First Day Home

I was born just before Christmas.  My parents brought me home on Christmas Day.  We went to the house of my maternal grandparents first.  No one here remembers these events.  But recently our mother shared this information.  I am still unsure why she told us, and her manner was so matter-of-fact, at times amused by the events she was describing.  I do not know if it is true, I can't remember that far back, however, it matches the things we do know about our past, and doesn't seem inconceivable. I do not know if some things were made up or altered, I do not disbelieve it, even though I wish I could.   I write this now, because there is a need, to understand and accept.  Anyway, this is the story my mother told me, of our first contact with the outside world .  The one that would be our home for a lot of years.

It was late morning when my father picked my mother and us up from the hospital.  I had been fed early that morning but my mother had chosen not to feed me since, supposedly wanting to wait 'til she got home.  So by the time my father arrived I was getting hungry and grizzly.  When we got back to my grandparents home, my grandmother was already drunk.  She drank sherry, coffee cups full of it, and had been drinking all morning.  My brother, then almost three, rushed to my mother demanding her attention.  So my mother dumped me on the table, she laughed when she told me that, comparing it to throwing down a bag of groceries that had gotten too heavy to carry.  My mother then took my brother into her lap cuddling him and talking about Santa, as I lay alone and wiggling on the table.  My mother described me as a beached fish trying to get back to the water I was squirming so much.  Whether it was my movement, or because the neighbours were there and she wanted to show me to them, my grandmother decided to pick me up.  sitting back in her chair she removed my blanket and clothing till I was lying there naked.   "See I have my first granddaughter" she announced.  Then she spread my legs apart and used her finger to expose my genitals, as if to prove to them I was indeed female.  My mother said everyone was very amused by this.  that it was funny and in no way out of the ordinary.  My grandmother continued to play with me for a while.  But not in the normal way someone plays with a child, instead she stroked and prodded my genitals, until she grew hungry enough to realise a dinner was being cooked.  I was left on the chair naked and uncovered as the family sat down for their christmas meal.  I was left along for the rest of the day, neither held or spoken to until my father subtly suggested I could be fed.

I was 8 days old and that was my introduction to the family.