Almost

I was 19 days shy of being a bastard. My parents always told me that I was the product of a “blessed union of love in marriage.” They also told me they have been strict Catholics since the day they were born. This leads me to believe that a shotgun is where the “blessed union” part comes in when a pregnant 17-year-old marries a 21-year-old. No? Then the only other alternative is that I am a miracle baby. With my parents’ strong Catholic belief, sex before marriage was obviously out of the question—or is it just birth control that’s unheard of at the Vatican? Going along with the former, I conclude that I was conceived, carried, and delivered in the span of 19 miraculous days.
Imagine the delight of a girl, who almost graduated from high school, and a boy, who spends the rest of his days working at a boat factory to make ends meet, welcoming their beautiful pink bundle into the world! I’m sure my arrival brought tears to many an eye, but I’m doubtful they were tears of joy or celebration.
The odds were stacked against me from the day I was conceived. I can look through my mom’s old photo albums and see her striking poses at six, seven, and eight months pregnant, slamming beers and smoking cigarettes. To this day, whenever I look through those photos, my brother snidely comments, “It sure explains a lot, Stace.”
The thing is, he doesn’t realize how close things were to being different.
Apparently, not as a result of the drinking and smoking, I had to spend several weeks down at “The U” when I was born because I was hydrocephalic—I had water on my brain.
It looks like I’m somewhat of a double miracle. Not only was I almost a bastard, but I was almost a retarded bastard.

Despite my parents being married at such a young age, they thought having one child wasn’t enough and decided to have my brother Jesse a few years later, my sister Sarah a few years after that, and my other sister Jenny a few years after that. It’s hard for me to imagine that my mom had four children when she was my age now.
My mom was a homemaker until just a few years ago and gracefully grew into it from as far back as I can remember. She was a very traditional wife and mother—cooking, cleaning and caring constantly. She did them all, and still does, better than anyone I know. She was the primary caregiver during my childhood, since my dad was always working. Her method of discipline was “the stick.” The stick was a wooden kitchen spoon, about eight inches long. When fights between siblings erupted, she shouted, “I’m getting the stick!” In our younger years, it was a threat. That eventually changed.
Around 10 years of age, I was in a hair-pulling match with my brother. We were warned with the stick, but chose to ignore. A few minutes more of screaming and mom came stomping, spoon in hand, proceeded by my brother and I taking off through the other side of the living room. This made my mom even angrier and scared us—or so we thought. I had never actually been hit by the stick and wasn’t sure how it would feel, but always imagined it to be very painful. When my mom finally caught me by a hard yank of the ponytail, I realized I was as tall as she was and bigger as well.
When the spoon hit my behind, I squealed “nooo!” but started laughing as it came out. She walked out of the room without another word. I knew she was turning me over to the wolves. When I say the wolves, I mean my dad.

My dad was a workaholic growing up. I don’t remember him much from my childhood, except when he yelled at us. Once a week he stayed home with us while my mom had her “night out” to go grocery shopping. I dreaded those nights because I walked on eggshells. He was like a volcano waiting to erupt. If I saw toys on the living room floor and heard my dad’s footsteps coming, I would be sure to quickly move the toys aside, knowing my dad would step on one, hurt his foot and spend the remainder of the evening screaming at us.
I don’t think he realized how much energy he wasted being loud and angry. All he had to do was snap his fingers and point and I ran to my room crying. This further escalated into, “Quit crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!” I always wondered why parents said that, because it never worked. It only made kids (me) cry even more.
Upon growing up and getting to know my dad’s family more intimately, I began to understand why he is the way he is. His dad committed suicide when my dad was a child, leaving my grandma with three young boys. My grandma then went through marriage after marriage, soon adopting the secret nickname “Grandma Liz.”
Because my parents were so young when I was born, our relationship has always been one more categorized as friendship, rather than parent/child. I protected them from a lot of my childhood that I knew they weren’t prepared to handle as parents. This really is where the miracle comes into play I suppose, that a near retarded bastard, such as myself, could be sitting here typing this for others to read. Although, when my mom reads this, I suspect “the stick” may see the light of day again.