31 Day Challenge Day 2: She Is Born

I was born in Edina, Minnesota, on Tuesday, February 24, 1970. It was a bitter, cold day, and my mom and dad barely made it to the hospital due to icy roads. Waiting at home with the sitter was Tommy Q, my older brother by just 14 months.  People referred to us as the Italian Twins, a term used to describe babies born less than two years apart. For most of our childhood, we were like twins, and we did everything together.

My mom was twenty-two, and my dad was twenty-five. They had met New Year's Eve, 1965 at a party in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, my dad's hometown. My dad had been back in the states for a few months, following two tours to Vietnam with the Navy. My mom was born in Winona, MN, and was attending Mount Mercy University as a library science major. Like everything my parents would do later in their lives together, their meeting and subsequent dating were dysfunctional and chaotic. What started on the eve of a new year, set events into motion my young parents could not have dreamed up if they tried. 

I was an unplanned and unwanted pregnancy. I learned these facts when I was 12 in a therapy session I endured during mom's third attempt at rehab. And just so mom got her point across, she lamented Roe v. Wade coming into effect too late to help her. To be fair, my brother was only five months old when my mom got pregnant with me. Married for a little over a year, my parents were already in serious trouble. My mom told me later, near the end of her life that she was happy that I was a girl, so at least I have one good memory of my birth story.

My parents took me home to their little apartment in Eagan, Minnesota on Yankee Doodle Road. Ironically, in 1998, Stephen and I would move into the condominiums directly across the street from my first home with our own little family. My mom was very ill, and we moved from San Diego to Eagan to care for her. I was a very needy baby, and my parents never tired of reminding me that throughout the years. I have very few pictures of my first year, and I've always felt a disconnect from my baby self because of it. I don't trust my parent's version of events, which leaves me often imagining different versions of my first year.

We stayed on Yankee Doodle Road for barely a year. Despite having a marriage that was wrong for all of us, my parents chose to stay together. My mom wanted to leave and return home to Winona, where her parents and siblings still lived in her childhood home. Mom shared this with me years later, and when I asked her why, her answer startled me. "You reap what you sow Emily, don't ever forget that." This answer left me feeling hollow and sad. It reminded me how bleak things must have looked that cold February day for my mom. The day she had a daughter she didn't know if she wanted, living in a marriage she wanted even less.