mrs. Armstrong, and why would she have to get Mom "ready"? (The "ready" word I remembered from the one time I tried to ask her about things.) That's where the "never mind now" came in. I guess it was very hard for my mother to talk about some things.
In my imaginary conversation she would continue, "I was at Hotel Dieu hospital and Dr. Gallagher came to deliver you early in the afternoon."
I have a good imagination but it's not good enough when it comes to pretending that Mother was describing what really happened next, so I would just go back to reading about it in my baby books.
It seemed that I was born on a Thursday, and the "Weekday Prophecy" in one of the books said that Thursday's child is "solemn and sad"...funny, I didn't think I was sad, and I was not sure what solemn meant. It also seemed that I was in good shape. I weighed eight pounds and thirteen ounces and I was twenty inches long. (Lately I learned that I have shrunk three inches since I started out as a grown-up...could I be working my way back to twenty inches?)
My father made most of the entries in one of the books. His handwriting was really pretty, but sometimes it was kind of hard to read. I used to like to think about him sitting at a table or a desk entering a long list of all the gifts I received, and where I went on my first "outing". My mother received thirteen bouquets of flowers while in the hospital, all described in my book, (this time in my mother's handwriting!). I guess my birth was close to the time of Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic, because my first outing was on September 24th, to see "Colonel Lindbergh" at William Beaumont Hospital (on the grounds of nearby Fort Bliss), as a guest of Captain and Mrs. J. F. Hamner, according to one entry in my book. I wonder what "Lucky Lindy" thought of that twenty inch long bundle wrapped in a pink blanket! I also wonder who the Hamners were! I never heard my mother or father mention them...maybe I should have asked about them, but I never did.